songs that stick

New Shiny Shoes
Sandra McCracken

It's been almost two years now since I saw you last
Sorry I remember you anyway 'cause you won't escort me out of your past
So you'd better just leave me here
'Cause I knew you when
Just take your new shiny shoes
You don't have to be my friend

Go ahead and walk away
Sever these last ties
I am nothing but a breath
And you're nothing but a lie

You got the last word when you left
to put me in my place
and you went off to your wild dreams
gone without a trace

While you follow that yellow brick road
to thine own self be true
and when you choose to go that way
in the end there is only you

Go ahead and walk away
Sever these last ties
I am nothing but a breath
And you're nothing but a lie

high on the sound of your own name
and this fleeting fanfare
the common ground is falling down
as if it was never there

while I'm still wearing this same old dress
my heart has come alive
and i will wait for your return
if you'll ever change your mind

Go ahead and walk away
Sever these last ties
I am nothing but a breath
And you're nothing but a lie

I wish I could find a way for you to actually hear this song
. Don't you love (and sometimes hate?) when there are songs that wrench on you again and again? Sometimes because they're too close to home and other times because it's so far from where you are?

I once went to a poetry reading to raise money for the situation in Darfur and two poets quoted Czeslaw Milosz, "Poetry doesn't change anything." Both poets, of course, attempting to disagree. I have to say perhaps the highest aim of art is to do just that: change something. Sometimes it's a subtle change in the way we approach something, sometimes it's picking up the phone to fight seeming inevitability, sometimes it leads us to more art or prayer, or conversation, and the ripples continue.

This song does all of that for me.