We Gave Up On Love

I think we all decided
One day
Somewhere
To give up on love

Not the idea or the newness of it
But on the real deal
The ever-lasting part of it

We gave it up when we shot Lennon near that hotel in New York City
We gave up on it when we plowed that sad bullet through Kennedy's head
and all that beautiful love we thought we had was scattered over the pavement with the blood
and the pieces of his skull
I knew the love was gone when Morrison, and Hendrix, and Joplin, and Bonham, and Cobain, and Marley
and Bukowski with those drinks,
and Thompson with that gun,
and Vonnegut on those stairs,
and Terence McKenna with that brain cancer
Hicks and Carlin,
They all met their deaths head on
We gave up on love when we assassinated Lincoln
Jesus...
We didn't even want it back then

"The amount of times I thought I was in love" she said
"I definitely wasn't, ha ha"
And you never will be
I thought to myself
"Or perhaps you were in love every time" I said
"You just blindly chose to disregard it."
She stared into her glass blankly and then replied
"That's a good way of thinking."

But clearly there had been no thought process
None, zero, zilch, zip
Sometimes that also gets tossed away with the love
The thinking
and its full on impulse from there, baby!
Holding hands and tonging and cuddling and touching
At first like a fine painting held in front of all the faces of the world
and then with time
like torment
Everywhere

Fingers like sickly tentacles
Moist and clammy
Lips like filthy concrete
and no more sex
Just poor body language
Hell and fire
A lot of drinking and cigarettes
Whining
Left once more with the choice of leaving or staying
and then
again
"The amount of times I thought I was in love..."

But that's not love that's just something to do in place of it
Over and over
to hopelessly drag on the illusion of love
Fornication
Weird decisions
But I know we all decided
One day
Somewhere
To give up on it

I also know I wasn't there