When you took me in your hands
put pressure on my eyes
I tried to feel anything, I tried
not to lie.
Maybe I was born like this,
or changed with the turning season.
Maybe it’s just fate
Some people are alone for a reason.

There are dogs that will always
bite a helping hand –
Until someone calls the dog-pound
Or there’s not a finger left in the land.

Buy shorts when the snow’s falling
and sweaters when the summer has hardened blossoms into fruit.
Always use an oven-mitt if you aren’t sure about the heat
and brush your cups with a long handled-brush, or they might just
burst.
Never ride on the back of another man’s motorcycle,
and always walk into the wind when you’re on a deer track.
I wish I could tell you something about love,
or something about the way you ought to live,
but being old doesn’t mean you know anything about love,
it just means you’ve survived a while.

I am ready for my last fight today,
Khaki shadows cutting down the way.
There’s a widow – wailing.
Blood – trailing.
Cattle – mauled,
So the army and the hunters were called.
When they beat the brush all night,
They shoot everything in sight.
When the stars are glinting off of the guns-
What kind of monster turns and runs?

I don’t know what they wanted from me
I’m in no shape to hunt –
Can’t they see?
Claws blasted down to a stub.
Hunters laughing at the corpse of a cub.
No morals growing at the end of a vine,
Every hero needs a villain,
I’ve found mine.

The man who kills you will not be a stranger in the road.
He will come home at the end of a shift and
bring you flowers, will rub your feet
when the baby is thrashing. The man who
kills you will look almost exactly like the man
you loved, the man who said he loved you,
but in his eyes will be a new, distant thing,
a hard edge like a shape hovering in the night
and blotting out the starlight. The man who kills you will
wear a better mask than the man you love. The man who kills you
will raise the dead and make them dance.