The War Ended But I Didn’t
The thing is over, everybody moved along,
the thing is done and I’m still singing the song
that belonged to a situation that has passed.
The thing is done and I’m still holding fast
to the fury that was valid in its time,
to the fury running over the same damn rhyme
that I’ve been singing for so long I can’t hear
the difference between what happened and right here.
The man I was angry at has married twice,
the man I was angry at is living his life nice
in a house somewhere with kids and a career.
The man I was angry at doesn’t know I’m here,
still carrying the thing that bears his name,
still running through the story and the frame
of everything he did in the year it happened,
in the year the whole thing opened and it blackened.
The war ended but I didn’t, I didn’t,
the war ended but I’m still in the trench and sitting
with the fury of the thing that was a decade back.
The war ended but I’m still on the attack,
on the version of the man that lives in me.
The war ended but I haven’t yet been free
to set the whole damn thing down on the ground.
The war ended but I haven’t heard the sound
of the ceasefire yet, I haven’t got the word.
The war ended but the message never reached me, heard.
The war ended but it’s still running in my blood,
the war ended but I’m still standing in the mud
of the original offense and all its weight.
The war ended but I didn’t, and I’m still irate
at a man who doesn’t know my name anymore.
The war ended but I didn’t, that’s what I’m here for.
I’ve been the angry man at dinner when it came up,
I’ve been the angry man at the bar and the cup
of the whole damn story poured into the ear
of whoever happened to be sitting near
me when it surfaced for the hundredth time.
The anger of the year it happened, in its prime
still, like the anger didn’t get the note
that the situation ended. It still votes
for the original position that it started at,
it still holds the line on that original mat.
My buddy said let it go four years ago,
my buddy said let it go and I said I know.
But the knowing and the letting are two different things,
the knowing lives in the head and the letting needs the strings
that tie the thing together to be cut.
The knowing lives in the mind but the gut
still holds the catalog of every detail.
The gut still runs the whole original tale
in full, on the lowest setting, every day.
The gut doesn’t care what the head wants to say.
I know it’s done, I know the man is gone,
I know the situation’s dead and long
past the point of mattering in any real way.
I know the situation ended in that year, that day,
and I’m still angry about it in the now,
and I cannot tell you the why or the how
to exit the anger of the thing that’s over,
cannot tell you how to drive to the shoulder
and set the anger down beside the road
and drive away from it without the load.
The anger that outlives its cause is a creature,
the anger that outlives its cause has every feature
of the original but it’s running without fuel.
The anger that outlives its cause is the fool
that stays at the party after everybody leaves.
The anger that outlives its cause believes
that staying keeps the thing alive and real,
that setting it down would be the betrayal deal
of what was actually done. The anger that outlives
is steering the ship that already docked and gives
no sign of leaving the harbor of the past.
The anger that outlives its cause is gonna last,
and I’m the proof of it, I’m the evidence.
I’m the man who has the anger past the tense
of when it mattered and the anger doesn’t know
the thing is over, the anger doesn’t go
looking for the door, the anger just runs
the same loop it’s been running, the same guns
of the same siege against the gone.
The anger that outlives its cause is me and I’m going on.