Misadventures of a Misfit

“The Graveyard Near The House”

by The Airborne Toxic Event

The other day when we were walking by the graveyard near the house you asked me if I thought
Would ever die. And if life and love both fade so predictably, we’ve made ourselves a kind of predictable lie.
So I pictured us like corpses lying side by side in pieces in some dark and lonely plot under a bough. We looked so silly
There all decomposed, half turned to dust in tattered clothes, though we probably look just as silly now.

Bye, bye, bye, all this dog-eared innocence. I can’t pretend that I can tell you what is going to happen next or how to be.
But you have no idea about me. Do you?

It left me to wonder if people ever know each other or just stumble around like strangers in the dark. Because sometimes
You seem so strange to me, I must seem strange to you. We’re like two actors playing two parts. Did you memorize your lines? ‘Cause
I did. Here’s the part where I get so mad. I tell you that I can’t forget the past. You get so quiet now
And you seem somehow like a lost and lonely child and you just hope that the moment won’t last.

Bye, bye, bye all this dogged innocence. I can’t pretend that I can tell you what is going to happen next or how to be.
But you have no idea about me. Do you?

Still, there’s always a way around. There’s something tying our feet to the ground.
A moment passed, we hear how it sounds. And it seems a little less profound, like we’re all
Going the same way down.

I’m just trying to write it all down.

I write songs, and you write letters. We are tied like two in tethers, and we talk and read and laugh and sleep at night in
Bed together. And you wake in tears sometimes, I can see the thoughts flash across your eyes.
They say, “Darling will you be kind? Will you be a good man and stay behind if I get old?”

Then the letters all flash through my head, with the words that I was told about the fading flesh of life and love,
The failures of the bold. I can list each crippling fear like I’m reading from a will.

And I’ll defy every one and love you still. I will carry you with me up every hill. And if you die before I die,
I’ll carve your name out of the sky. I’ll fall asleep with your memory and dream of where you lie.

It may be better to move on and to let life just carry on and I may be wrong. Still I’ll try.

Because it’s better to love whether you win or lose or die. It’s better to love and I will love you until I die.

This song has been reaching out to me lately, and I can’t completely understand why I feel like it’d be on the soundtrack to my life. But still, it’s one of those songs I’m sure would be listed. After my walk through the cemetery the other day, the peace it brought, and some of the stress lately.. Yeah. This fits.

~Angel