I’ve got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry

The sun has come. The mist has gone. We see in the distance... our long way home. I was always yours to have.

Pretty women wonder where my secre… I’m not cute or built to suit a fa… But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say,

There is no warning rattle at the… nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer… Safe in the dark prison, I know t… light slides over the fingered work of a toothless

She came home running back to the mothering blackness deep in the smothering blackness white tears icicle gold plains of… She came home running

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you?

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleev… to peer into my eyes while I within deny their threats and answer them with lies. Mushlike memories perform

I keep on drying again. Veins collapse, opening like the Small fists of sleeping Children. Memory of old tombs,

Lying, thinking Last night How to find my soul a home Where water is not thirsty And bread loaf is not stone

Shadows on the wall Noises down the hall Life doesn’t frighten me at all Bad dogs barking loud Big ghosts in a cloud

I keep on dying again. Veins collapse, opening like the Small fists of sleeping Children. Memory of old tombs,

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing

FOR DAVID P—B The eye follows, the land Slips upward, creases down, forms The gentle buttocks of a young Giant. In the nestle,