with my compliments

How do you cool your lips
After a summer’s kiss
How do you rid the sweat
After the body bliss
How do you turn your eyes
From the romantic glare
How do you block the sound
Of a voice you’d know anywhere

Oh, I really should have known
By the time you drove me home
By the vagueness in your eyes
Your casual good-byes
By the chill in your embrace
The expression on your face
That told me
Maybe
You might have some advice to give
On how to be
Insensitive

How do you numb your skin
After the warmest touch
How do you slow your blood
After the body rush
How do you free your soul
After you’ve found a friend
How do you teach your heart
It’s a crime to fall in love again

Oh, you probably won’t remember me
It’s probably ancient history
I’m one of the chosen few
Who went ahead and fell for you
I’m out of vogue,
I’m out of touch
I fell too fast,
I feel too much
I thought that you might have
Some advice to give on how to be
Insensitive

I really should have known
By the time you drove me home
By the vagueness in your eyes
Your casual good-byes
By the chill in your embrace
The expression on your face
That told me
Maybe
You might have some advice to give
On how to be
Insensitive

compliments to you, to your cold and calculated precision, to your capacity to inflict pain, and your utter luck in not feeling any. and your unparalleled gift of forgetting.

i wish i didn't wish i was you.

in time i believe the pain will fade, and the deep twisting knives of the memories of you will not be as all consuming as they are, and i will think of this not with fondness but with a bit more maturity tempered by the cruelty of those words you spoke.

because cruelty it was. from someone who once upon a time i believed i would share happy memories with. even in passing in an unknown place. if i had known then what you were capable of i wouldn't have.

no. i would have.

because those days showed me hope of infinite possibility. cut short by the combined forces of uncontested logic and undisciplined emotions, but hope all the same. if only for that.

i am not one for regrets. i have, for every thing that i have done, every thing that has gone wrong, and every thing that has gone right, taken responsibility for my actions. right up to and including feeling this way.

hopeless. and defeated and crippled. by a friend who amazed me and i have to admit made me happy. but then again... who else but a friend, and more so a friend who knows you inside out, could inflict that kind of pain?

so mine the memories of twilights and bright daylight, mine the memories of lonely songs, mine the sorrow for the lost tomorrow.

should my friends see yet again a lingering sadness in my smile, should they recall a point where they saw me happy, and should they recall a point that happens to coincide with you and me,

mine the memory returning.

this parade, this never ending (jesus so tiring) parade, this numbness to foreboding that still allows for excruciating pain.

how i would love to be able to say that i have laid down the baton for someone else to light and twirl. but as tired as i am, as crippled as i am, as unbelievably in pain as i am,

i am still the leader of this parade.