botched sonnet

We spill our guts, but casually, (and not really)

the way women just know how to do

easy as breathing, at once meaningless and vital

threading the freeway in the afternoon sun,

gorge on words with an old, rusty lexicon

so familiar it's frightening.

---

This song reminds me of you,

about whom I strung under 10 words

together today, moving on

to new schemes, over lunch. And it didn't sting.

So easy it was frightening: you are now story:

short story.

We played it over and again

on Santa Monica Blvd, no less. It did not fit us,

but we liked it,

I liked it,

the way it sounded sad.

why Tolstoy is the man

'What happiness and peace of mind would be mind if I only could say now, "Lord have mercy upon me!..." But who would I be talking to? Either some indeterminate, inaccessible power, which I cannot have any contact with and cannot even put into words, the great All or Nothing,' he said to himself, 'or else that God sewn up in a little bag like Marie's icon? No. Nothing is certain, nothing but the nothingness of all that we can understand, and the splendor of something we can't understand, but we know to be infinitely important.'

-War and Peace

in its dangerous marquees, even fake sitars....

Bon Iver's Re: Stacks is an amazing song. I've never listened to the words before tonight. They are much more powerful than I ever guessed. I always thought they were referring to, as I've posted above, dangerous marquees and fake sitars.

The real lyrics are epically cooler. In fact, quite amazing. One of my favorite poems I've read for a long time.

This my excavation and today is kumran

Everything that happens is from now on

This is pouring rain

This is paralyzed

I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time

It's hard to find it when you knew it

When your money's gone

And you're drunk as hell

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load

In the back and the racks and the stacks are your load

In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load

I've twisting to the sun I needed to replace

The fountain in the front yard is rusted out

All my love was down

In a frozen ground

There's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed

And he's dangling my keys he even fakes a toss

Whatever could it be

That has brought me to this loss?

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load

In the back and the racks and the stacks of your load

In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization

It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away

Your love will be

Safe with me

*Lots of the references are to poker--I didn't pick that up at first...

*Also, the first reference to Kumran (the day they found the Dead Sea Scrolls) is explained by this quote by the songwriter:

When they found them it changed the whole course of Christianity, whether people wanted to know it or not. A lot of people chose to ignore it, a lot of people decided to run with it, and for many people it destroyed their faith, so I think I was just looking at it as a metaphor for whatever happens after that is new shit.