there is black at the end of every miracle
and the base of every rainbow where the colors drip
and mix in the sickest sort of chorus.
color and rain and atmospheric moisture,
you kneeled under a rainbow and prayed;
water in your alveoli paint in your bronchi,
you inhaled all your art
to make yourself prettier on the inside -
{but that doesn't work when everything you paint
is uglier than anything else:
broken ***** girls
and rusted knives and rotten fruit -
how can you expect to be beautiful with a rotting apple
for a heart?
you're an abandoned orchard,
falling to seed when you once fed a nation,
dry earth dead trees rotten rotten fruit
remember your glory days and cry}
you were a blackbird but time plucked all your feathers
you were a blackbird but now, oh,
with all your yellow blood,
canary in a coal mine you knew it was too late.
you were the first to be tragic.
the first to choke on coaldust -
the road to el dorado is paved in coal
and all the gold is smudged in black from the men who sought riches
but brought with them misery.
canary in a coal mine you died in el dorado,
canary in a coal mine you died in a city
of your blood.
there is black at the end of every miracle and the beginning of every tragedy
but if all goes well it'll be all
blues and reds
by the end of the story.
drowned and bled,
primary colors for your finale.
you knew these colors would be your end, blue and red blue and red
and you sought out yellow,
canary in a coal mine, ***** el dorado,
yellow hope yellow fear
primary colors like building blocks,
carbon the base of the universe
blueredyellow the base of the paintings you inhaled,
blueredyellow and carbon coal.
you were a blackbird and blueredyellow in the reflections of your wings,
oily rainbows on your back
primary colors in your lungs,
and all your gaunt thoughts envelop you you never should have tried
to be beautiful -
a tragic hero can only do so much before falling apart
a tragedy can only go so far before it becomes comedy.
you inhaled all your paintings and they live in your lungs
live and rot and cry because you never painted happiness
{it's hard to paint something that doesn't exist,
it's hard to paint something you've never known -
abandoned orchard you rot beside the highway and cry.
tell yourself happiness doesn't exist,
cause that's better than knowing
it's there
but you're just
not
worthy}
blackbird canary-blood apple-heart
do you even know who you are anymore?
all the broken ***** girls in your lungs
and the crying boys in your mind -
you never knew who you were,
fragmented as you are -
all your masks are just
sick echoes of the parts of you that wouldn't burn,
all your paintings are just sick echoes of the parts of you
scattered over el dorado.
gather yourself up,
knit yourself back together -
make your nest in a flak suit and sleep dreaming of you.
the coal burns around you and you don't stop singing
you will not be the only tragedy in this mine.