There has to be more than this
Is there no reason for me to exist
But for as a plaything of miscreants, malingerers, dastards and knaves?

How is it so
A child can be bought for a year's worth of grain?
In this day and age
It's hard to explain but it happens again and again

I'll never forget the scene
Where the freckled jowls contort across my father's face and disappear under the wheels of the cart

Then the sky parts
Pillar of rain
It is my mother

In another life
If I ever had children of my own
I'd cleave them to my breast
And convey them far from this country of demons made flesh

My last bedfellow is choked to the death on a dummy of puke
I stole this horse, Old Speckled Brownface
From the royal tannery
Haunches glossy with sweat
We burst through the birch
Turn our heads north
With dawn in our lungs we reach the border