Page One

Six o’clock in the morning. 

The mothers have the welfare office surrounded. 

They waddle and wail edgily, 

Clutching handlettes, 

Telling stories, 

Talking in voicies of purple horsies. 

And then, tick-tock, 

The gateway brays its opening. 

The men begin to pitch and sway. 

They’ve undergone a loss of vigor, 

And an attendant physical change. 

Their powerful force made its way. 

Hysterical, I tell you, 

Regularly unrestrained. 

A hundred babies rode that day. 

See men to the left of them. 

See men to the right of them. 

Put out to sea on the shoulders of they that bore them.