February 17, 2005

The Last Balloon

You make choices
Once I heard you sing.
You learn to love and live
with things.
Wisdom is the last balloon
gone up so high so fast
it hit the moon.
Don't bother now.
Don't make it right.
Confusion rings like loneliness
at night.

We were friends of ghosts
I heard you shout.
I wonder what you lost
when I found my way out.
If wisdom is a perfect square
it dies there in your mind
when you don't share it.
That don't make it easy, does it?
A bad mood looks like lonesome
when you love it.

Not much is good but some
things you know.
Time will fly. Kids will grow.
Wisdom is a passing debt
paid by friends we never met.
So leave it there.
And let it die.
A sea bird is a stone
about to fly.

I'll lead a charge but
I won't believe.
The thing I mastered first
was how not to leave.
Now wisdom is this coat we share
that never fits
but we don't care.
We wear it all around
and stay outside.
Our foolishness is fast asleep.
Or did it die?

Just tell the truth for once
you said don't fuck around
beside my bed and
don't ask for this when
you don't even want it.
It's hot out here now and I'm last
I'm done with it.
But then you count on me and
I'm dead and gone and born
again a man.
Emotion is the furthest thing from my mind.
So I try to stand
in line and try to learn to lose.
Because your wisdom is a poem
I can love but
never use.