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Provisionally "I", practically alive |
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mistook sign for signified, |
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And so since have often tried |
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to run'em off a cliff like Gadarene swine. |
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And tied my word-ropes in anchor bends, |
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Wondering whether we were someone better then, |
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Or maybe just better able to pretend, |
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(and what better means to our inevitable end?) |
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No, I don't know if I know, |
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though some with certainty insist "No certainty exists!" |
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Well I'm certain enough of this: |
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in the past fourteen years there's only one girl I've kissed! |
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In the blistering heat of the Asbury pier |
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we sat, quiet as monks on the Ferris wheel. |
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'Til looking down at the waltzer and out at the sea, |
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I asked her "Do you ever have that recurring fantasy |
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where you push little kids from the tops of the rides?" |
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And she shook her head "no," and I said "Oh...neither do I." |
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Then with my Grandma's ring, I went down on one knee, |
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And the subsequent catastrophe has since haunted me |
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like a fiberglass ghost in the attic of my inconveniently selective memory. |
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As provisionally "you" mercifully withdrew |
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all the bearing points we thought we knew, |
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days run, days set clock, our comet shot. |
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We sailed waywardly on, |
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singing our midnight archer songs |
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until well past dawn. |
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It's still dark on the deck of our boat, haphazardly blown, |
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broken bows, our aimless arrow words don't mean a thing. |
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So by now I think it's pretty obvious that there's no God -- |
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and there's definitely a God! |
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I dreamt on the rocks at the Asbury dunes |
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that you jumped from the top of the log flume |
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And they gather like wolves on the boardwalk below |
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They're howling for answers no wolf can know! |
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I charged at the waves with a glass in my hand |
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I was tossed like a ball at the bottle stand |
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And I landed besides your remains on the stones |
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where your cold finger wrapped round my ankle bones. |
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Maybe ten feet away was a star, thousands of times the size of our Sun |
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Exploding like carnie balloons you can throw darts at. |
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Slept until our chest was full |
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of yarn we spun from Shetland wool. |
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Socks from where the Dorset grows |
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sheared and scoured hours before the rooster crows. |
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The price of German silver fell, |
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and threw disused thalers down the superstition well. |
