Okkervil River: The War Criminal Rises And Speaks

The heart wants to feel. The heart wants to hold. The heart takes past Subway, past Stop and Shop, past Beals, and calls it coming home. The heart wants a trail away from alone, so the heart turns a sale into a well-worn milestone towards hard-won soft furniture, fought-for fast food, defended end table that holds paperbacks and back U.S. News. The mind turns an itch into a bruise, and the hands start to twitch when theyre feeling ill-used. And youre almost back now, you can see by the signs; from the bank you tell the temperature and then the time, and the billboard reads some headlines. The head wants to turn, to avert both its eyes, but the mind wants to learn of some truth that might be inside reported crimes. So they found a lieutenant who killed a village of kids. After finishing off the wives, he wiped off his knife and thats what he did. And theyre not claiming that theres any excusing it; that was thirty years back, and they just get paid for the facts the way they got them in. Now hes rising and not denying. His hands are shaking, but hes not crying. And hes saying How did I climb out of a life so boring into that moment? Please stop ignoring the heart inside, oh you readers at home! While you gasp at my bloody crimes, please take the time to make your heart my home: where Im forgiven by time, where Im cushioned by hope, where Im numbed by long drives, where Im talked off or doped. Does the heart wants to atone? Oh, I believe that its so, because if I could climb back through time, Id restore their lives and then give back my own: tens of times now its size on a far distant road in a far distant time where every night Im still crying, entirely alone. But the news today always fades away as you drive by, until at dinnertime when you look into her eyes, lit by evening sun - that, as usual, comes
from above that straight,
unbroken line, the horizon - its rising is a given, just
like your living. Your
hearts warm and kind. Your
mind is your own. Our blood-
spattered criminal is
inscrutable; dont worry, he
wont rise up behind your
eyes and take wild control. Hes not of this time, he
fell out of a