Erin McKeown Follow

Yesterday i was born of a coke-goddess queen,
a child of the city,
and tonight as i lie in the arms of a silver clad diva,
with her hips clutching mine,
cradled, i love, amidst the newspapers,
the television, the noise,
the lies, the heat that is not hot,
yet nearly intolerable.

And the day that it happened,
the day that i began to become woman, i cried.
where's that poetry gone,
cause i think i have lost some sensual sweet.
where's my little girl hips?
a little innocence on these lips isn't so hard to wipe away.
just ask me.

Now rolling, now rocking, now tick-tocking time away,
my hands reach for my face but fingers like knives,
10 to a set, cut deep and leave me scarred.
so that my lips pass over her lips yet
feel more and more like the concrete coating all around.
and i reflect that what i write,
what i say mirrors the glass all around and what i think,
well, that's a product manufactured downtown.
so i reflect that these hips
now rolling, now rocking,
now tick-tocking time away
will one day bear the child of the cold pushing and hard driving city.

And as the years went by small changes occurred in my face, my body, my love.
my body has been becoming concrete for years now.
where's that poetry gone,
cause i think i have lost some sensual sweet.
where's my little girl hips?
a little innocence on these lips isn't so hard to wipe away.
just ask me.

Now coming home tonight, alone,
coming home wandering these streets alone,
thinking only words for thought and with words and thoughts
i am alone.
and if you walk my streets, if you say my words,
if you hold my hips, new to me,
will it ever be so clear
that it is the buildings that rise and stiffen to seed the sky,
spawning the ever growing puddle of sprawl in the ever growing land of filth,
and that i am my hips.
i am my hips.
i am my hips - the bastard child of the city grown.