The Arsonist

First you burned your own house down
Then you sold the ashes to the clown
Who painted this brow with thunderclouds
And pulled flowers out of his mouth
Then you grabbed the bouquet and flew
From everything that asked to much of you
But the future gives birth to both sorrow and mirth
It don’t matter what you say or do
And now, you pray for a dry canteen
So you can dare an empty sky to rain
Then you shake your fist, you can’t resist
Does anybody feel your pain?
You’re alone and you can’t go home again
They look for you in the leaves of magazines
In picaresque stories, in penny arcade portraits of Lauren Bacall
While I look for you in the dye of canceled stamps
In the panic of sirens, in the vanishing kite strings of airplane exhaust
But nobody can catch the arsonist