After breaking your heart
I listened to Radiohead, really I was
Still trying to go over
The times you played Radiohead
Once,  I was just trying to
Remember the words you said

Now,
I just sit
And listen
To Radiohead
Because  
You never played them
More than once
And I will probably
End up playing their music
To someone else
Instead.

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

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.