Who's there?
|
Who's there?
|
|
|
And I remember
|
Flashes of laughter
|
And lunatics
|
Seductive propaganda
|
Scrolling across my mind
|
Like guerrilla cinema.
|
|
Belts and wooden spoons
|
Flies in the afterbirth
|
And crawling on linoleum kitchens
|
And cracked porcelain sinks stuffed with
|
Dirty dishes.
|
|
The early morning anxiety of grade-school
|
dark stockings to hide curses.
|
Secret friends and festive holidays
|
And everyone in their Sunday best
|
Pretending to like each other.
|
|
For generations and generations of
|
Sad mistakes.
|
Stealing away in the dead of night to
|
Escape the stiff jawed henchmen in the hungry trucks
|
Of an angry landlord miles and miles away.
|
|
Impatient and understanding
|
Waking on the side of the road
|
Hissing radiator hoses cracked like
|
Burned skin.
|
Days so hot the nuclear holocaust would've felt like
|
Siberian blizzard.
|
|
And I remember
|
The first time I felt it alive inside me
|
Turning the dead weight
|
Moving within the folds of its winged embrace
|
Opening and sliding those black feathers
|
Inches at a time.
|
Those feet
|
Pushing and digging into the membrane
|
To find its comfort or to relieve pressure from one of those stagnant staces
|
Where one of its limbs had gone numb.
|
And I remember night
|
Listening to it hum
|
Feeling it move in its mysteries
|
Cleaning its feathers for hours
|
And I remember this
|
And I know
|
I never had a chance.
|
There's never any escaping it.
|
|
-----------------
|
I Remember
|
| Otep |
