Vanity, In Vain.

Whirling hurricanes,

Jokes I’ll never get,

My inability to hula hoop,

But I already got that.

It’s not a newsflash

That there’s nothing there

But reading minds

And lullabies of loneliness;

Of a connection,

Too strong to do anything

But collapse upon itself.

You may be a storm,

But I’ve always been something else,

Something I’ve yet to define

That breaks what has not been broken,

That fixes what has already fixed itself.

If you’re meant to be alone,

I’m meant to spend forever

Finding myself in your fallacies.

I will not let go,

Not if the axis cracks,

Not if the breathing stops,

I will not let go.

Though you’re looking,

Look no further,

The only person who can rescue you

Is the one who needs to be saved.

If you’d let me hold you,

I’d hold you ‘til the morning came

And met the day, ‘til the day came

And met the afternoon,

‘Til you became me and I became you.

If you’d let me.

There are things I could change

If I could bring myself to,

There are things you could do

If you’d let yourself live.

By twenty-two, it’s too late,

Nobody folds at twenty-one,

Nobody folds at twenty,

Nobody folds at nineteen,

Or eighteen, or seventeen,

Or when one card is a Queen

Or when love is on the screen

Or when hate causes a scene.

Nobody ever folds without a reason to,

And excuses were never your style.

Reviews

[Emily Rose]

"If you're meant to be alone,/I'm meant to spend forever/Finding myself in your fallacies" - Ah, wonderous - it's so true and self-reflective. I get the feeling you're being a bit too hard on yourself, though :-) I get the feeling that there's a lot of things in the poem that I don't understand - I can grasp at them and get a little bit of a hold but then it slips away and I'm left in the dark again. I like that - it's a little frustrating sometimes, but it just makes me work hard to understand and intrepret.

Is the whole "nobody folds at 21" etc. a blackjack reference? That's kind of what I got from it. It's interesting how the numbers correspond to ages and scores in the card game. Maybe I'm misinterpreting, though.

Great job with this, as usual.

[Jeremy]

Nicely done on the analogies (metaphors) in this one.

[Engulfed in Flames]

ouch!....

"Nobody folds at twenty one"...nice