Let me catch you for just one moment
As you are fleeing through the door.
I need but one moment
For you to hear out this half-empty cup
Of half-wry sighs and half-written elegies.

Please, dear,
We've pulled up all the floorboards
And the trees are leaving all their leaves.
What have we left to give tonight?

I can take away and I can take apart;
I can rebuild and I can deconstruct.
Give me my materials--
I shall build a home for you.
I am constructor.

I can still see your body turning away
And it leaves me turning in my bed,
Gnashing my teeth and banging my head
In the ceaseless rage I've trapped within the matrix of my pride.

But please,
I forget myself--
Who are you again?

I can take you away
But I might take you apart.
Even then, I could rebuild you,
Even if my pride is to deconstruct,
For if I am in ownership of my materials,
I could build a home for you with ease
For I am your constructor.

I have been broken before,
But I will rebuild again.
If I could spread your notes out on the floor,
I could retrace my arterial entrance path
Back to summer's heart.

Every door I have passed through for the past four nights
Brings me back to the wooden shell house
With barren trees in the yard
And a paint-stripped fence
Looking more like a portal to the end of our years
Than a passageway to our beginnings.
I have seen this town fall apart and put itself together again,
But it always looks so very new,
And I don't recognize anything here anymore
Without your eyes to tease out the details
Of my boxed-up life.
My details are on fine paper in the basement;
My spirit is in 1s and 0s on a disc.

You look thirsty for my final words to you,
So take from me my half-empty cup,
Drink up, drink up,
And carry out my half-wry sighs
And help finish my half-written elegies,
For they are sung to all the things you symbolize.
I could grind my dreams to compost and spread them thing across the lawn.
I could cleave these wounded halves together and set them on our bed.
But instead, I've broken down your arms
And I've disassembled my eyes--
I've spread the parts very far.

You have been broken before
And you will rebuild again;
You have witnessed my notes
And know well your arterial paths.

I will replace these floorboards
Just as spring rewrites the leaves.
Bear not the wounds of my destructions,
For they shall be put right;
I can do no less as a parting gift--
I am constructor.

I've had my moment
And I've no intention to keep you,
So, if it is what you desire,
Flee on, flee on, flee on.

---

A lot of Elton John and early Genesis will do this to a man. I've no idea why, but dissolving relationships have been a font of inspiration for me recently. So, I thought to write something lengthy and a bit complex with themes to represent certain areas of the relationship or the person or the dissolution or what have you to be called back in permutations as both a callback to my old style of poetry (lengthy narratives in verse) and the focused nuance I've been practicing lately. Perhaps this one rings truer than the older pieces of the style. There is also a muted cycle-of-seasons thing going on.

This looks like it would sound great as one of those kind of dramatic like songs. Something like a ballad... kind of like "Stop in the name of love..." gives me that feeling like "Let me catch you for just one moment..." I can also imagine like a beegees type feel with the lead singing recorded twice to give it that kind of echo effect. It'd be great with piano.

It's not too bad, although something about it's rhythm bothers me. A pretty solid peice in all. Hard for me to say... I hate pop :p.