delusion

This is a souvenir, taken from the place we went so we could leave this pain behind.

Stop. Rewind.


Polyphony and Pontification: A Nocterna in Pathetique
Tangled wires and cables, like umbilical cords, connect us to the artificial things that deliver us our life blood. Blank-eyed screens give us the impossible things we were too realistic to believe in. The clock in the corner tallies time as it passes, ignored. Hours and days, counted and falsified upon recounting, tell fairy tales. Once upon a time there was, but no one would ever believe that there was- a girl and then, from nowhere, there was a boy.
The words wrote themselves. We should, we could and we are. Irrationally simple. They made us together so that we could be alone. We created. The things we made destroyed, defying the hot breath of liars secrets exhaled into our ears. They deleted the years ago voices that half warned and half taunted us, with varying intentions and uniform consequences.
They were the voices that left my poetry in dumpsters and made the latches on your guitar case rusty and stiff. They haunted hours sacrificed to metaphor and melody, they crossed out the lines that we wrote. They hung around our necks and in the back of our minds.
Youll never play as prettily. Youll never sing as sweet.
Youll never be a rock star, or hear palms slapped together for you.
There will never be a golden seal stamped with the word Caldecott on book covers bearing your name.
Are you still writing those silly words, silly girl?.
History books will never remember this, never remember you.
You wont ever inspire. All big dreams end the same. They end.

The reasoning of liars hid my dreams from prying eyes and secretly, I dreamed a million too big dreams. A continent away, a silly boy filled his bedroom with Neil Young songs, the soundtrack to the dreams that stole his time. I wonder if you knew that you werent the only one.
I imagine as you sit there, closer than those voices told me that you would ever be- eleven years pages torn from calendars, crumpled and discarded. Which page was wrapped around the things you dared to hope for? And does the ghost of maybe still sing sweet songs in the sticky haze of falling asleep and waking up minutes? When did your heroes stop being your competition and start being your inspiration?
Was it you that said youd never measure up? You lied.
Let me whisper to you, boy. Read my girl dreams words.

The music plays. You listen and the wild-eyed deafness that makes me irrelevant and invisible to you tells me all your secrets. (While quicker fingers strum slicker guitars reminding you why you keep them hidden).
Sometimes I dont notice and I push expectant questions off my toungue. I watch them hang in the space between us. Like puffs of smoke they pull apart from themselves.They spread away from each other, word from word, syllables from sound, until they float away. Im grateful as they fade, then disappear. My intrusive thoughts are suddenly so ridiculous there painted (interrupting.) clumsy, on the ledger lines and spaces of your songs. My picayune words defy the silent call of the graceful treble clef. It reserves five lines, four spaces, none of them for my unmetered noise. But you didnt hear me anyway. Youre the worst listener that Ive ever met.
I smile. The childish film of indignation at being ignored is quick dissolving. You arent as silent as you think you are.
Your clandestine romance with music plucks pizzicato notes on sad, hidden away strings. You dont know how I listen while you listen. You sit and stare at nothing. Blank eyed, you dont watch me watch you.
But the ghost symphony of your time-smothered dreams plays on, singing all your secret songs. I hear it as a secondary sound, like the reverb that makes you giddy. It echoes from your rawest places, unedited. Its what hurts the insides of your ribcage. Its the ringing in your ears.
Your mute chorus sings pitch-perfect love songs in the past tense, in the third person. Lyrics tell the stories of your fractured life, of lonely Calgary, of Europe that you planned to, but never got to see. In all the stops and rests, I hear the back lyrics you never meant to write.
From the backs of closets in abandoned Northwest provinces , half-finished and near forgotten chords chant protests. Ink trapped in ignored notebooks screams outraged recollections of imagined songs, manifested as roughdrafts, dripping with anticipation. You never got around to smoothing them, to hearing them, to playing them. You abandoned them, accused them of abandoning you.
They are the subconscious creations pulled to the surface by late night anguish, without conservative Canadian benefactors in mind. Morning made your words vulgar. The muses you carry in your back pocket, shoved in your iPod, made your notes too simple. Fragmented inspiration, motivation, declarations and admissions form alliances and betray you. They tell me. They haunt you. You deserted them for self doubt and a comfortable complacency.
I hear your secret songs, quiet boy. They are subliminal messages, slipped into the labored breathing sounds your tired spine twisted to steal from your microphone.
They dream of California maybes and they whisper to me:
"Dream, girl, dream. You arent the only one".

Remember?