Nonkilling 6 • Hunger

Winter raging
The color gone, hands were blue and cold
A recitation I slowly read you Tomb for Anatole:
He was eight years old
A dead child is no
Occasion for a song
Where did I go wrong?

When they say face facts, disobey that
There's singing still left to be done
They still can't name that, fragrant
Wind rolling off a corpse
Until the day that you play back the tape that you made
Record your mother saying every word
Pronounce the gray that
The rains had brought over the sun
Like a veil to suffocate the earth

But hunger is first

And I could feel in my body time rushing in
The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin
The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong
Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum

I remember snow
Saw it fall
Watched a child learn, the word 'nightfall'
And sleep because it's sad, or not sleep at all
I learned the word "forever" from Demerol
I let my body go: I feed the thaw
Like jumping off a cliff, but never falling
A dust finer than smoke
A memory in my throat
A flame that pulses cold
A faraway echo ...

Though hard to feel in my body time rushing in
The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin.
The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong
Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum

And I could feel in my body time rushing in
The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin
The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong
Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum

I remember snow
Saw it fall
Watched a child learn, the word 'nightfall'
And sleep because it's sad, or not sleep at all
I learned the word "forever" from Demerol
I let my body go: I feed the thaw