Grass is wilting

Windows are bright hot squares

Merry-go-rounds turn with sickening motion

Round and round and round and round

Till the anemic and wasted sun goes down.

Dreamers tonight speak of the ocean

Cut down from dreams like tattered laundry—

Yellow skins on useless skeletons,

Rotted teeth, dulled swords

Naked children, dripping pipes, screaming doors

Motionless moon, silent god

Ripped shoes, sewing machine parts

Big bones, stills and secret swamps, boxing gloves,

Conga line of dwarves in pea-green trousers

Staring down the highway into glassy sky—

Reflections in a blind and gouged-out eye.

Nameless corpses, clumsy knives,

Whiskey music, stolen tickets

Nothing to say, nothing to do, no reason to cry

Howls from the chain gang, clang of shovels, dusty song.

Teenage girls dripping from blue lakes into sad maturity

Lessons hard-boiled like eggs in the wrathful sun.

Let the doors open, let the light outside the café

Or I will break the door down with my fists,

Fighting with my dirty, suicidal head to the floor

Groping for the music, music, music

Mute and lame and blind and fearful,

I will tear at the air with all my might

Till the clouds heavy with my song sail out of sight.