• i’d suffer hell if you’d tell me what you’d do to me tonight
• heat of her breath in my mouth; im alive
• i’d be the choiceless hope in grief that drove him underground
• idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword
• and when the earth is trembling on some new beginning with the same sweet shock of when adam first came
• every version of me dead and buried in the yard outside
• the stench of the sea and the absence of green are the death of all things that are seen and unseen
• if I was born as a blackthorn tree i’d wanna be felled by you, held by you, fuel the pyre of your enemies
• some like to imagine the dark caress of someone else, I guess any thrill will do
• before the wave hits, marveling at god; before he feels alone one final time and marries the sea
• betray the moon as acolyte on first and fierce affirming sight
• i have never known peace like the damp grass that yields to me, I have never known hunger like these insects that feast on me
• screaming the name of a foreigner’s god; the purest expression of grief
• sweet and right and merciful, i’m all but washed in the tide of her breathing
• but you don’t know the hell you put me through; to have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you
• so i try to talk refined for fear that you find out how i’m imagining you
• my head was war, my skin was soaked, I called your name ‘til the fever broke
• be still, my indelible friend, you are unbreaking
• remember me, love, when i’m reborn as a shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn

Bruce Springsteen, NJ, 1982