Home Planet News

a journal of literature & art

Don Bertschman


      Left it here for you to find
      Left this here for you to find
      Left this song for you to find
      cause I’ll be gone a long, long time

A cheap black box and a few clear beads
A bit of Rumi that spoke to me
All the years I believed
love could change most anything

      I left this here for you to find
      Left it here for you to find
      All these years I left behind
      cause I’ll be gone a long, long time

A shift key from my first word machine
I loved making words when I could barely read
So many words outlasting me
Some poetic, some just mean

      Left them here for you to find
      Or erase them all from the master drive
      I left a million words of me behind
      I’ll be gone a long, long time

A padlocked chest with troubled gifts
All the troubled ways we said yes
I treasured every mark we left
But love writes names in dust I guess

      I left it here for you to find
      Pleasure or pain’s for you to decide
      Left so much of us behind
      I’ll be gone a long, long time

Two parts heartache, two parts light
Two blue pills and a hard white lie
Bit more space in the middle of the night
Lines withdrawn so don’t think twice

      Left this here for you to find
      All these things we left behind
      Nothing left for us to hide
      And I’ll be gone a long, long time

So many things I stole from you —
t-shirts, earrings, points of view
I never asked, you never said “I do”
Now what you take back must belong to you

      I left it here for you to find
     What I could not take I left behind
      Left it all for you to find
      and I’ll be gone a long, long time   

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