Because We Ain’t Simple And Love Ain’t Simple

TWO FREAKS IN A MEAN GOD’S SWEATY FIST

next morning over grits and aspirin
i remembered          jack oh shit honey
i can’t believe i fuckin did that
convulsive recall cut through whiskey obscurity
like the knife
my knife in my hand and jack grinnin it off       just us
friday night drunk again except i was pitbull furied
about a blank spot
i was holdin’ up steel to my lover
i was serious
what do you mean he asked me at the table
so i had to say before god and my coffee
i threatened to cut you last night didn’t i man
more sorries and panicky lovetalk started runnin out of me
until the grin came back        he said oh
that’s right    i’d forgotten all about it      he held that little smile
so long i wanted to scream motherfucker but  i started cryin
instead
he’d been as loaded as me        didn’t know what issue
brought together me and him and the knife and something mad
enough to shank eight years of us
somethin that backed down when he just said
you know sparrow if i felt like it
i could get really pissed of about this            the movie stopped
there for both of us
he was holdin me while i came apart again
me and him know each other clear
to the marrowbones and black mirrors by now
me and him go on anyway
eight years or twenty thousand
sparrow and jack is the road we’re goin down
without a simple love poem in sight
because we ain’t simple and
love ain’t simple
love has vicious motherfucker midnights curled up waitin in it
like when we were naked makin war words
about how if
ordinary common people are shit and i hate everyone
i must hate him too
right then i did but he was the one
who said i hate you first and got up to leave
i gave him my back like the finger      told him thanks
for tellin me one piece of truth tonight anyway
and i would have said more but he kicked me off the bed
before i could and if love was somethin simple
it would have busted like a wine bottle right there
it took us two days to cry about it together
but that man has hands that make me forget sometimes
how much i hate my body
that man can keep tellin’ me after the first thousand
times i told him that was a
goddamn lie
that man is as smart as me and too weird to ever be boring
with his head full of politics and priestcraft and philosophical
terrors
he can tell me about because i’ve got em too
me and him know each other all right
it’s our damnation to
it’s our damnation to know that hate walks beside love
like a shadow that has teeth
it’s our damnation each to live in the other’s
valley of flames
because our demons are crazy drunk
on love for each other
the same way we are
two freaks in a mean god’s sweaty fist
it’s our damnation practiced to perfection
we’ve done it for years
we’ve done it for lifetimes and some of ‘em ended like this
could have
but we keep comin’ back
we’ve got stuff that ruins us for anyone else
we need each other’s weirdness and rage like dope
it ain’t simple           it’s got thorns
it’s got roots that wrap around bones and boulders
all the way to the heart of the earth
sparrow and jack is the road we’re goin’ down
together in this poem
this car with the back seat full of monsters
that were always driving drunk
the hit of murder keeps us awake for the ride
sparrow and jack it the road that starts and ends
in the worlds we have where the other one is the only man alive
and those are worlds
big enough for all the pain we throw around
because we’re men and we can’t help it
all we can do is wrap our arms around love
even and especially when it smells like shit and looks like
the black sponge soaked in blood at
the center of trust’s shattered bones
and around each other after the storms die down

—Sparrow 13 Laughingwand

from Hell Soup: The Collected Writings [ Manic D ]

*Please note: some line breaks “auto-corrected” by WordPress.
[ Apologies, Apologies ]

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“…like a captured moon might be.”

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