My heart is a dead end.

A guitar is playing on the street corner
and trying to call out my name
he thinks he knows my heart
and that music can heal

but he doesn't have the keys
set the way I remember them
and his fingers wear down like chalk
on strings down-tuned to melancholy.

With his guitar slung over his shoulder
like a broken wing;
because there's always money for sympathy
but never enough change..

and there's always someone with an harmonica
leeching inspiration from a breeze.
You do not know my heart;

It cries like Rutger Hauer from the rooftops
as the rain falls to its knees.
and sings itself to sleep mechanical lullabies
doubting that it has a soul.

It drags itself like litter through streets
over broken bottles and strewn films strips
left miserable in the opera noir
of blader-runner-blue rains.

...And you never think to look
under the fingernails of the world
to find the dirt that is my heart sometimes
wishing to be left there;

It is the pavement artist trying to sell
his desperate paintings on a desolate road;
to someone whose heart
is still like a girl running free,
rattling a stick along sunlit railings
that flicker epileptic;

as sparklers that go out
when passed to the wrong hands.

• On Friday, May 1, 2009, carlosjackal (1801) wrote:
  
  That switch from the 4th stanza to the 5th...Brilliant. And the whole piece just works fantastically from start to finish. And I concur with Nessa and Colin...This deserving of so many more comments.
  
  
• On Friday, May 1, 2009, carlosjackal (1801) wrote:
  
  *is
  
  
• On Wednesday, February 25, 2009, saintedmad (1425) wrote:
  
  conur with col [on all points]. .. the confessional voice, the alternating scenarios of introspection and exoskeleton of all else. . .. an inward lookout. the ill.chimed music, the lulled isolation of an introvert, wishing to be known, but for me [of course] it was the streetartist/little gril metaphor; and flicker epileptic....the stopstilling innocence of what used to be the entire world gone by..run amuck. . . .and that girl is still playing with ehr sticks and stones and able to see the beauty. the beautiful unrealness of us all.....we all need eyes such as hers...or such as yours.
  
  
• On Tuesday, February 24, 2009, The Zebra Warrior (2209) wrote:
  
  I have to say a few things on this...firstly; I am astounded that no one has any commentry to speak on this. It's really worthy of something more, jeez! What grips me with this poem is the references to Bladerunner, and that emphatic feel of bleakness, similiar to the visual as well as the content feel of the film. When you write of Rutger Hauer 'crying' from the rooftops, my guess is you're referring to the infamous scene where he renders his last lines so poetically and profoundly. I think it's one fo the great moments in celluloid "...all those moments will be lost...like..tears - in the rain..". For me that's a similiar notion to what this poem speaks, a kind of post-existentialist summary of self and identity in a concrete world; amongst the detritus "mechanical lullabies", the 'machinery of our lives' as another poet once wrote.
  
  
• On Tuesday, February 24, 2009, The Zebra Warrior (2209) wrote:
  
  and nothing now, but in my head that little sparse music playing over Hauer's distinct voice rendering his final moments; his own limited life. This has a slightly confessional, deeply personal tone, but it identifies heavily with the world, it's current confusions and its endless machinations. A very absorbing, engrossing and moving poem I felt and certainly not worthy of being as discarded by the readers here as it appears to have been(only so far..)