04-17-2014, 01:22 AM
Everywhere the criminals sat in one boat,
they shared the books in the library:
Thursday's the Hammer of the Week; Butterscotch Hedgerow,
which is what many of them thought the color of the sun was like
in Europe;
Organ Grinders Monthly, a racist pamphlet
that always seemed to be stuck inside one of the books.
One of the authors had even cried into the manuscript,
and then had that published in a book.
They were always looking for things like that,
the prisoners,
some sign of life inside the art.
All they had was art,
the bastards were sent out in the middle of every ocean.
If they found a map sometimes in the library,
it was one of those things that said "You Are Here"
wherever there was a middling area in the blue.
They were all like that, all the maps,
the ones in books of Oz and Middle-Earth too.
Always, "You Are Here";
sent out with a big boat of books,
in the middle of nowhere,
like something in a children's fantasy:
only it wasn't real-life they were starting from
since their vantage point was a false one.
One day someone brought a radio on board.
Don't ask me where he came from or how he got out there
in the ocean, I don't know;
only this is what happened.
And on the radio all the news stations were white noise,
or not exactly what you'd call that,
something more like music.
And it had been so long since any of them had heard music.
It wasn't long before they forgot how to read,
though by that time, most of their sentences were up,
time had been served.
It was only a week they were out there anyway . . .
They'd be home by the weekend,
plus they had to throw most of the books over
to make room for new arrivals.
Though not always,
a few of them got arrested again on Saturday nights
or more unluckingly on Fridays,
were processed on Sunday all over again.
It was their lucking, they'd be in and out of jail their whole lives.
The old story of them that didn't know how to live
once they were on land,
that's the best way I'd describe it.
I guess it depends on where you were born.
they shared the books in the library:
Thursday's the Hammer of the Week; Butterscotch Hedgerow,
which is what many of them thought the color of the sun was like
in Europe;
Organ Grinders Monthly, a racist pamphlet
that always seemed to be stuck inside one of the books.
One of the authors had even cried into the manuscript,
and then had that published in a book.
They were always looking for things like that,
the prisoners,
some sign of life inside the art.
All they had was art,
the bastards were sent out in the middle of every ocean.
If they found a map sometimes in the library,
it was one of those things that said "You Are Here"
wherever there was a middling area in the blue.
They were all like that, all the maps,
the ones in books of Oz and Middle-Earth too.
Always, "You Are Here";
sent out with a big boat of books,
in the middle of nowhere,
like something in a children's fantasy:
only it wasn't real-life they were starting from
since their vantage point was a false one.
One day someone brought a radio on board.
Don't ask me where he came from or how he got out there
in the ocean, I don't know;
only this is what happened.
And on the radio all the news stations were white noise,
or not exactly what you'd call that,
something more like music.
And it had been so long since any of them had heard music.
It wasn't long before they forgot how to read,
though by that time, most of their sentences were up,
time had been served.
It was only a week they were out there anyway . . .
They'd be home by the weekend,
plus they had to throw most of the books over
to make room for new arrivals.
Though not always,
a few of them got arrested again on Saturday nights
or more unluckingly on Fridays,
were processed on Sunday all over again.
It was their lucking, they'd be in and out of jail their whole lives.
The old story of them that didn't know how to live
once they were on land,
that's the best way I'd describe it.
I guess it depends on where you were born.