Words

I could stand if I had to without you

I could stand alone

but nothing would get across

nothing could move

I’d be half a damn suspension bridge

hanging in cartoon space

pulling on air

when I wrote this I wasn’t in a coffee shop

working out what I was going to say about you

in a poem on stage in three minutes flat

I had a flat blocking traffic on the Lion’s Gate bridge

waiting for help killing time no spare no jack

thinking would I survive the dive

the salt smack concrete kiss of sea?

what are my odds at this height these currents that temperature?

what are my odds without you?

I could survive but what’s the good of just surviving?

after the rush of emergency only injuries dull recovery

piling up heart beats

ripping up diaries for fuel to heat up tasteless rations

signaling distress with domestic mess on the bed on the floor

rumpled clothes shouting in semaphore HELP SOS MAYDAY

I need you I need you I got to get something started

and you’re my only match

remember St. Pauls? my bipolar expedition

to the headwaters of my pain

they wouldn’t let me join the crew for the trip back

without the s e c r e t p a s s w o r d s

but it wasn’t true I didn’t want to die I just didn’t

want to live anymore like that out there

near the finish I call you up almost happy

to let you know I can see the end of wilderness

and I really think I’m going to make it out alive

but you know I have a strange sense of humour:

hello? This is Dr. Bad Impersonation Of

are you Mrs. Waiting Anxiously

wife of Mr. On The Edge?

well I’m sorry but he really is on the edge

of the roof of the hospital yes

he says he’s going to jump

dead air free fall eternity

I expect you to laugh say

you’re such a fucking idiot

when are you coming home?

dead air free fall

eternity before I can make you understand

I’m joking about it because now I can

you are why I’m still alive

just living’s never been the point

so ya I could make do if anything happened to you

I’d have to

but making do isn’t making anything at all

getting by

would just take me past what I want

which is you and me and now

and this thing we built

that helps us hold each other up

so love can crawl

bumper to bumper

day in day out

In the rushed hours and speeding years

over the gap that fails

to divide us