Some people just captivate.
We stare at them with wide-open awe.
Their words are words we've heard before
But never with that emotion, that intensity
That tear-duct searing rip out
That leaves us breathless with shock
And fear and wonder and that craving
For more and more and more.

Like poets aflame
They transcend and bring us
A world so suddenly real:
A glimpse into how things really are,
That with their each straining effort
We feel our eking lives passing
Too fast, too slow, too feebly.
We know we are wasting every moment
Without such feeling, without such zeal,
Without such hopelessness and such fear;
Without such love and such emptiness.
Without such truth.

When a person like that dies, it's no wonder.
How could they keep living
Among our compromises and our lies?
How could one so true
Who gave it all to us,
Who drained everything out
To the last refrain, do anything else?

When a person like that dies, it's no wonder.
It leaves an emptiness
Like a word we can't remember,
A lost train of thought.
It leaves us drifting in its crater.
We want to fill it, but it
Just stays empty.

Like a tune we can't forget
But will never be able to sing;
When a person like that dies,
It's the death of everything.

[For Amy Winehouse. 1983-2011.]

07/29/2011

Posted on 07/29/2011
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