Bird's Eye View

"but you, my soiled teenage girlfriend
or are you furrowed like a lioness
and we are vagabonds
we travel without seatbelts on"

[From the song: Here I dreamt I was an Architect, by The Decemberists]

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Bird's Eye View

We say we've got nothing to lose,
Yet choke on laughter and gargle tears
With plump hearts dangling from sleeves,
Ripe, loosened, and ready to be plucked.
And lovers have the bird's eye view,
From up here, it's all a godsend.
There's never any warning label
Though we know to handle with care.
And no one here would comprehend
But you, my soiled teenage girlfriend.

Don't ask me what the weather was like
That day I met your smile.
A stifling, technicolour rhapsody,
And pinpricks on a voodoo doll.
But memory is not to blame,
The tides reversed and I couldn't care less.
I was a broken guitar string
And you played me beautifully.
Are you still my beaming baroness
Or are you furrowed like a lioness?

Within that sea of hallmark cards
We rocked the boat and sank it.
With coffee stains on every photograph,
Those black halos of dramatic irony.
And we'd yet to have our fill
Before we reached for seconds.
Rationing bliss by the spoonfuls,
Hopeless romantics with a sweet tooth.
We're a tawdry pair of diamonds
And we are vagabonds.

What a noxious emotion we toast to,
Filtered through those rose-tinted cheaters
With the sheepish bliss of lust.
I kept the miscounted petals
And brewed the She Loves Me Nots.
No more do we call fate a con
When karma turns full circle,
Takes the wheel and slams the breaks.
But when there's nothing to be won
We travel without seatbelts on.

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[This is a Glosa: you take a 4-line verse from anywhere and use each one as the last line of four stanzas in a 40-line poem, and there's also a rhyming scheme...it's not nearly as confusing as it sounds, but indeed difficult....longest poem i've written yet.]