THERE ARE NO PIRATES IN OUR FATHERS' HOUSES

my city is a specter tonight. the snow has frozen everything in place, but i seem to be keeping one blue spark alive for the ghosts lurking behind the dusty broken trees. what a generous winter that would cast such a dream on this place

old voices have left fingerprints on these memories. they echo and fade without the vitality of presence, and tonight i feel as if i'm the only one keeping them alive. should i choose to forget, they would dissolve and scatter into the dim

strange vibrations on this night at home. strange characters resurfacing with old thoughts, old photographs, and old letters. how easily i concede to the muddled drudgery of nostalgia, and how tragic the quiet ticks of age

in my absence, everything has changed. but while i am absent, memory is stone and unmoving. what a generous season that would cast such a dream on this place...

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i couldn't really say why this visit home has come with so many surprises. if i absolutely had to, i might say that this will be the last time that i and everyone else will indulge in reliving the well-worn events of our shared past; that we have finally outgrown whatever it was we cherished so dearly. these halls resound with laughter, but it's beginning to sound like a childish, unfamiliar laughter, and sooner or later we'll walk away from it leaving a few soldiers behind, like me, to guard the path out of history, and to keep it locked away for good. why should so many old faces reappear to me now, i really couldn't say. maybe its the last gasp of a dying breed of Us.

why now, Ms Chairlift o' Reciprocity, do you resurface? why still, Ms NYC, do you and i stand on opposite sides of the glass? and why have i resigned to scream and kick and bite and scratch and whine and bitch until i get my way?

well, we all have our talents. and all children, but one, grow up.

this is all much too serious for tuesday, i'm afraid, but sleep well under warm blankets of snow tonight, lads. there are no pirates in our fathers' houses.