One of my most personal lines of poetry is from "8 Space", when I say that "No one calls Huntsville home" as an indictment to all the times I've stayed here while my friends have gone off into other lives. As the spring semester winds down, several of my friends are getting ready to go again. This my 10-minute attempt to capture that mood.
"Goodbye Is a Song I've Sung", for E Marie
Goodbye is a song I've sung, many times, played upon the heart
And in the sunrises when the deep quiet refuses to steal my thoughts
And am forced to live myself as I am, facing the gray and the blue
And the scent of grass yearning to grow in the coming in the day.
Goodbye, oh how I've sung you,
Though you have no rhythm
Though you have no rhyme
Though you have no melody nor harmony just a beat and a time and a
Salty sweet bitter lyricism about your teeth
Goodbye, oh goodbye, your name I can barely speak,
Given to you by circumstances, the chance of knowing
But for a time and then it collapses into the shape it was
Which is the shape it will be again, the great unknowing
After the such short knowing, the silence after a brief shout
Goodbye is a lonesome valley we all get to walk
Goodbye is a lonesome valley, we never go by ourselves
Hark the void of goodbye, come and sing her face,
And then let it die on your lips, just another forgotten taste
Until it is sung again and again until it is meaningless
Rain drops off a window down to the ground,
Drying as they fell
