Chapter three: the great american game

Dear Diary, Grandfather's creaky as his front porch
Loads his shotgun beneath the awning, spittoon restless for rain
Carpenter's chair against the whistling air
Rocking, back and forth, rocking snap shot picture -
Worth it, just like the movies

She said that he loved baseball, and James Earl Jones
Said that he's got God talking inside of his thoughts
While he's rounding those bases on his way back home

If you build it, they will come
(And baby listens to what the Lord say)
But I've been getting pretty worn, building for nearly a decade

In a perfect world
We shouldn’t have been allowed to lose sight of what it means to love wholly
I’ve got a Polaroid hanging on my wall
That a friend took of me and my angel
I remember the day like it’s something I can touch
But it’s stuck in the square between the borders of the film
And I can run my fingers over our faces
But I can’t get back to the places we were

You’ve got a pain deep in your bones, son
It compels you forward like you’re tied to a slave master’s cruel hand
And it's the same pain that drives that oppressor’s heart of stone
So you’ve grown to love the man
You keep pouring yourself out, again and again
Into legible lines through a crooked pen
Yeah, it’s painful, but it’s familiar –
So habit breeds comfort, and I don’t know what I’d do without him

So in the early morning
When you’ve fallen asleep in our home
I drift back into the memories that I’ve claimed as my own
And wonder if tonight will be a night I’ll hang on my wall
Like I did before we stopped taking photos
Out of the habit of being comfortable with not trying at all

In a perfect world
We’ll have albums labeled Seasons with chapter headings
And we’ll staple them to the cork-board that hangs at the foot of the bed
There’s longevity in a memory spilt out in pen
And if a picture is worth a thousand words then I’ve written down every one of them

I work hard, scarred
Toil through that soil for the youth I see in my friends
But these journals are moments in time
Snapshots of our lives, and in retrospect
Age is an overexposed photo that the memories can't mend

I know my sweet seductress, and her name is Depression
I wrote best beneath that demon’s destructive oppression

In those Polaroids, she drove the ink into the canvas
Like a slave beneath his master’s cruel hand
And I hated that whip, but always wondered what I’d do without it
So I grew to love the man

Oh, I wept for change!
I begged for movement and the good Lord, he answered my prayers
But you don’t know how to breathe easy when you let go of your habits
Even if your comforts left you gasping for air

Dear Time
Grandfather's as creaky as his front porch
Scent like oil in the gun barrel
Dip-can kicked over the railing
Sandpaper hands stuck behind thumb tacks on my wall
I’ve got an ache in my chest for every season I miss
And it gets worse when the snow starts to fall
There are butterflies alive in that couple’s eyes
A few years since forgotten by all
And sometimes, if the phone starts to ring
I can still hear their wings when you call

But I begged for movement and I got what I asked for
And I can picture the answer like it came yesterday
And in the land of the gods, I think that things are timeless
But we are still prone to decay

You know I still lift up hope of certain smiles in those photos for us when I pray

Time is a cruel lover, and she breaks her house apart at its bones
You know comfort is no good reason for standing still
And idle hands build nothing that you can call your own