I guess it’s time to say goodbye to all the secret clubs I wanted to command, it’s time to end the signature I stretched from line to line. Come here, darling, I want to read your little hand. If it’s all right to love you still I’d really like to see the sign.

That’s a man, they said, a man we’ll have to see

when we’re ready to raise the final infantry

I told you where I’ve been and what I’ve lost and why. When I start to talk about my soul you always seem to smile and you ask if I got enough of the blanket that you made me buy and I don’t know who’s got who figured out as we plunge in ancient whispers down some river like the Nile.

I studied the departures of some fancy air-o-planes, I walked the airport corridors and I broke into a run. The signals that I scratched for you on frosty windowpanes, they melted when I barely missed the sun.

You saw me once too often climbing down the stairs that lead from the lip of your pedestal. I don’t like the way I look from behind, and I wish you’d turn your marble head every time I fall. You said you wanted me naked so I hung my skin in the wind. Ah, the whole world felt so new. I didn’t think when I tiptoed up those stairs that you’d treat me like a piece of meat on your barbeque.

That’s a man, they said, a man we’ll have to see

when we’re ready to raise the final infantry.