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Conor Oberst Jul 2012
The phone slips from a loose grip.
Words were missing then. Some apology.
I didn't want to tell you this.
No, it's just some guy she's been hanging out with.
I don't know. The past couple of weeks, I guess.
Well, thank you and hang up the phone.
Let the funeral start;
hear the casket close.
Let's pin split-black ribbon to your overcoat.
Well, laughter pours from under doors.
In this house, I don't understand that sound no more.
Seems artificial, like a TV set.

Well... haligh, haligh, a lie, haligh
This weight it must be satisfied.
You offer only one reply,
you know not what to do,
but you tear and tear your hair from roots
of that same head you have twice removed now.
A lock of hair you said would prove
our love would never die.
Well ha ha ha.

I remember everything;
the words we spoke on freezing South Street,
and all those mornings watching you get ready for school.
You combed your hair inside that mirror;
the one you painted blue and glued with jewelry tears.
Something about those bright colors
would always make you feel better.
But now we speak with ruined tongues,
and the words we say aren't meant for anyone.
It's just a mumbled sentence to a passing acquaintance,
but there was once you.

You said you hate my suffering
and you understood
and you'd take care of me,
you'd always be there,
well where are you now?

Haligh, haligh, a lie, haligh
The plans were never finalized,
but left to hang like yarn and twine
dangling before my eyes
as you tear and tear your hair from roots
of that same head you have twice removed now,
a lock of hair you said would prove
our love would never die.

And I sing and sing of awful things.
The pleasure that my sadness brings
as my fingers press onto the strings
in yet another clumsy chord.
Haligh, haligh, an awful lie,
this weight would now be satisfied.
I'm gonna give you only one reply;
I know not who I am.

But I talk in the mirror
to the stranger that appears.
Our conversations are circles;
always one-sided.
Nothing is clear.

Except we keep coming back
to this meaning that I lack.
He says the choices were given,
now you must live them
or just not live.
Now do you want that?
Tyler King Nov 2014
On the corner of 3rd Street and another downward spiral
The ghosts of saints drift above the haunted concrete,
And blood like cathedral bells stains the skyline
And they allowed the city of pariahs a goodnight kiss
And to die, by night and be reborn
Three days hence in resounding glory
But their utopia was stillborn
The sky stank of gasoline and there was a ****** on exit 52
The taste of cheap cigarettes was inescapable
And sic transit gloria mundi!
Tagged on the cathedral wall
The wind that howled was frightened and the skyscrapers echoed the cries of the abandoned
Hallelujah, haligh
Let them join hands and sing!
Let them meet unholy demise with divine grace!
And let their voices be carried off on the lonely wind
To disappear like so many ghosts in the snow

— The End —