The Ghost of Old Love
You can never be free of old love.
It'll always be caged in your heart and head.
At any time, the ghost of old love can hijack your brain.
Turn it into a forest of monkeys.
Shaking the branches of your memory.
Pelting the present with fruit of the past.
Both rotten and sweet.
You're really living a double life.
One in the tangible-one in your monkey mind.
One household brimming with the old love.
Shuddered and blistered with peeling paint.
Its rooms filled with wild cherry pits.
A nickel bag of cheap Mexican gold.
Copper pots filled with vipers and laughter.
A carousel of house cats and fire ants.
Zigzagging along suburban rapids.
The big fall just around the bend of night.
Where everything was deadly but very alive,
It was all about accumulating the scars of living.
Your new house is freshly painted.
Everything is uncomfortably perfect.
Just like you see on a movie set.
Perfect lines under perfect face and hair,
Perfect lipstick that never smears.
Where's the real living-
The grime in the corner.
The clownish tangle of underwear at the foot of the bed.
Your conversations have become a stepping stone.
To get through dinner.
This house can never burn down because it lacks fire.
There are only oatmeal and Epsom salt.
Where nothing is deadly but everything's dead
The only scar is from not living,
You miss the imperfections of the old love.
Imperfections are the soil of life.
Where serpents wrap around sunflowers.
Spitting fiery pearls and manic thorns.
The manic carnival ride and the crash that follows
You didn't know it then, but you know it now.
That it was all worth it.
Where you live now, there are no serpents or sunflowers.
No tornadoes or pinwheels or fear.
Dialogue is just a sparkless interview in gray.
And what if the quiet moments are uncomfortable
or are they filled with monkeys swinging from your brain stem?
Screaming ya shoulda picked me!
ya shoulda picked me!!
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