The groan lifts
Like Yankees greeting Pickett
Eerily pronounced and wavering
Up along the cement tree trunks
Through the windows of capitalist Princesses
Buried in ears pasted on balloon-heads

Name branded, copy written
This fortress of our fathers impenetrable
Defends the deaf

From a basement:
Insomnious, drugged
Labouring to produce life
Pick locks for the suburban Alcatraz

From a basement:
To the floors of attics
Pink insulation blankets
Five bucks for food and smokes

From a basement:
To metropolises
To the offices of liars
To the steely castles of usury

From a basement:
Into feverish, vomiting disbelief
Spent and turned a pay cheque
Fingernails on cotton chalkboards

From a basement:
Three blocks to the water
To float still in the well of it
To ply life with exaggeration
To grin at whatever notion lives in the sky
And sink