A Strange Land by Anson Clark

I’ve got those blues, if I ain’t got you;

The homicide of lounging and dreaming

Nothing.

 

Here I stand, tall in the shade,

Expressing no color, caught in my

Cabin overlooking the ocean.

 

My dreams vanishing like cigarette

Smoke, and I see archetypes of you

Wandering down the stairs, holding

Vogue in your hands; judging Manolo

Blahnik. And we would then argue.

You see, I ain’t got those blues,

If I ain’t got you.

 

Your life’s journey; one magical movement,

One journey across the melancholy mass,

From Keter to Malchut.

 

Here I am looking at you; you looking

At me. And I just don’t understand.

And the corner of your dress gets caught

On the edge of the table. You float like

A phantom, and when I would start to

Complain, you would place your finger

Over my lips; and I would remember

The red-haired girl riding a bike past those

White wooden Pennsylvanian fences,

As summer stammered its baking hell.

And I would remember smelling the scent of

Freshly baked bread, and then recall the moment

Of collecting sea shells on some faraway shore;

The waves folding like freshly pressed sheets

That my mother used to wash then iron.

 

I remember you wearing an Open-Knit Ballet-Neck

Sweater, smiling like my eyes were some Renaissance

Canvas. You had just beaten me at Twister and we had

Finished a bottle of wine; and I would think of sad love

Songs, as the Cadillac lay half buried in the sand; the chrome

Stained and dripping.

 

The cabin by the ocean is all I have left of you; strumming

Soul with its peculiarities, but the music was more in you

Than in me. This parliament’s on fire, and I now love your

Complaints concerning my hairstyle. I look for you in the shadows

Of the cabin, for not only do the shadows offer shade from the

Stammered sun, but I now do not understand the light.

Anyway, it’s safer than a strange land.

All I can think of to say is “Stay. Do something.”