It Just Comes Out

I have spent the past two days doing nothing but recuperating. It has been nice but also dreadfully boring and unproductive. I was just thinking this as I lay in my bed waiting for a text or a phone call or a Facebook update to give me something to look at when I started typing out some lyrics. I didn't think about them, they just came out. I figured when writing happens this way it's best not to edit and just let it be so below I have included the song 'Jump'. Also below, a poem I wrote as part of my 'In the Palm of Your Hand' New Years project. It is one of two poems written for the Speak, Memory chapter of the book.


Jump

You spent hours building reflections
In a fragmented mirror
Building dreams out of dissipated, unresolving fears

You were beautiful in pieces
And a masterpiece when whole
But that didn't happen often since
Each day your soul was holier than the Mother Mary's own

And when we fall we kiss the world goodbye
A single tear drops from the eye's of man
And when you go
The whole wide world will sing
About the joy you didn't bring
It isn't better to know and I
Don't want to say I told you so


When you laughed it made the earth crack
Underneath your saddled weight
Sewing semblances of smiles
Onto your sullen face

You're the hero that they asked for
A casualty of faith
Making all the question answered
As time will take the place of fate
So no need to go make haste

'Cause when we fall we kiss the world goodbye
A single tear drops from the eye's of man
And when you go
The whole wide world will sing
About the joy you didn't bring
It isn't better to know and I
Don't want to say I told you so
But I told you so


You can let go of all forgivings
Let this life that's left you seething
Fade away
Its not your mistake
There's no accident in wondering
What makes it all okay
Just remember its a lie
That tomorrows a new day
It's all the same
And you'll hate it anyway

when we fall we kiss the world goodbye
A single tear drops from the eye's of man
And when you go
The whole wide world will sing
About the joy you didn't bring
It isn't better to know and I
Don't want to say I told you
But I told you so
I told you so

© Valerie Long



Poem One: A Childhood Memory

“February 27th”

My body was stone
Sunken into a cheap futon mattress
I could still smell her hair, green apple saliva on the pillow

Her note said it was my fault.
This wasn’t unusual
The several deep marks on my inner thighs, monuments to all the faults before this

I hadn’t expected that there would be so much pain
My body stretching the full length of the bed,
Muscles ripping from my bones, heart beat pounding in my ears,
It was our first time all over again
Only she wasn’t next to me, any sign of her was lost in and out of consciousness

The chemicals from the many, too many, sleeping pills floated
Iridescent arrows shot from invisible enemies raced toward me
Their precise sting radiating through every limb

So this is what it’s like to die?
The question hung on a dry tongue
Throat closed with anticipation
Palms sweaty with nerves

Then the heart that beat
Each pause getting longer
And each picture my eyes took dimmer
Every tear sliding off my cheek and getting lost in the comforter underneath

Was it my heart or my lungs that froze first?
Silent sweeping over the room like a snow storm
Cold settling in around the loneliness
Black enveloping the scene until morning

© Valerie Long