Poem

Written By

Elliott Smith

Recording Sessions

Unknown if ever recorded

Availability of Official Release

N/A

Lyrics

if I could get the first line the rest would follow
and I wouldn’t rest until I got the first line, but I thought maybe a placeholder will do,
so bracket this idea, we’ll return to this later
in number theory, one implies two
and two implies three, whereas
from three everything else follows
but the fret line appeared to be missing, so bracket this idea, we’ll return to this later
I wondered why the left side of the body wasn’t quite a perfect reverse of the right in anyway, and why things look simpler, more pre debatable, and generally better from a so-called “appropriate” distance
I told her, “don’t come any closer or things’ll become fused
Actually, I used the word con-fused. three has a way of taking over, but the first line was still unidentified, so bracket this idea, we’ll return to this later.
and, really, I felt like the one, and she reinforced that idea by saying “you’re the one,” everything else, that wasn’t me, well that was her of course. I said “I love you too”. The question was, what is our latitude (?).  everything followed from that unruly little master. she said, these kinds of children laugh while their parents slowly, traditionally she said, suffocate and die. I responded to that with the assertion: I’ll always miss you, but the first love is still unknown, so bracket this idea, we’ll return to this later.

Audio

N/A

Note

This is something written by Elliott on an ATM receipt dated July 19, 1997. This doesn’t appear to resemble the structure of a song at all, and it’s possible this may have been one of the compositions in the running to be read at Elliott’s performance at the Knitting Factory in September later that year.