Bent and Beat

come and gone like a fleeting storm

that blows in from the east and rattles your world

before fading into your next day

nostalgia is worse than being forgotten

nostalgia for the masks that you wore so well

but little for the face beneath them

you were as alien to as the wish to be

and as earthborne as they pretend they're not

they know little of

flatness, fields, and february

expanses of fertile nothingness

cornfield dreams and co-op realities

of feeling the pain (not the pride) of being the outcast

they have complicated your truth and mine as well

fools like i have allowed them, to unworthily try to drape themselves with your mantle

to be pretenders to a throne that never was

just an old velvet chair you dragged from the barn to midtown

worse than that

i have forgotten myself the debt i owe you

the things in me that are you

that i hide away, those real natural parts of our shared heritage and experience

those some things they try to wear as seamlessly

as the masks you wore

but they don't even know which words where yours

and which were overdubbed shoved into your already dead mouth

i wore your glasses

they carried me for miles

past marfa

past griffith park

past paso robles (with that song in my head)

until just south of a westernmost pier

the ocean washed them away

swiftly

and the memories followed, slow but steadily

as the surf erodes the shore

for that i'm sorry

and i will pull my memories of you around me

to kindle my dreams

keep my intentions from being snuffed by the wind