Clove On the Water

Forgot to hit post on this the other day:
I wrote most of this in both of the locations in the poem. I did just about all the editing and wrapping it up over a clove and a Corona on an apartment balcony in the setting sun the day before Halloween, so this is one of the fastest ones I've blistered out lately. It's kind of silly now, but I like the imagery, the coherence, and the flow. The only thing I'm unsure of now is the kick-out (and the message of it)...but hey, a song's a song.



As the wind kicks up it lights my clove
And there I sat upon the boardwalk and strove
To bite back my tears against the pier lights
I'm lost in the rolling blues that fill this night
Flowing out from the guitar pumped by the bar
The sound thicker than the smoke curling from my char
All in all, it's a beautiful night
But something is truly not quite right
For as the lights of the pier shimmer orange upon the waves
I'm sitting and dripping ash and tears upon the page
See there's a hole beneath my arm where you used to sit
And everywhere the tide goes it takes my tears with it
This afternoon I sat and watched the ocean, peaceful foamy blue
And both times, I was just kissing a cigarette instead of you
I can sit in my jeans and put my toes in the sand
But I just want to put down my pen and pick up your hand
Now there's a silence in my day where I used to hear your laugh
Even wonderful things have an emptiness to remind me of what I used to have
That's why you're the first to hear when I pull out my phone
Because you're the one that feels like home
So everything that should be something new
Is like a bad copy of a time I already had with you
Anywhere anytime anyplace is just a clone
Of a time when I was there while your smile shone
As I sit and the smoke curls around my head
I can hear the things that you would've said
It makes it hard to be just your friend
When all day I ache to be yours again
Anywhere I go I can already feel you there
And all of my time is something I wish we shared
I sit on this beach with a clove to enjoy
And I just dream of a future where I was your boy
Knowing that life with you by my side
Should be the truth rather than this beautiful lie
It's amazing that you'll be on the coast of Spain
But here on this Cali shore I'm dying just the same
So as my thoughts fly to the town of Alicante
And my mind is filed with the chords of John Frusciante
The wind burns my clove all the way to teh embers
I push myself to forget to remember
And I try to pretend that when the sun rises on a new day
That I somehow will snap and feel okay
Even though the space where you used to sit will feel the same
And the tide takes my tears with it but not my pain