Ripe Fruit

*hypothetical song #18

Take the bees and leave the honey
Tell the spring you’ll come and find her
After you’ve seen all the others
Drawn a map of every quarter
Don’t tell them you’re not afraid of dying
They’ll just resent you for it
Call you all their favourite dirty words

There’s a naked woman in the hall
She’s been there for a while
Shivering like she hasn’t noticed
The mercury’s still rising steady
Someone’s trying to tell you
She just wants to tell you something
But the pitch has lost the impact it once had

Out the hallway door
Into the noise of the lobby
To the echoes of your footsteps
Off the towering marble statues
Engraved with the names of men
Who no one knew better than you know
The man dozing off at the front desk

Hail a cab on Grafton street
Look into his tired eyes
Red-veined from the cheap burnt coffee
Lips cracked from the hours out in the cold
Where he smokes his cigarettes
Between the passengers
Not allowed to smoke in his own car

Don’t tell them you’re never coming back
Even if you believe it
Check the image in the mirror
Try to picture what you look like
To someone who doesn’t see your face
Every time they brush their teeth
Wash their hands or comb their hair

Look into your tired eyes
How many of the cracks can be seen
Because you know where to find them
And how many are lit up like the
Signs along the highway where you
Throw your thumb and hope that someone
Catches it before it hits the ground

Ask the drivers how to say their names
The way their mothers said it
When they ask you where you headed
Tell them if you knew where you were going
You would have been there long ago
Instead of being somewhere new
Tell them you don’t want to know

Let the fruit most ripe be consumed
And let the lesser live on
Memorize your favourite stories
So you’ll have less books to carry
Take the trees out by the roots
And let the sunlight hit your toes
Salvation’s never been so far from bliss

-dgh