Tag: Simple Things

A Simple Thing

[These are lyrics to a song I wrote when I was in my mid-twenties. They are exactly as originally written. – Owen]

They say that love’s a simple thing, well
That I know is true:
The love that you can freely give
Will come right back to you,
Will come right back to you

I give my love the purest things that
I know how to give;
But she can give me so much more
All she has to do is live,
All she has to do is live

But pain can take you anywhere
And Heaven’s for when we die –
And when you love, you kill your self
And there’s no asking why,
There is no asking why —

I’ve heard that love’s a simple thing, well
That I can’t deny;
You find someone to give your love,
And then, you say goodbye,
And then you say goodbye –

And then

You say

Goodbye

Love

Fingernails

Another chore is calling. It
Is time to cut my fingernails;
Just one more choice I might get wrong
And send my poor night off the rails –

There is no upside I can see;
For varied colors I have none.
I’ll go with “clear & manly” for
That’s how I always get them done.

But I might cut too short and then
I end up in a painful mess,
Or I might clip them jagged and
Then scratch my wife with my caress.

A thankless task I must endure.
And now you have endured it too:
Like fingernails across a board
I’ve shared my clipped concerns
With you

Old Books for Sale

Though young, I memorized the many names
Of all the books up on my mother’s shelf;
Eventually, I read them, every one.

Like voyages I’d longed to take, myself,
I found them strange and wonderful, indeed;
These old books that I new as only names.

They all took part, my growing soul to feed,
Connected me to worlds that long had passed,
And gave me reading’s love, a love steadfast.

.

Today, upon this table, I can see
What’s left of someone gone, who much like me
Loved all these books for how they made her feel;
Who found that fiction made her life
More real

Rain

we know that rain’s a healthy thing,
but yet, it seems a barrier
to many things we want to do;
so we become a tarrier
just waiting for the rain to cease –
although its sound may bring some peace –
we want it to be through —

we’ve known the rain since childhood,
it comes and goes as rain’s inclined;
but yet, we often will complain,
and in these haggard moments find
some solace in the strange belief
that rain just comes to give us grief
and storms to cause us pain

regardless of its frequency,
we tend to take rain
personally

Mailboxes

The marvel that you wrote a thing
When you were halfway ’round the world
That then would show up at my door –
‘Twas really some invention —

It’s strange how we no longer see
The wonders of technology:
We take them now as granted things,
Just so much bland
Convention

Birthday Cards

she keeps years’ worth of birthday cards;
the ones she gets, or’s yet to give –
the colors, lines, the messages,
allow her to relive —

for often, what is physical,
is more emotional than that
which merely lives within our heads;
so often, she has sat

and read again these many cards.
for they can brighten up a day
or make her think, or love again:
yes, art is funny
in that
way