my poetry was lousy, you said
547 words. PG.
Joan Baez. Bob Dylan.
Summary: Joan's a little sentimental, sometimes.
Note: Set sorta vaguely around 1966. Originally posted here.
He is like one of those ink-covered ink-spattered notebooks pages he's always crumbling up and throwing away, messy and dirty and full of brilliance. Sometimes Joan picks them up - no one else is going to clean, anyway - and smoothes them out, reads his cramped poetry. She runs her fingers over the smudged, rejected words but she can't really touch them, just like she can run her fingers all over his skin and never really be touching him. Nothing touches Bobby; he's too far out there.
She remembers the little scrap of a boy she saw at Folk City, with his hick clothes and his baby fat. It's hard to see that boy in his thin, sharp face these days, his skinny body in its skinny suits. But the shadowed eyes are the same, tiredness like bruising around the blue. And his mouth is the same, that twisting cruel mouth. She'd been the one on her high horse at Folk City, sipping her Shirley Temple like the goody-two-shoes she still is, looking up at him doubtfully through her lashes. She was a big deal and he was a strange nobody, a wrinkled vagabond. Now he's Bob Dylan and she's picking up his trash.
He's electric, and she remembers when he wasn't. She thinks that's why he's starting to hate her.
Joan can't help who she is: an upright kind of girl, a square. She can't help that her feelings run deep and true like roots and she can't shake them loose. He hooked her with that rough, jagged knife of a voice and now he's angry that she's bleeding everywhere.
He goes for girls who fit his image so these days he prefers the scrawny waifs with decoration - the earrings, the makeup, the smart little outfits and architecture hair. Joan looks in the mirror sometimes and wonders if he'd like her better if she plucked her eyebrows and lined her eyes, teased her hair and wore better clothes. But the only thing that runs deeper than his songs in her blood is her sense of self and she can't help who she is.
Once in a while he still swaggers over like he owns the joint and slings an arm around her waist, demands, "Joanie, you sing me something." He smells like whiskey and she knows he probably didn't swallow anything except booze and pills all day. So she picks up an old guitar and sings something for him, one of his discarded songs. He probably doesn't even remember writing it. Bobby listens for a while before ambling over to the typewriter and it's not long before the snapping of keys becomes her accompaniment.
He kind of hates her these days, but he loved her voice before he ever loved her. There was music before there was affection, his words a dizzy spell that took up a big enough space in her heart to let him slide on in. And now that they're both running thin with each other, short on patience or pleasure, the music's still there. Joan thinks that's the one thing that doesn't shrivel and die, the one thing that's forever, the one thing that's real.
She bets Bob would think that's real sentimental, but oh well. Joan's a little sentimental, sometimes.
547 words. PG.
Joan Baez. Bob Dylan.
Summary: Joan's a little sentimental, sometimes.
Note: Set sorta vaguely around 1966. Originally posted here.
He is like one of those ink-covered ink-spattered notebooks pages he's always crumbling up and throwing away, messy and dirty and full of brilliance. Sometimes Joan picks them up - no one else is going to clean, anyway - and smoothes them out, reads his cramped poetry. She runs her fingers over the smudged, rejected words but she can't really touch them, just like she can run her fingers all over his skin and never really be touching him. Nothing touches Bobby; he's too far out there.
She remembers the little scrap of a boy she saw at Folk City, with his hick clothes and his baby fat. It's hard to see that boy in his thin, sharp face these days, his skinny body in its skinny suits. But the shadowed eyes are the same, tiredness like bruising around the blue. And his mouth is the same, that twisting cruel mouth. She'd been the one on her high horse at Folk City, sipping her Shirley Temple like the goody-two-shoes she still is, looking up at him doubtfully through her lashes. She was a big deal and he was a strange nobody, a wrinkled vagabond. Now he's Bob Dylan and she's picking up his trash.
He's electric, and she remembers when he wasn't. She thinks that's why he's starting to hate her.
Joan can't help who she is: an upright kind of girl, a square. She can't help that her feelings run deep and true like roots and she can't shake them loose. He hooked her with that rough, jagged knife of a voice and now he's angry that she's bleeding everywhere.
He goes for girls who fit his image so these days he prefers the scrawny waifs with decoration - the earrings, the makeup, the smart little outfits and architecture hair. Joan looks in the mirror sometimes and wonders if he'd like her better if she plucked her eyebrows and lined her eyes, teased her hair and wore better clothes. But the only thing that runs deeper than his songs in her blood is her sense of self and she can't help who she is.
Once in a while he still swaggers over like he owns the joint and slings an arm around her waist, demands, "Joanie, you sing me something." He smells like whiskey and she knows he probably didn't swallow anything except booze and pills all day. So she picks up an old guitar and sings something for him, one of his discarded songs. He probably doesn't even remember writing it. Bobby listens for a while before ambling over to the typewriter and it's not long before the snapping of keys becomes her accompaniment.
He kind of hates her these days, but he loved her voice before he ever loved her. There was music before there was affection, his words a dizzy spell that took up a big enough space in her heart to let him slide on in. And now that they're both running thin with each other, short on patience or pleasure, the music's still there. Joan thinks that's the one thing that doesn't shrivel and die, the one thing that's forever, the one thing that's real.
She bets Bob would think that's real sentimental, but oh well. Joan's a little sentimental, sometimes.