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Ellis Paul

Looking For My Friends

from: Stories
This time let's not bring up my disasters,
Or put me on some couch like Sigmund Freud.
Your textbooks filled with hypothetical answers.
So summarize, she called it null and void.
What do you want me to tell you?
What do you want me to say?
I've been cut by the rose again.
All the petals have fallen to pieces.

Now I'm left with the thorn and the stem.
I'm out looking for my friends, looking for my friends.

She left the note in the sleeve of my coat, that was not nice --
I called her on the phone, the voice that spoke, it was cold, it was hard as ice.

I tried to speak,
the connection was weak
'cause I was talking to a machine.
She said, "If this is you, we're totally through,"
and that's the last of her I've seen.

What do you want me to tell you?
I got the message loud and clear --
Now I can't talk, 'cause talk is cheap.
I'm in a no-win situation.
There are no words that I could speak that would mend this broken rose.
So here I am, on the couch of a friend who submits his observations,
He says love just comes and goes...

Ellis Paul Publishing (ASCAP) 1994