Dear Drifter ,
it's been a while since you came around to this part of the city. It's not like I'm starting to miss you or something; you were, no offense, way too adolescent for my aluminum brain. But winter is a lonely time for an out-of-order Street Lamp, and being disinterested in you used to give me a little something to do. Plus, to be fair, you undressed your guitar in beauty. A Street Lamp knows beauty when he sees it.
Six seasons I spent listening; listening to you create on those rough-love strings your runaway universe..the careless potpourri of sparrows and spangled stars often spiralling up to meet my blind man eyes.
Six years, watching your mournful shoulders - broken enough to relax, defiant enough never to. It repulsed me, you know. Your futile audacity. But mostly it reminded me of myself.
So there were evenings when I felt kindly enough to excuse you for those offensively muddy cades, muddy as hell and two sizes too small. You after all, loved your old junk. (Perhaps I was one of them?)
Point is, tonight is trashy enough to get me bored or nostalgic, and i chose nostalgia. Flatter yourself kid, I chose you.
I suppose I can safely say that I had, in my moment of ill-humour, developed a reckless taste for your kind of mishaps. But make no mistake, in my heart, i'm fairly sure I detest you - you and your caravanar's soul do my metal shoes no world of good. It's cute enough for you to wander your life away. But being born into the life of a Street Lamp, I never could agree to misadventures like road trips. Or love. (whichever you'll have)
It is strange, really - remembering things was never my strong point; So if someday,you mail me perhaps, asking me if your eyes were black, or a brown two shades lighter than that of your damned cades - i'd understandably not write back. Yet i remember. I remember your eyes to be like rundown refrigerators, anxious to preserve within their glassy depths the country-songs and the forest fires.
But enough of my apologetic poetry. Street Lamps make terrible poets, what was i thinking?
So i would just stop here, before I can ask you what you made of that girl that broke your heart. Or the girl that loved your songs. Or were they the same? (But you wouldn't know, ha ha)
Yes, I'd just go back to being an unexcited old Street Lamp, amused only as often as when the customary drunkard hurts his toe trying to kick my shin. I would not warn you about the satellite view of your fragile shoulders, or the killing weight of love songs tucked away in the back pocket. Nuh, I would not knowingly nod my head when you finally figure out that you are way too well-versed in pain to be able to cry your heart out.
You think you can love, and make love - and make songs and not sing them to her. Then find a place by some tottering lamp post, and arrange to cry six seasons away. And when you are done waiting for the tears that refuse you one kiss, you think you can put pen to paper, lips to light, guitar to dreams, and leave. Live inside your red little caravan till it flies you sufficiently Beyond. tchh-tch.
You don't know, but you are made of sterner stuff; fragile as those shoulders might appear.
Oh it'd probably take you no less than a colourful June noon to break down, you poor thing.
Here here, I shall hush it up now. And wait for the lovely sundance day when you return to this part of the town; seamless, guitarless.
Till then my friend, i'll count my drunkards, and you can break your heart and your strings, all in good faith.
Your dispassionately
(no, seriously)
The Lamp Post
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