Archive - Verse
Tilted Pictures
When time comes
For me to die,
And
I’m lying on my bed,
You’d think the thought
to come to me
Would be your pretty
Head.
But when
It really comes
I know other’s
Going to be,
Like how the
Picture on
My Kitchen wall
Tilted always to’rd the Lee.
Doin’ up the bacon
Or boilin’ up the eggs,
Smilin’ brightly up, I’d lift
the picture’s edge
And eye
its tiltedness
While sippin’ from
My cup.
I will think of you
When I die, of course,
Like a confusin’ mixture,
But somehow in my life
Love’s
real source
Will be the tiltin’
Of that old
Kitchen picture.
You might ask why,
And fairly so,
Since we once had
So much between us;
It has to do with
The mystery
We shared with
Fickle Venus.
Remember how
It was when we’d
Finished with our love
And, gazin’ in our fashion,
We’d dreamed
The flimsy dove
Had shared our
Achin’ passion?
But, he was far away
Flyin’ on other wings
Across the misty moors
Over distant things.
And we had
loved alone
Beneath the barren wall
While the future of our dyin’
Swept darkly down the hall.
The picture she’s still tilted
Upon the kitchen wall,
And the dove he still
Glides stiffly down the dingy hall.
And the vision of your face
Is there, but well disguised;
And my dyin’ only shows me
The insides of
me eyes.
I wish that there was
More, and more indeed
Should be, but time
Has its way for thee and me.
And love’s a fleetin’ thing,
So’s a flimsy dove,
But not a tiltin’ picure
Filled with tilted love.
And now that diein’s on me
I find it ain’t so bad
And well I can remember,
As a livin’ Lad,
Your slippin’ a hand
Deep down into me kilt,
And I’d give the kitchen picture
One more lovin’ tilt.
Then you and me we’d take
Me kilt off to the bed
And the lovin’ picure’d be
There roamin’ through my head
As I chased the errant dove
Enthralled by all.
And the memory of the creature
Makes me feel so small.
It’s not your lovin’ face
That I now recall,
Nor sense of diein’ grace.
It’s the simple tilted picture
On the kitchen wall.
But now diein’s finally over,
I see what I always knew:
It was always always, always only you.