The Painfully Alone

Hey there,

This is a new poem I wrote for my Music paper. It’s meant to be read in a spoken word, musical style (youtube “Frank” by Tom Waits for an idea. That song actually inspired a verse of my song). It’s not the most upbeat and happy piece I’ve written, but neither was the content we were discussing in class. I’ve added and taken away parts, still in construction. Aren’t they all?

The Painfully Alone

I once knew a guy
Name was Frank
Everybody called him
Redneck

He had 3 kids
Truck balls hung lower than his
We never knew
Quite what he did

22 years old
Furniture he sold
At least
That’s what I’m told

Working on a car
Chewing on that tar
A redneck may be what you are
But definitions only go so far

I once knew a guy named Kevin
Was real lucky with all the girls
One day one of their necklaces broke
We were all sliding on scattered pearls

You never know what will be
Slipping and sliding down Queen Street
You hold the door open and it’s a ploy
Take a girl home and you’re just another boy

Kevin was a player
A real troublemaker
He doesn’t really care
But you can’t always believe what you hear

I once knew a girl
Whose name escapes me
She showed me dreams
Connected synapses

My brain contorted
Like an acrobat
I never quite knew
It felt like that

It was Summer and Fall
Halloween orange hung on the wall
A life from a cage, a spirit sent free
I can’t even count how many times I wished it was just her and me

But the pearls they slide
And the inevitable fear
That I love her so much
That I might just disappear

She was a voice on a phone
She found me a home
But now she’s eloped
With my casiotone

At least that’s what I heard
On the radio

I once knew a man
He called himself Waits
He was a conflicted man
Filled with hate

He had a family
Or something of the sort
But I never saw him smile
He always played on an empty court

I wanted to know him
But it was a job instead
To breach the wall of fire
He set ablaze in his head

As the Fall day fell
With my bike crunching leaves
I rolled by the plot
Where he sent his family free

The molten remains
Of his internal struggle
That set the house alight
And turned it to rubble

The papers read he was deranged
Mad and insane, that he intentionally set the flame
No one could vouch for him either way
The papers were written with blood that day

For every red fruit
Can quickly be rotten
But words are only words
And words can be forgotten

September 24, 2014
New Zealand

Cheers,

Clayton