Diving Board Failures

by Briyan Frederick

published by Blind Mime Music, ASCAP

Briyan: guitars, sunoai

This song was created based on a challenge to create a song based on this photo.

The guitars come from a tapegerm I made in November 2006.

Diving Board Failures

There’s a wet thing rolling through the wires,
a whisper wrapped in wax and static fires
The raccoon spins sugar and lies,
its paws blue with nostalgia and lullabies
Someone call the Vice Chancellor over here
like it meant something to someone dear
Like any of this means anything to anyone
besides string taped to cans
Hung in a child's disarray between our bedrooms
And boxes filled with sand

Alfonso the mule's diving board failures
fumbled glory, lost to gravity’s wins
A mule in motion is unafraid to plow the threads
Alfonso the mule's diving board failures
hoofsteps echo in the chlorine and the din
Bubbles floating like painted mannequin heads
Here we go again
Where angels fear to tread

Giraffes gamble in our bingo hall of dreams,
Necks careeening through timezones
It's not what it seems.
A slogan shouts NOW! in bold and sans serif,
but what is all the hurry
when question marks and deputy sherrifs
Leave participples hanging off cliffs
And melting in my hands
along with our doubts as they wander
Away with the mimes and the band

Alfonso the mule's diving board failures
fumbled glory, lost to gravity’s wins
A mule in motion is unafraid to plow the threads
Alfonso the mule's diving board failures
hoofsteps echo in the chlorine and the din
Bubbles floating like painted mannequin heads
Here we go again
Where angels fear to tread

Alfonso, alas, isn’t diving anymore.
The circus has passed
And he’s floating far away
With beasts faced with metaphors
and weightless regret
where the sticky note poetry
reveals something and yet
Nothing at all at all

Alfonso the mule's diving board failures
fumbled glory, lost to gravity’s wins
A mule in motion is unafraid to plow the threads
Alfonso the mule's diving board failures
hoofsteps echo in the chlorine and the din
Bubbles floating like painted mannequin heads
Here we go again
Where angels fear to tread

Let's remember the final dive
through the pulp and fiction failures,
through the paper mists of whispering twins
Let's recall the fall,
chasing answers,
just to feel the splash
of something almost real

At least inside my head
Where angels fear to tread