tarnished string

One song is all my fingers have been able to play for weeks and weeks. That one song that has yet to fall into completion, the words and the music fall premature. If a song had a birth certificate it would read five pounds four ounces...It's that song that always had an argument as an epilogue..."Girl from Carolina fits better..." "no...sweet girl from Arkansas sounds more fitting" and on and on that line of assertion and rebuttal would continue. How many years has that song been sung half written in kitchens and stairwells? For the life of me that recollection is lost. Granted this glass is full of wine and wine at times makes the memory falter. But that song (and the wine) brings me back to relive each moment...be it violent or tender or seemingly unremarkable and beguine which no amount of wine can make me forget...There was a time back oh some five years ago coming back to the commonwealth from empire state where wine and music made up the ebb and flow of my days. That was before I knew, that was before the world broke open and spilled it's truth in the dead center of my life, before I could ever write songs of that magnitude for one must feel the love and loss of an equal depth in order to compose a song such as that one. Art still mirrors life.

It wasn't but five weeks ago I played guitar on the stairwell for the last time. After I tried and tried to create something from the chaos I took the guitar strings and ripped them apart, so nothing more would resonate from the hollow body....and then i wept in your kitchen for reasons known and unknown. For losses felt and losses soon to make themselves manifest. That guitar was still resting in the chair when I walked out the door for the last time. It's strings hanging spent and torn...and that song will never be completed. And perhaps I will never play again...that week it wasn't simply guitar strings which lay tattered and torn but emotions and hopes that were left in shambles. And tonight....tonight...how many glasses of wine has it taken to simply put these words down, thoughts, damn worthless thoughts but two paragraphs....there is nothing to get right if it can't be written. But nevertheless I have played that song for weeks and each time it has sprung forth from lips and fingers the words remain "sweet girl from Arkansas..." and so it will remain as late and unwelcome as the conclusion to any argument. It should have always played that way. And in this case I wish I could go back and make life mirror art.