| Maybe you women haven’t noticed it, I set my sun, my moon and constellations By you, and before you were, I was the same. If you cannot imagine me before you were, Then you will have to try a little harder. Woman made I was, but women directed I surely was, and no man ever claimed me. Warlone women weaned me, and I felt Manly, fierce and small like toasted cheese. There at 8a Bay Road, above that shop. Lights out, a perfect home for a ‘41’er. Year of Pearl Harbour, and result in doubt, Into uniform go the men once again, And who to stop them, not their poverty. Small like toasted cheese and happy. When Marmeduke monkey went missing, I was woman wrapped, secured from men, No bombs worried me until I was Aged fourteen, when atom dreams Detonated my nightmind into sweated Tomorrow, to start allover again. Small I was, not stupid. I saw the trophy from the warrior man, Who gave it to my hand, was a token Of arms and death and of the gone Years, wasted at least for one man. It was a GI pannikin, cunningly divided, Like the families left behind. Jeff Lynch, February 2006 |