{"sf1_id":1724812,"sf2_id":"ynZPqPeY","title":"Dear Concerned Estranged","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":391,"posted_at":"2021-06-02T18:42:00.000Z","tags":["Poetry","lyric"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1724812-dear-concerned-estranged","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/ynZPqPeY","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/e6/b7/e6b791c8-956f-444d-ae3e-cebeabedfb76","description":"#39 of poetry\n\nI don't think anyone to whom this poem is capable of speaking needs any explanation as to what it's talking about.\nThough I am petty enough to dedicate it to my birth parents.\nYou can listen to a reading of this by  makyo on the Voice of Dog HERE: https://www.thevoice.dog/episode/dear-concerned-estranged-a-poem-by-rob-macwolf-read-by-madison-scott-clary","content":"I saw that you left me a voicemail.  \nI noticed you sent me a card.\n\nI know you're expecting an answer,\n\nBut finding the time is so hard.  \nThe gods and the ghosts outside waiting,\n\nThe skies underfoot in the street,  \nThe sunsets in sun-scented forests  \nWhere mountains are smaller than trees--\n\nAll of these things are my life now.  \nI've no time to pick up the phone.  \nI live everywhere out on the highway  \nAnd the one place I can't go is home.\n\n  \n\nThere are gardens whose stillness has lasted  \nFor longer than man has had fire.  \nThere is music that no one has mastered,  \nAnd it waits for an ear to inspire.  \nThere's apples of gold and of silver  \nAnd glistening obsidian too.  \nThe gold heal. The silver grant wishes.  \nWho knows what the obsidian do?  \nThere are hours in the the hours beyond midnight  \nThat no human clock has yet known.  \nAll these you would have me abandon\n\nIn exchange for a chance to come home.  \n  \nI think I don't think you remember  \nWhat I once had to do to survive.  \nI lived in the upper back cupboard.  \nI told all the necessary lies.  \nBut lies cannot keep one from freezing\n\nAnd you lose all the taste from your tongue.  \nAnd I couldn't keep the lies moving.  \nThey ran out of fuel and were done.  \nI left them somewhere on the highway--   \nThey're probably still out there alone--   \nThen I turned around and got walking.  \nI knew that I couldn't come home.\n\n  \n\nSo I will be out in the sunrise  \nIn the lots where old shops were torn down.  \nAnd I will be down every alley  \nIn every forgotten town.  \nAnd I will not need your umbrella  \nThe rains, they will do me no harm.  \nI'll turn my face to the rainfall  \nAnd the rainfall, it keepeth me warm.  \nAnd maybe, at the end of some autumn,  \nA ship will be waiting for me  \nWhere the sun will be setting and steeping  \nIts colors all into the sea.\n\nI'll say goodbye to the summer.  \nI'll leave the highway behind.\n\nI'll take the ship, and forever  \nBe somewhere out there with the wind.  \nAnd that, I'm afraid, is my answer.  \nIt's the only one that I own:  \nEven though you'll never see me,  \nThat's where I'll be finally home.  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1719955-ghost-of-the-western-cretaceous-sea.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1729339-i-ve-lost-count-of-the-homes-that-i-have-lost.json"}}