I May Have Died but I've Gone Nowhere
Once I walked inside your eye. You kept your girlfriend in there, the one you always talked
about. She wears a red dress, lives in a bed underwater, celebrates her birthday with a
panpipe–bass drum serenade. Of course she can breathe. You know how she got there but don't
like to talk about it. It must have been a spell because she can't leave like I can. They couldn't
charge you with kidnapping. They called her on the water phone; she said she was fine. You sit
around with candles and emote, but she's fine. You can see only what's outside your eye, so I
take pictures while I'm in. Don't look at them until I'm gone. No one likes a man who puts out
candles with tears. No one likes a man who lights too many candles, who keeps time by tapping
his foot, a man as simple as a zoom lens that pulls too quickly, an undertow.
*Title is a lyric from "I'll Be There" by Escape Club (#8 on Billboard Hot 100, 1991).