Astride the Great Divide

I could characterize myself as needy, but that would be redundant. Everyone is. Everyone needs SOMETHING, some people need lots of things.

Is my problem that I need things that are fundamentally contradictory? I need independence, I need support and assurance. I need acclaim, I need privacy. I need affection, I need space. I need sex, but I need love. The last two aren't wholly opposed, but I've found myself looking at trading one for the other more often than I'd like to. I need the future, but sometimes I yearn for the past. The present tense, at any rate, has been unkind to me on a subsurface level of late, in terms of emotion and satisfaction and comfort and the feeling of belonging. I'm in between homes right now in many respects, and don't expect I'll find my new one for quite a while. Dos Passos wrote the sketch "VAG" to close out 1919 about a roadside drifter looking weathered, beaten, but at peace. I guess that's what I aim for anymore.

Fireworks

I've got a confession --
Felt like I was sitting at a funeral procession
As the star shells lit up the sky
Our last Fourth of July

I know you couldn't miss it
As six-year-olds with sparklers laughed off in the distance
We were dead when you arrived
We were tracing lines to other peoples' lives

* And I was hoping I could re-ignite
But I kept panning gold and coming up with pyrite

And Tulsa town felt so dead to me that summer
We were treading water and we were going under
I just wonder
Why you held so tightly in my sleep

I've got recollection
Sitting in the hospital, waiting for directions -
Waiting for the at-ease that never came -
These things all end the same

In your yard, we were lighting
Fuses in the dark, throwing sparks like lightning
It should've been the highlight of my year
But last lights always disappear

** And I was waiting for some eloquence to show up
But all I saw was, things so bright just burn out or blow up

[ref.]

{Oh, eulogizing effigies --
There's no disguising the atrophy
But we're free, now, anyway
So I guess... Happy Independence Day}

*** And I'm still waiting to forget
But the last thing I remember is the first thing I regret

[ref.]