Mark Fullmer

Composed for and broadcast on the A Mutual Respect February Music Month Challenge

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I hadn’t at all expected to get to my second song on the AMR 10-song February Challenge this soon, but after I got home from this Thai cafe I found myself playing around with ye ol’ guitar of yore and, well, this is what came out. I originally wrote the lyrics as a poem, back in those highfalutin grad school days. I sent it out to the literati, the intelligentsia, the hoi AND the poloi. One friend, a girl, a grad school buddy who shall remain nameless, wrote back something like “Please don’t send me stuff like this again. Ever.” So now I find myself putting it to music. Anyway. The chorus came first (from a tidbit I was humming on the way home today) and the verses followed pretty intuitively.

(Scroll down to play song)

My love, you are like a lovely flower,
Whose fragrance lasts until it wilts
And turns all yellow and dry
And bugs devour it, slowly.

My love, you are like Spring showers,
Dropping in just when things are looking up,
Wetting all over the place,
Causing worms to surface
And car accidents.

My love, you are like the summer sun,
Which feels good when it first touches me,
But soon, if I’m around for more than
Fifteen minutes without sunscreen,
Turns my skin pink and raw and rashy,
And poses the danger of melanoma.

My love, you are like the autumn leaves,
Which, as Time passes,
Sag and shrivel and fall, barren,
To the ground, for me to rake
Into black plastic trash bags, again and again.

My love, you are like the winter wind,
From which my appendages turn blue
And painful, and get frostbite,
And fall from my body with a tinkle.

My love, you are like a letter,
Which I send to the electric company,
Explaining why I was late for last month's bill
And surely you must have no heart if you turn the
Electricity off on a guy because his girlfriend
Spent the money on tampons.

My love, you are like a melody
Which the Bush administration blasted
For a week straight through monstrous
Stereospeakers outside Manuel Noriega’s compound
Until he gave up, defeated, sleepless, insane.

My love, you are like a broken toaster oven.
My love, you are like a gangrenous pustule.
My love, you are like Love.