For The Captain

(album: Stars Too Small To Use - 1999)

Relax, no song is written, nothing you thought of yourself. It's just a ghost that came unbidden to this house. This infection grows stronger every year. This seed inside the water of your tear, there is no escaping it. This seed blooming in the water of your tear the way an unborn baby's ear unfolds in your belly. This infection grows stronger every year, this direction of a tear rolling down your cheek, there is no escaping it. There is no escaping the thing that is making its home in your radio.

Bless this tiny alley. We have fallen. From tall buildings we have fallen. Bless the birth of him, the chapel he was killed in, all these tiny flowers. They have sat under the sidewalk. They have waited for the pieces of the summer sun to show us all that is your beauty and all that is your treasure. I could smell your skin beside me and say I hope I'm here forever, but, Captain, with your lovers, with your list of favorite pillows, with your favorite list of children, with the wall where you drew windows overlooking tiny gardens cut in two by jagged mountains (and the secret sacred sharing that went on beside the fountain where the water waits forever for a tiny, tiny treasure that would rise up and recover, that would leave this tiny alley) when you meet me in the garden with your wings all dipped in cedar, all these spirits brushing past me brushing past me in the ether say, "All this is window dressing. All you are is flimsy curtains. You will flame up with a word from us, and won't know that you're burning."