Amiri Baraka - Way Out West lyrics

As simple an act as opening the eyes. Merely coming into things by degrees. Morning: some tear is broken on the wooden stairs of my lady's eyes. Profusions of green. The leaves. Their constant prehensions. Like old junkies on Sheridan Square, eyes cold and round. There is a song Nat Cole sings . . . This city & the intricate disorder of the seasons. Unable to mention something as abstract as time. Even so, (bowing low in thick smoke from cheap incense; all kinds questions filling the mouth, till you suffocate & fall dead to opulent carpet.) Even so, shadows will creep over your flesh & hide your disorder, your lies. There are unattractive wild ferns outside the window where the cats hide. They yowl from there at nights. In heat & bleeding on my tulips. Steel bells, like the evil unwashed Sphinx, towing in the twilight. Childless old murderers, for centuries with musty eyes. I am distressed. Thinking of the seasons, how they pa**, how I pa**, my very youth, the ripe sweet of my life; drained off . . . Like giant rhesus monkeys; picking their skulls, with ingenious cruelty s**ing out the brains. No use for beauty collapsed, with moldy breath done in. Insidious weight of cankered dreams. Tiresias' weathered co*k. Walking into the sea, shells caught in the hair. Coarse waves tearing the tongue. Closing the eyes. As simple an act. You float