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