Lyrics
Oh, raven bird.
I don’t feel much myself as of late. My body is changing, my sides are splitting. My back is breaking, like my bones have grown much too large for my flesh.
Oh, raven bird.
I went to a bar the other day. I cannot drink. I visited a bar the other day, and they had a taxidermy mount on the wall. It looked at me as if it was still alive. I saw it blink.
I wondered about the simplicities of a dead animal. You’ve already felt the inevitable bullet holes of a hungry man’s gun puncture your body you spent so long growing. Now, you sit on the wall and watch… your head sits on the wall and watches… but how you could sit if you don’t have legs… your head watches as desperate monsters infiltrate a tipsy girl’s drink at the bar, and take her home, but not her home.
You see the birth of an alcoholic on his 21st birthday, and the death of his dignity on his 30th.
You’ve seen music fill every empty corner of the room, charming the ears of drunken fools.
You’ve seen that sign go up out front, that horrible sign. “Please Remain 6 Feet Apart” it read.
You’ve seen one bar close and another open.
You’ve seen one bottle empty, and another cork pop. Oh, the familiar sound of pouring bourbon, and the burn as it washes down one’s esophagus. Doesn’t it hurt just to watch?
Oh, raven bird,
why do we speak such words when we do not mean them?
Why do we love?
Why do we hate?
Why do we [bleep]?
Why wouldn’t we?
Why do we drink when we know it will hurt?
Why do we cry?
Why do we smile?
Why don’t you?
Why wouldn’t I?
If we would just stop killing each other, the world would be overpopulated. But if desperate monsters would stop infiltrating an innocent girl’s drink, maybe there wouldn’t be as many of us.
If old wrinkled white men would stop making rules for a body they will never possess, maybe there wouldn’t be as many of us.
Maybe a woman could better empathize, because a man’s worst pain is a woman preventing a birth, and a woman’s worst pain is the birth of a man.
Oh, raven bird,
don’t let them give me a gun. Who knows what I will do with it when I am of age? Would they care what I do? They sent a boy to the battlefield, what else did they expect?
Oh, raven bird,
why can I never figure out how to end a poem like this?