And I wake up in the city. All them cold dim lights shining down on me. The walls are concrete, I can’t kick through them. The windows dirt filled, I can’t see through them. I walk with eyes closed through the hallway, stumble down the stairs to the basement. The sound of people, the sound of machines. I must escape them, get my poor soul clean. Down in the basement I find a corner. It is cobwebbed, cracked and hollow. I take my hat off, I let my hair down. Then I back up to the opposite wall. I start running, my head strikes corner. And the whole building, man, it starts to crumble. Twenty stories of city dwellings are now cracked rubble upon the sidewalk. All that graffiti, all of them children. Forever safe now from becoming orphans. And me I’m safe too, I’m in a tunnel hidden down here beneath the city. Now look there on the floor, an old white pony with a map tied to its ankle. The map has only one black arrow that says, “nowhere” in its center. Ill at ease, Ill at ease. Ain’t it grand? The tunnel leads to a forest So, so grand. Thousand year old trees. Yet this magnificence leaves me feeling impotent and insignificant. Everything fits but me. Crow, deer carcass, loose branches, still water, and me? Human! So ugly with combed hair and tight fitting clothes.
Whisper whisper to the dead carp lying bloated on the red shore. Face all caved in from my wood bat. Fins all thorn off by my fingernails. It is lunch time. Fuckin’ fish meat. Gathered berries stain my fingers. So this is real life. Not just dressed up. Unprotected by my neighbors. And when the night falls I see real stars, not just stickers on my ceiling. Lord it is grotesque. Lord it’s absurd. To keep speaking these cold, cold city words. I need a new language full of trouble, full of danger and uncertainly. Grunts and growls, moans and howls, something awful to offend thee. But even out here I feel walled in. I feel cut off from my birth skin. This ain’t primal, no this is fake too. The geese fly above in a two-sided triangle. I lift my slingshot, filled up with sharp rocks. I’m just like David. They are Goliath. And one by one boy, the birds they fall dead. I laugh silently and I stomp on their heads. Ill at ease, Ill at ease. Ain’t it grand? The tunnel leads to a forest. So, so grand. Thousand year old trees. Yet this magnificence leaves me feeling impotent and insignificant. Everything fits but me. Crow, deer carcass, loose branches, still water, and me? Human! So ugly with combed hair and tight fitting clothes.
And I wake up in the country. Pestilent sun shining down on me. I reap my bounty, one thousand acres. Yes I do own this, I justly claim it. Fuck the generations who came before me. I never needed them nor nobody. I’m like an Indian, so silent and wise. Though I know nothing and I hate silence. Ill at ease, ill at ease.