Jem Goulding

Hippies Lie

This heart was safe wrapped up in ice
Until you reached into my sky
And melt it with your zenith
I wish I wanted to break this beautiful curse
Be free of the love you cast out so willingly, like a spell
But every minute in your light is like medicine
Living therapy
You

I feel like this forest you’ve taken me to
Whose trees would fall without you
Humming through their leaves
Like if you untangle our limbs
You’ll uproot a lifeline and I’ll cease to be

Guitar cradled in both arms
Your blood starts to spill and for a while it’s sacred
Especially when we pretend you only play like this for me
These serenades are threads I want to tug at
Unmask the thespian
But don’t in case they snap altogether
And I’m left alone with only echoes of us

Sometimes I think you hear my heart beat and strum away in time
Then I admit it’s my veins pulsing to your strings
A metaphor for our dynamic
Disguised in your performance

Your peace makes me want war
I want to pull the pin on your golden grenade
See your soul dowse these walls
Hurl your poetry promises across the floor like marbles
Watch them shatter in pain
But they won’t
They’ll bounce out a melody that sounds of last summer
Though you’ve no need for chimes to solstice
These are your picnic days
And it never rains in your realm

Stop with your magic for a minute
Your wizardry makes me mortal
The next time you tell me what I want to hear
I’ll dash a fatal blow to that angel face
Only you’ve already closed your eyes
Falling back through the air
Arms out stretched
Landing on my sheets in that irresistible crucifix

Can’t help but take your photograph
And climb your waist

I want to breathe you in now
Play yin and yang
So I stare past your glistening neck
Fixate with blurred vision on your ceiling
Try to dissolve into the same trance you’re in
Don’t leave me behind
My stars could implode
But I can’t purge the fear of losing you
Even here
I’m petrified with doubt Until the poncho we lay under falls away and I’m lost in your oasis

Even after all the midnights of naked laughter
All the hazy breakfasts and smoke misted noons
There’s a stranger in my bed again
I’m wearing his T-shirt
And I gave up keeping up with your head when I realized
You are not of this earth
My heartbreaking, breathtaking alien.

Tomorrow when we’re out in the world
The masses
They will swarm and fall
And I remember
It’ll always be this way for you
Everyone loves a smiler.

The agony is that I know who I have to be
To keep you
But can’t reverse the supernova
That person got lost behind the moon

The day you danced into my sky.