O FORMER-LOVERS

                                                                                                                  

What did you do in my life? Were you the butcher or the bride? My savior? A suicide?

O countess, accountant, or clown: the one who talked all my airplanes down?

Forgotten parents, let’s make amends.

(Or is my asking a form of revenge?)

You wanted straighten, I wanted bend.

The times I broke out, where were you then?

                 Hi ho rally ree, hi ho rally ree

                 Hi ho hi ho hi ho rally ree.

                O life, you’re a fife

                 that plays out of tune.

                 I plug my ears shut

                 but still hear your song.

                 Hi ho hi ho rally ree.

O former lovers, can’t we be friends?

So many starting lines only dead ends.

Snippets of love songs lost to the winds.

O former loved ones, why not be friends?

                 Hi ho rally ree, hi ho rally ree

                 Hi ho hi ho hi ho rally ree.

                My life is a wife                                                             

                 who’s made out of tongue,

                 who talks while I fuck--

                 just on on and on. . . .

                 Hi ho hi ho rally ree.

O unborn bastards, shall we pretend?

Could we have saved some instead of just spend?

Why can’t the onces become once agains?

Quit filling rivers with corpses and cans.

                 Hi ho hi ho hi ho rally ree.

                O -- life is a knife

                 and it’s nine feet long.

                 We’re stuck in the gut

                 and then we are gone.

                 Hi ho hi ho rally ree.

In your life, what was I? Just one more endless hammer on the anvil of your nights?

Rusty dull umbilical scissors? Unspooled string to your puffed up kite?

--Duane Vorhees