Recent Songs: The Fever Song

The Fever Song


Tell me, is true art beauty
Or is true art lies?
I find each easiest to conjure when entwined
I only spoke of beauty
I even called it kind:
All this barbed wire that’s tangled around my mind
When you played the servant
You called it love
I played the doctor playing doctor in his vault
And they called me good
And they called me wise
Because the few patients that left matured like wine
Still, what would I know
Of four-letter words
If they aren’t woven to be flails against your worth?
I have kissed your fur
And I bit your neck
But you swear I haven’t tasted your soul yet
When you speak of love
It’s more than mystique
More than an apple growing on a fruitless tree

Oh, is true art beauty
Or is true art lies?
Like prince and pauper, in each other they will hide
The drunken comedian
Let’s call him divine
Because he’s dying to make us smile all the time
The ambassador
Of the promise land
With his folded bills placed on a child’s nightstand
The charismatic tramp
That we all love to hate
Is never scorned in person for leaving all his waifs
The young single-mother
We try to call noble
Her child screaming in his prison unanswered
And I don’t have an answer
I barely have leanings
And you know poets hate to tell you what it means
I hang these ornaments
On a fruitless tree
Trying to make it through another night without calling

Tell me, is true art beauty
Or is true art lies?
I find each easiest to conjure when entwined
You only spoke of beauty
You even called it kind:
All the barbed wire that has tangled up your mind
And we have failed completely
At the top of the hill
In front of everyone that matters to us still
I couldn’t play the prophet
Or be their sacrifice
But I would fall though for you to melt their lake of ice
Still, I couldn’t feel smaller
All that I thought I’d be
Back in the orchard when we were young and naïve
So I release my arms
And hang my humbled head
But the fever takes pen and paper to my bed
I try to keep my distance
Like I could set you free
The wire only tears in deeper as it is released

So is true art beauty
Or is true art lies?
Like love, whatever’s easy I suspect’s contrived
But I don’t have an answer
It’s not that kind of tree
That I lie with you beneath in fever dreams


November 1, 2015