Provisionally 'I', practically alive
Mistook sign for signified
And so since I've often tried
To run them off a cliff like Gadarene swine
And tied my word-ropes in anchor bends
Wondering whether we were someone better then
Or maybe just better able to pretend
(and what better means to our inevitable end)
No, I don't know if I know
Though some, with certainty insist
Well I'm certain enough of this:
In the past 14 years, there's only one girl I've kissed
In the blistering heat of the Asbury pier
We sat quiet as monks on the Ferris wheel
Until looking down at the waltzer
I asked her, "Do you ever have that recurring fantasy
Where you push little kids
From the tops of the ride?"
And she shook her head no
I said "oh, neither do I"
And with my grandma's ring
And the subsequent catastrophe
Like a fiberglass ghost in the attic
My inconveniently selective memory
As provisionally 'You' mercifully withdrew
All the bearing points we thought we knew
Singing our midnight archer songs
It's still dark in the deck of our boat
Haphazardly blown broken bows
It's pretty obvious that there's no God
And there's definitely a God
I dreamt of the rocks at the Asbury dunes
And that you jumped from the top
And they gather like wolves
And they're howling for answers
Wrapped 'round my ankle bones
Maybe ten feet away was a star
Thousands of times the size of our Sun
Exploding like the tiny balloons
I slept until our chest was full
Of yarn we spun from Shetland wool
In socks from where the Dorset grows
Sheared and scoured hours before
The price of German silver fell
Threw this disused thalers
Down the superstition well