oh, frances

"God Dies," by Frances Farmer

No one ever came to me and said, "You're a fool. There isn't such a thing as God. Somebody has been stuffing you." It wasn't a murder. I think God just died of old age. And when I realized that he wasn't any more, it didn't shock me. It seemed natural and right.

Maybe it was because I was never properly impressed with a religion. I went to Sunday school and liked the stories about Christ and the Christmas star. They were beautiful. They made you warm and happy to think about. But I didn't believe them. The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant, pretty stories, but not true.

Religion was too vague. God was different. He was something real, something I could feel. But there were only certain times when I could feel it. I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God. "I am clean, now. I've never been as clean. I'll never be cleaner." And somehow, it was God. I wasn't sure that it was just something cool and dark and clean.

That wasn't religion, though. There was too much of the physical about it. I couldn't get that same feeling during the day, with my hands in dirty dish water and the hard sun showing up the dirtiness on the roof-tops. And after a time, even at night, the feeling of God didn't last. I began to wonder what the minister meant when he said, "God, the father, sees even the smallest sparrow fall. He watches over all his children." That jumbled it all up for me. But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God. So at night, when I went to bed, I would think, "I am clean. I am sleepy." And then I went to sleep. It didn't keep me from enjoying the cleanness any less. I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.

Sometimes I found he was useful to remember; especially when I lost things that were important. After slamming through the house, panicky and breathless from searching, I could stop in the middle of a room and shut my eyes. "Please God, let me find my red hat with the blue trimmings." It usually worked. God became a super-father that couldn't spank me. But if I wanted a thing badly enough, he arranged it.

That satisfied me until I began to figure that if God loved all his children equally, why did he bother about my red hat and let other people lose their fathers and mothers for always? I began to see that he didn't have much to do about hats, people dying or anything. They happened whether he wanted them to or not, and he stayed in heaven and pretended not to notice. I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing. It seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he became less and less, until he was... nothingness.

I felt rather proud to think that I had found the truth myself, without help from any one. It puzzled me that other people hadn't found out, too. God was gone. We were younger. We had reached past him. Why couldn't they see it? It still puzzles me.

thompson girl

thompson girl, i'm stranded at the unique motel
thompson girl winterfighter's shot on the car as well
looks like christmas at 55 degrees
this latitude weakens my knees,

thompson girl grunt work somewhere between dream and duty
poking through with all them shoots of beauty

thompson girl walking from chruchill
across the icy world with polar bears it's mostly uphill
but when she saw that nickel stack
she whistled hard and i whistled back,

thompson girl grunt work somewhere between dream and duty
poking through with all them shoots of beauty
grunt work somewhere between dream and duty
poking through with all them shoots of beauty

thompson girl were down to the dead houseplants
thompson girl we've jettisoned everything we can
she says springtime's coming wait til you see
it poking through with them shoots of beauty
it's the end of rent-a-movie weather
it's time to end this siege together,
thompson girl
thompson girl
thompson girl
thompson girl

trag.hip

lakes of canada

Look for me another day
I feel that I could change,
I feel that I could change.
There's a sudden joy that's like
a fish, a moving light;
I thought I saw it
rowing on the lakes of Canada

Oh laughing man 
what have you won?
don't tell me what cannot be done.
my little mouth, my winter lungs
don't tell me what cannot be done,
cannot be done di-da-di-da de da da da de da...

Walking in the cirlce of a flashlight
someone starts to sing, to join in.
Talk of loneliness in quiet voices
I am shy but you can reach me. 
rowing on the lakes of Canada
rowing on the lakes of Canada

Oh laughing man 
what have you won?
don't tell me what cannot be done.
my little mouth, my winter lungs
don't tell me what cannot be done.
cannot be done di-da-di-da de da da da de da...

Look for me another time,
give me another day.
I feel that I could change

rowing on the lakes of Canada,
rowing on the lakes of Canada.

inn.miss.

left-

all i can think is this 

a night of missed kisses, red clouds and

music- loud

over the waves of the ohio,

yeh, i know-

and im used to the feeling of being used too...

you sleep and i'm awake

you call that a choice? for FUCKS sake!

i didn't do- did not do-

anything wrong,

at least

not to you.

into the rivers' water deep 

i wanted it to sink

to drown 

if i can't be reached i can't be found

and i wish to a god

try as hard as i can, but

the winds keep calling, and 

after all

this IS what i am-

you call it lost

or lonely

or broken or sad

or evil, and devil woman- yes!

that is what you said,

and with an easy way out, no less

and no better

you sent me that smile in the black and white

and i read it at night

right down to that last line

i get it-

you have to say goodbye.

what am i left with?

smoldering embers of possibilities and a

restless longing 

for lonely and

anything

and i shoulda seen it coming

from a week away-

not the only time you've had nothing to say

abscond

and fray-

i become a memory, again

in someone else's head

a ghost of myself

behind you as you tread

to find who you think

is gonna save your soul

but i've been through a lot more, 

WHAT THE FUCK DO you KNOW?

and

it's really that easy 

just to let me go?

so,

into the ohio 

and the water and the current

to the mississippi 

to lie on the river bed

with all that history

like me

is what i am- this-

a ghost

a loss

a want, like a fire

for the frost

i'm pale

and don't eat i don't sleep and

can't if i tried

theres a black sickness eating me on the inside

and my heart beats slower- look

i just want to die,

anyway...

and you have already said goodbye

airport

Today the grass is like another green, 
straight from heaven's garden, 
like you've never seen. 
At first glance it's like this place is on fire, 
but it's just time for this dew to expire. 
Most of the days I'm down near the sea. 
People say they're not seeing me, 
I miss them as much as they miss me. I miss 
them just like they miss me. 
Now yesterday I think he might have called to say 
Hey, or just to get us all together on a Saturday, 
to take some time come down your way. 
But he's over on the North Side. 
He can walk. 
He doesn't need a ride. 
I wouldn't pick him up anyway. 
It's not not my town. 
I don't know the way. 
I see him out my window, 
on a very different street where leaves fall 
up in the Spring time, and the sun sets in the East.
I'm always late whem I'm visiting. 
I can't remember where the station is. 
What time will you be coming in? 
I wish my town had an airport.
In 15 minutes we'de be at my door. 
We'd used the time for a walk and some wine, 
but these days I'm trying not to think about time. 
I see him out my window, 
on a very different street where leaves fall up in the Spring time, 
and the sun sets in the east. 
We hang out in the garden, away from phone calls, 
strip malls-now I don't want to leave you behind. 
It's just that grayed-out horizon. 
Hey, don't you think it's time?

karate

so long

so long that
i could not know what to say
even if it was told
to me
in your sweet, secret code
what is the true price
of youth and young womanhood?
if my body decays
like sandcastles being eaten away
by the tide
and the moon
and all that deep,
dark
dark
blue