Fever Grass

House of hunger, cold stove
It's madness in the cupboards
It's no table manners at ya cousin's
It's humming microwave ovens
It's auntie bent-backed from the juggling (two jobs)

Mom would send me over there with something
Mumbling about that deadbeat husband
'Cause was in the back, bent, tryna get nine out a onion
Tryna get that baker's dozen
Inexorable, you can't stop what's coming (that's vanity)

I don't give a fuck how deep them troops is dug in
Deng Xiaoping, dead dogs dangle from lamppost
Long tongues
Win or lose, the Maoists is still glum
Rain blood, we still lit like wet blunts

Cut the power, I'll thrive in the dark
With survivors killers and cowards 'cause they ain't got no heart
No hours, every day is a tally mark

Cut the power, I'll thrive in the dark
The survivors killers and cowards 'cause they ain't got no heart
No hours, every day is a tally mark

Cut the power, I'll thrive in the dark
The survivors killers and cowards 'cause we ain't got no heart
No hours, every day is a tally mark
We hid while they went in the Ark, two by two
When he was gone, we danced under the moon

My grandfather built God a house in the jungle, laid every brick
Mixed cement out of pain and sweat
Love, self-loathing, fear of the pit
That pitch black, "Repent"
From pulpit, men hurled threats, women's bowed heads
Sunday it's sun-up to sunset

Out the window, hummingbirds sip from long-neck flowers
Sway like women's hips under thin shift under church dress
My great grandmother was a witch
But they came for poultice when they was sick
They came when baby was late or too early to save, but the mother lived
Sugarcane stripped with machete

Sticky full lips, the meeting ground marked by white flags on crooked sticks
Tangled fever grass, green mangoes peeled with teeth
Tambourine jangle, goatskin drums, ramble down mountainsides so steep, so green
Rain tattoo tin roof, breadfruit heavy in the trees
Stands of bamboo where rootsmen crop they weed