1
in a cold room
your tears are warm
beneath your calm
your heart beats wildly
trying to be free
and the possibility
recedes and recedes
they are even trying to find their way
into your head
or so it seems
waking up each day
and having to leave your bed
2
there’s no way you can know
there are women of their word
but maybe they can show you
a thing or two
sometimes
listening to yourself you can hear
a drunken procession
a tide of furious women
tearing your house apart
ignoring the protests
of doctors fathers teachers and policemen
3
as you lie in the flak
exhausted out of ammunition
tortured by thirst
a helicopter appears waving a ladder
it’s John Wayne
and the helicopter is shaped like a horse
when you stay at home
your parents drink and quarrel
sometimes you wonder
if you’d make a better go of it alone
in bed
you hug your cassette recorder
like a lifebuoy
a ship
sails over the horizon manned
by a rock band
all its flags waving
4
in nooks and crannies in the mountains
there are plots
of paradise
you know they’re there
but you can’t travel
and you’re on your own
who signed the paper
that sent you down
for seventeen years? you don’t know
but as your fellow prisoners
gape through the windows
at the sun you know
that you can’t wait any longer
they’re out there with the blow torches
and machine guns
the noise is terrible
they’re coming in
the building comes down in satisfied rubble
in slow motion a blackboard duster
settles on your hand
and you land
