Light Over Charlevoix

The azure eyes looking down at me,
(Why can’t it stop, why won’t it stop.)
She is telling me to come sit up in the willow tree
With her, watching the Sun escape
And the branches tremble as I climb,
Till I sit by her side
And her hair is a waterfall on her shoulders,
Flying like mist in the wind.
Over the bay there is a light from Charlevoix
That makes me feel hollow,
And I know that the dead rhetoric
Tumbling, rolling, flying in a crumbled-up mess
Is something no one wants to simply pick up
And throw away—
So why do I find the need
To read it over and over and over?
(Why can’t I stop thinking, why won’t it go away.)
A grievance pleads to my ears
After a moment that I took her hand in mine,
And I don’t know what all
The songs in our heads mean anymore,
Yet the scene around me turns white
With the illness of expectation,
Plaguing that which I blame,
All that I do not understand,
On the buildings that have
To hold up the sky,
And I still am not tall enough
To reach the ceiling of it.
(Go away from me, stop playing with my head.)
The only reason I can cling to
When the red light glares above the street
And a man who had one too many an aperitif
Collides with the hand that I let go,
Is that I can only assume to blame
The Sirens slithering into view,
And the sky is either
Too empty or too narrow
For me to understand why
Her face is so clear and hopeless;
And the humans being so temporal
Do not see me shaking without end
As they shove me aside to prove to me
How much you can belittle
Words that the wind carries
Like pointlessly crisp leaves in an open autumn.
(Tell me why, give me one reason that is not filthy.)
The sky has become so narrow and close
That the stars are beginning to sting my
Comfortless frame, senseless
To the flow of the air,
Crushing this body
That is not even my own.
(How can you call this fine, how can you seem to just pass this by.)
And they are lifting down the box—
(Stop crying, why won’t you stop crying like a fool.)
The box has been covered by now,
And I am more lonesome than the walls,
Because they used to see the hand I hold every
Day that I spill over in jealousy for,
And the spiral staircase I go down every morning,
Feels like a prolonged hallucination,
Dreadfully common to me now.
(Why did you have to, why didn’t you stay.)
My hand looks thin before me,
And my feel fail to hold their balance
(Why can’t it end, why won’t my mind stop bleeding.)
Upon the cement I walk along,
And the winds planted over the lake
Are harvesting a storm, the eye
Swirling with all the rancour
I could ever set aside from the lustre
Of this world in the midst, paining me to
Relieve the emptiness in the bottom of the well
Before something miserable replaces that too.
And the jazz playing down at Randy’s
Has become as silent as
The dead rhetoric I finally decided to
Toss away, along with the mask
That resembles my contradiction—
And I cannot keep my breath
From pulsing like the waves of
The storm raging, sinking my heart
Like the stones skipping back at me,
As if I were the unstrung marionette
That was worthless enough even with
The strength upon its wrist for
A chance to save a life.
(Tell me why the chimera kills my imagination—
Tell me how to keep the voices from coming into the room—
Tell me why I abandoned all these songs we had—
Tell me why the breeze hurts so much—
Tell me why the lion roaring at me is no companion—
Tell me why the Sirens liken to all my variance—
Tell me why I can’t see my eyes in the mirror anymore—
Tell me why another story had to die—
Tell me why I can’t learn anymore about myself—
Tell me why the dulcet lake before me
And the tree coloured with affliction
Seem to want nothing more than be amiable—
Tell me why the light over Charlevoix doesn’t ever leave me in any way—
Tell me why the doves always seem so peaceful—
Tell me why all this sorrow tastes like grey pudding—
Tell me why I should stand up and know why—
Please can’t you tell me?)