Nonkilling 6 | Hunger

Nonkilling 6

[Verse: Li-Young Lee]
Bodies eating bodies, heads eating heads
We are nothing eating nothing
And though we feast, are filled, overfilled
We go famished
We gang the doors of death
That is, our deaths are fed
That we may continue our daily dying
Our bodies going down

Hunger

[Intro: How to Dress Well]
Winter raging
The color gone, hands were blue and cold
A recitation, I slowly read you Tomb for Anatole:
"He was eight years old
A dead child is no
Occasion for a song
Where did I go wrong?"

[Verse 1: How to Dress Well]
When they say face facts, disobey that
There's singing still left to be done
They still can't name that, fragrant
Wind rolling off a corpse
Until the day that you play back the tape that you made
Record your mother saying every word
Pronounce the gray that
The rains had brought over the sun
Like a veil to suffocate the earth

[Bridge: How to Dress Well]
But hunger is first

[Chorus: How to Dress Well]
And I could feel in my body time rushing in
The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin
The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong
Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum

[Verse 2: How to Dress Well]
I remember snow
Saw it fall
Watched a child learn, the word "nightfall"
And sleep because it's sad, or not sleep at all
I learned the word "forever" from Demerol
I let my body go, I feed the thaw
Like jumping off a cliff, but never falling
A dust finer than smoke
A memory in my throat
A flame that pulses cold
A faraway echo

[Chorus: How to Dress Well]
And I could feel in my body time rushing in
The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin
The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong
Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum

[Chorus: How to Dress Well]
And I could feel in my body time rushing in
The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin
The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong
Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum

[Interlude]

[Outro: How to Dress Well]
I remember snow
Saw it fall
Watched a child learn, the word "nightfall"
And sleep because it's sad, or not sleep at all
I learned the word "forever" from Demerol
I let my body go, I feed the thaw