Damaged trust and marriage schemes
Held hostage in each others' dreams
Pinned to walls but flailing still
Forgotten values, failing wills
True love waits, we tell ourselves
True love gladly stacks the shelves
True love sets conditions and
True love does the dishes and
Slowly, slowly, we forget
Just why we're here and who we met
Another notch in wrinkled frowns
Where I keep getting lost and found
In roller-coaster ups and downs
I'm lost and lost and lost and found

Missing flights and toxic tongues
Catharsis found in tar-filled lungs
I lost myself in who I wasn't
And in what true love does and doesn't
Not quite gaslit, not quite safe
Playing back the ancient tape
We envy death for constancy-
Besmirching our own consciences
We forgo our emoluments
Too traumatized by precedents
But hush you tell me, no one knows
The pretzel-bending ways we grow
Forever twisting round and round
Lost and lost and lost and found

Now freaking out, now breaking down
Now glaciers found in evening gowns
Now agonizing 'Who am I?'s
Now dying fire in your eyes
At last the sunset settles debts
We tally up our last regrets
Relenting to incessant ghosts
Abandoning essential posts
'Til all that's left is loss and hurt
It burns and burns and burns and burns
And now I choke on orders filled
And mourn alone the youth we killed
I scrape the comb across my nettles
Pricking feelings, bleeding mettle
Finally free from ups and downs,
I find myself on solid ground

Insanity creeping up behind me.
On the soft note
I become the victim.
The colors of the rainbow are changing.
The colors are changing.

The Words Are Wrong


The words are wrong, in this Radiohead song;
The words are wrong, in this Radiohead song.
The words are wrong; she wears me out.
The words are wrong, in this Radiohead song.


(C)2011 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.

the sweeping, disfigured noise
once a muddied succession of numbers (0101101, et cetera)

reconsidered

has long since made its home in a dream;
a blooming curlicue of letters (AECAAEGA, et cetera)

like the intimacy between pen pals.
like spinning plates.

Here again, behind closed eyes
Balanced on this fragile threshold
One
Enjoying the moment before it’s over
As morning melts the locks
Two
Tenderly tracing unseen features
Kneading you from dreams and memories
Three
Feeling the meter of your sleeping heartbeat
Synchronizing as we breathe
Four
Folding you closer, moored in your warmth
Pressing your blessed scent against my chest
Five
Picturing the glow outside
Alighting on your resting eyes
Six
Savoring our seven precious seconds
Helplessly defending the present tense
Seven




Today I woke up holding your pillow.