The Sky

It was the summer I lived in a room above a store
Small windows, street noise, bare mattress on a painted floor
Enamored of poverty, furniture I got for free
Or hammered out of motorcycle crates I found in the alley, ooh

I met a man they called The Sky

And I pronounced him ugly
Then I fell in love so crazy that it should have passed by quickly
And it would have I guess, but for that trick of nature
That told me to convince him that we had to stay together, ooh

In my own defense, he shouldn't have believed me
I was nineteen and a poet, drunk with the power of words
Words words words words words words words words
words words words

When he moved to my flat everything he owned fit in one bag
And we painted trees on all the walls to look like we were
in the forest and he
Lifted me up on his shoulders
So I could paint the ceiling blue, the color of the sky, ooh

We were so close together that we had no perspective
So we got a puppy, a lab-shepherd mix, we called him The Rock
And we bought a car, an old blue valiant, for twenty five dollars
And it ran with a racket and a great blue cloud but it ran anyhow, ooh

The Sky got a letter from his mother, she called him Frank
The puppy pissed on a pile of poems and I couldn't call
the image back
And I lost my words, they were coming out in three
Like "what the hell," "I don't care," "it's your turn," "don't blame me"

When it all ended we were idling at the curb
I said, "Everything worth saying has already been said by someone who understands the power of words, I only understand their weakness, where they fall short, what they can never measure"
Then I ran out of words so I gunned the engine hard
To express displeasure

The Sky took The Rock and drove off in a great blue cloud
I went upstairs and I shut the window because the traffic
was too loud
Of course there were no words to say what I was feeling
So I stood on a table that I built from a crate and I painted a thunderstorm on the ceiling

©2000 Annie Gallup