I Can't Sing

I used to dream about being a singer. Until I was 12 or so and discovered the record button on my stereo. Dream shattered. Anyone who's been stuck in a car with me for any length of time will tell you why. I couldn't carry a tune if you held a gun to my head. I'm like one of the funny rejects you see on American Idol, not just bad, but really, really bad.

That being said, I have a fairly good ear, and a deep abiding love for music and spoken word poetry. For the rest of my days I will sit in audiences and wish I could put my words into pleasing sounds. Really, I can't even recite poetry. Not good when you write poetry. I've got one of those voices that sort of grates and sounds always like I'm alot younger than I am and I have some kind of cold, and my mama should have taught me to blow my nose or something. It's truly wretched.

Fortunately for me, I've had the great fortune to have relationships with a couple of musicians, so even though I can't create music myself, (because in addition to having no voice, I've got no rhythm either, so playing an instrument's out as well) I get to be around it alot. Not that I'm always all that appreciative of the music in my life. In fact, I spend alot of time talking about the pitfalls of being a musician's girlfriend. Aside from the continuous Yoko jokes, there's the constant sense of being excluded from something. It's sort of like when you sit at a table with people much, much smarter than you. (Another common experience in my life.) While it's fascinating and certainly an enriching experience, when you are as dramatic as I am, and have an innate need to be the center of attention, it tends to make you feel about as useful as tits on a bull.

But, I can write. I can put words together in a way that sometimes make a person go...wow...or go, you know, I've never really heard someone say it like that before. I can, from time to time, put the jumble of thoughts in my mind into a form that other people find entertaining. So, you know, if 30 years on the planets teaches you nothing at all, it teaches you to find ways to use what you have to your advantage.

What's all this leading up to...you might be asking yourself. Or if you're not, you don't know me all that well and aren't all that familiar with the long explanations I have for anything I do. Rationalizations really, that usually are way longer than whatever it was I was going to tell you. So, here's the thing. I've been making myself write, either taking little zygotes of ideas and trying to expand them, or going back over old journals and poems and rewriting and rewording, and I found this little, well not so little, poem/song thingy I wrote some years back that I really liked and decided to share with you all.

See, even when you know you can't do something...sometimes dreams don't go away....

Anyway, this here is called Anything But Fine, hope you enjoy it.


Anything But Fine

honey you know i was never much to look at
but lately i've been looking really bad
cause i've been staying up all night
thinking about that last fight we had
there's so much i should have said
so much that went unspoken
and i wish i could tell you now
cause i'm tired of being broken

and i know i never held your heart in my hands
though you know you always had mine
but i really think that if you had to leave
you could have left it behind
after everything we've been through
i can't believe you'd say goodbye
and i don't think i can live this way
this is anything but fine

it's a hard road to walk
when you're walking it alone
and everyday i become more weary
weary to the bone
there's so much i never told you
so many things i never said
now it's all driving me crazy
feeling trapped inside my head
and the path from you to me
is getting longer every day
and i have fallen oh so many times
along the way
don't think i'll ever find my way back
or that you'll find your way here
and all i seem to know anymore
are emptiness and fear

i've been so busy trying to remember
the girl i was before you came
driving down another lonely highway
realizing i'll never be the same
and every time i see you
and every time you call
i get closer to the truth
that we never really knew each other at all
and the road keeps stretching onward
and time keeps ticking by
and i still don't understand
why you ever let me say goodbye

yeah, i know i never held your heart in my hands
though we both know you always had mine
but baby when i left
i left my heart behind
and after everything you've been to me
i don't want to say goodbye
i won't do this anymore
cause this is anything but fine