Ages of Cages: Matchbox Petals

Matchbox Petals

Matchboxes filled with dogwood petals by the mirror in her room
To compensate her handmade gloom
And the typewriter that she threw down to the street
Little trinkets from the jackknife vets on the corner of Oblique and Fate
Where the TV prophets wait
They make poor substitutes for the happiness she seeks

She is tired of burning bridges
She’s so far from her hometown
Her western ambitions were all laced in deceit

Green bottle candleholders with their dead moths and smoke tails
On the oak table by the pails
That catch the water from the upstairs tenant’s eyes
Have abandoned her in the early hours, long before the rising sun
With her tapestry still undone
And all her empty telephones and rusty springs

She is tired of burning bridges
She’s so far from her hometown
She buried her heart on a cloud in the Jersey skies

When she came she said something about finding her faceless name
She’s got no illusions of fame
Just a hole that she cannot fill with these ferry coins
If I were her, I’d leave tomorrow with these postcards from Eden
And my scores left uneven
For no one’s ever left these streets quite in one piece

She is tired of burning bridges
She’s so far from her hometown
Her hopes like the sun fade into the mountain’s loins

When I finally received the telegraph, I knew its message would be grim
For the lights had all been dimmed
And all their faces hung like bats in an old house
Give all the petals from her matchboxes to a panhandling gust
And tell the brass bells to all hush
She’s not dead; her silhouette of gold’s been shed
She is tired of burning bridges
She’s going back to her hometown
She buried her heart on a cloud in the Jersey skies
She buried her heart on a cloud in the Jersey skies
She buried her heart on a cloud in the Jersey skies
She buried her heart on a cloud in the Jersey skies