FOREVER IS A VERY LONG TIME


Snake eyes roll from town to town like marbles on a map.
We humble creature know no comfort, judas chair for luxury's lap.
We simply take the wheel of fortune, and we strip its lucky brakes,
and go careening down the mountain through the wind tunnel of fate.
We have grass stains on our eyes from all of the world we have to see
in cities like some fool's crush we love and then we leave.
I am one wall, you are two walls, we are three walls a house.
I am one wall, you are two walls, we are three walls a house.
My antique spirit is my living room, my heart my leather couch.
I strike the tambourine against my hip, and hit the road again.
The folks who take the bravest risks, I bet they never had an accident.
You set a course for the world's end, you will find the end is endless
as the darkness, and the ocean, and the panic in Titanic
when it sinks in: that forever is a very long time.


So I will skip these hopping trains and face the body of my fears,
ring a bell around my neck to have your jingle heart be near.
I could lay inside your love for me, like a tiny raft in a tiny stream,
untie my name and be known only as the Ellis Island you see in me.
We'd flee to Little Egypt, grow a garden by the lake.
You lynch tomatoes, I kill the chickens, we knew all of them by name.
Plant a sunset, watch a tree, I hold her hand when it gets dark.
The purple Sun is just another star, the Earth another yard,
and then it sinks in: that forever is a very long time


Think I will take up quitting drinking, take the bottles out the fridge,
out of the cupboard, and the chimney — strange and stranger places hid.
I will collect them into bags, collect the bags into a can
that I will place beside the house, where garbage meets the garbage man.
Look at them all in there: their different shapes, their different colors,
like a sack of severed heads of new and old and older lovers.
It is too soon to say goodbyes. I miss their hands in my insides,
and the way their gentle fingernails would scratch the back of my mind.
I won't take you to the street tonight. I will have you one more time.
Like silver fillings to a cavity, I am yours and you are mine.
We let it sink in: how forever is a very long time.


Forever is a very long time.




DAS - Pace, Florida, USA