a cold and porcelain lonely in an old new york hotel a stranger to a city that she used to know so well bathing in a bathroom that is bathed in the first blue light of the beginning of a century at the end of an endless night
then she is wet behind the ears and wafting down the avenue pre-rush hour post-rain shower stillness seeping upwards like steam from another molten sewer summer in new york
they've been spraying us with chemicals in our sleep us / they something about the mosquitoes having some kind of disease them / me CIA foul play if you ask the guy selling hair dryers out of a gym bag chemical warfare "i'm telling you, lab rat to lab rat," he says, "that's where the truth is at" that's where the truth is at that's where the truth is at
and everything seems to have gone terribly wrong that can but one breath at a time is an acceptable plan she tells herself and the air is still there and this morning it's even breathable and for a second the relief is unbelievable and she's a heavy sack of flour sifted her burden lifted she's full of clean wind for one lean moment and then she's trapped again reverted caged and contorted with no way to get free and she's getting plenty of little kisses but nobody's slippin' her the key
her whole life is a long list of what ifs and she doesn't even know where to begin and the pageantry of suffering therein rivals television tv is, after all, the modern day roman coliseum human devastation as mass entertainment and now millions sit jeering collectively cheering the bloodthirsty hierarchy of the patriarchal arrangement
she is hailing a cab she is sailing down the avenue she's 19 going on 30 or maybe she's really 30 now ... it's hard to say it's hard to keep up with time once it's on its way
and, you know, she never had much of a chance born into a family built like an avalanche and somewhere in the 80s between the oat bran and the ozone she started to figure out things like why one eye pointed upwards looking for the holes in the sky one eye on the little flashing red light a picasso face twisted and listing down the canvas of the end of an endless night
10 9 8 seven six 5 4 three 2 one and kerplooey you're done. you're done for. you're done for good. so tell me did you? did you do did you do all you could ?