The Bits

(just looked in my written posts; I wrote this post several days ago, during my prep, and never did hit post. I forget what I was going to add - guess I'll put it up now. I was driving home today from work to ASU, and I think I might rip part of Aceyalone's "Everything Changes" and JMT's "Death Messiah" to make a backbeat - with some drum fills - as a beat for this, rhyming or not. I think the opener and closer for the latter would be a great lead in and final fall out, and good for in between lines. We'll see)

It actually hit me when I was walking out of my door to work yesterday morning, that "Farting in the Shower/Fuck You, Rudy" and "The Bits" were practically at complete odds with each other. I liked the statement in FITS/FYR, but I suppose the last few months may have changed my perspective on the matter - I'm coming around to the value of scorched earth.

Anyway, my level of production is going crazy - I went through my last three notepads, and started copying out smaller rhymes - that weren't part of any particular song, just jotted thoughts - into a new notebook, and organizing them by idea, so I could maybe string them together, or use the ideas and metaphors in them. That started taking so long, that I typed 5 single-spaced pages, just based out of the last notebook alone, after I'd stopped copying by hand.

I'm enjoying that fact. Anyway, I wanted to put up "The Bits" - I wrote it at home, a day or two before Thanksgiving, in one sitting, lying on the couch with my sisters. It was one of those trance writings, and it was interesting to me, because I made no attempt at rhyming. I haven't written a non-rhyming poem in a long, long time - "The Bits" is interesting to me both because of that fact, and because immediately after I wrote it, I began to write some other non-rhyming, but more song-structured items.


The Bits

I feel - I think - there were bits
of amazing, of passion, of love
but the aftertaste of latent contempt—
in that shitstorm, I can’t find them
you cheated
I cheated
you cheated
I cheated
we cheated
we quit
and we stayed anyway
maybe the bits kept happening
but I choked you off
choked you out
I was bitter
and you tore me apart for it
I kept you from what you loved
and fell for a Manhattan lesbian
but you got me back, well and good
you sent me heartfelt notes
said you needed to hear my voice
through a mouth wrapped around someone else
and while I thought of your kittens
and your hands in my hair
you laughed and bared it for everyone else
kept me hanging –
on the little bits that still cared
and if it wasn’t on purpose
you still knew what you were doing
it was still a summer for a fall
a quick trip past the bitter end
ammonia to clarify and erase whatever bits
I might find in the pictures of your face
staring intently from my phone
the ones I haven’t already deleted
so that when I think of Spain and
concerts and the road and my bed
sheets soaked with sweat and spent
grasping passion and your glowing eyes
full of laughter and love and hate
it’s all dimmer
whitewashed and going under
sands of grit scraping away
grinding the bits to zeroes in my mind
it’s not that we failed
it’s that we tried
long after we should’ve quit
all those precious little bits
are floating in a river of shit
and I’m pleasantly, painfully washing it away
the jealousy contempt fear
self-hatred love wonder passion
all together all gone all together
it’s so much simpler
just rip the bits out
cover, scrape, cleanse
take the lessons learned
like scars from a scrape and use them
know them
more poignant than silly ink
take them, and leave the bits behind
all together all gone
all gone, all together
scrape, wash, cleanse, bleach
gone
a river of shit
wash it away
so you don’t have to pick anything in it
you don’t know what’s worthwhile in there anyway