Turnaround France from Turnaround France by Will Clark

He’s gonna be your friend
the king is waiting for the rest of the castle

All he has is a chair
And a tower to stare out
Hoping that the stones will grow up

Then he pulls out a great, big book
And keeps it horizontal
He’s got time for reading
In the endless evening

There’s someone here who mistook it for a bible
And went out to see what the fuss was about
Staring at the page

She saw a mouth in the corner
And thought that she would be an ear
Show some mercy
And the mouth opened for the first time in years to say

“If I could choose, I’d gain it all and lose it all again
Just to end up at the exact spot
Over which
I am hunched
In beggars clothes
Forever old”

Not “older” as in “colder” but “warmer” as in “closer to death”

A talent for being ill
For being close and still
A talent for giving away
Exactly what the body needs

Sometimes we fall off that cliff
the world is flat when the eye requires it

But when you’re sad I am sad
the catch is the catching
And that hairy rug continues
To shed
There’s no word for how calmly the walls come up
I am living in her head
Drowning in it

“Hello, my life.” I said
the time it’s been could fill up a whole other book

We travelled alone to a city abroad
Went to the same gas station
As if just at the curve
Of a wheel in constant rotation

the doctor held her hand
while the plague made its way across the States
I took my turn around France

“If I could choose I’d gain it all and lose it all again
Just to end up at the exact walls between which
I am crushed
At one end hope
the other, hope”

• Appetizer Sampler
• Drum machine folk
• Folk
• american primitive
• folktronica
• Brooklyn