in the hard blue light the soft red meat flashes by and he lets it fly, despairing

from in the hard blue light by extinction of animals

	/

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lyrics

in the hard blue light the soft red meat flashes by and he lets it fly, despairing

he understands
why his mother, like a melon swollen
her trembling legs stepped out

onto the thin long line that
narrowed and vanished
into a blue grey horizon

why she crouched in the stinking fish hold,
tried to hide herself as poles of light wrung the wet air
kept her head down as paper was scratched and stuffed
with chicken scratch blue and black scrawls

and stern faces furrowed and unmarked hands pulled
shoving sometimes tearing occasionally caring and
why she waited for years behind the fence
her tiny dark eyed boy always

there

she fled a country where tomorrow's meal was never guaranteed
bent double in a field where a broken arm could mean
where one failed season could mean
where one missed payment or one raised voice or one foot wrong or just about anything it seemed could mean

the end

and how did he arrive
lost inside
the unrealised dreams
of a swollen, sandalled woman?

yesterday a man was dragged
into the big machine
they cleaned him out and within hours

it seemed

the machine roared again like a great steel mountain
like a huge shaking wall of metal and pastel
and blades and carnage and death

last week a lady broke her arm
when some railing collapsed
she was sent home

and she won’t be coming back

how is it
he's still here?

his situation nearly as fragile
as if he stood calf deep
in the rice paddies of his mother’s village

why does he stay
and why every day
negotiates the blood slick grated floor?

for the sun which lies
nestled under
one huge blanket in the second room

he stinks of offal and death
the door squeaks on stained hinges and
the floor complains as it bows

for the warmth of her touch
the huge brown eyes
the - daddy? whispered sleepy as she hears him