(spoken word)

1. Amerinam

Do people who die on TV really die
Some say yes
Some say no
Some say it’s clear as black and white
Some prefer
Radio 

I had a dream where an old man in striped pants walked down the corridor of a nursery
He wore a hat with stars and bars and he carried a basket filled with bombs
He stopped at every cradle, placed a bomb, lit the fuse and passed on
I followed close behind him, stopped at every cradle, picked up every bomb and I too passed on
At the end I stopped him to return them
His heart melted into plastic as the bombs exploded and the babies cried
I woke up and smiled

nine eleven I’ll never forget it was the morning they found frankie face down in a pool of blood outside his own front door, face down in the dark because the landlord couldn’t be bothered to change the light bulb. of course it wasn’t the light bulb being out that did it, whoever it was probably would have bashed his head in anyway but we’ll never know it was probably drug dealers but whether it was the old traditional ones or the new bastards on the block was hard to tell.
the ambulance came and took him away
the cops came and wrote down a few names
nobody cleaned up the blood for two or three days
nine eleven
there was a lot of collateral damage
if only they had got the white house too.
but that was in the afternoon

would I be willing to ride that plane on either side of the knife?
no
but when I heard they’d got the pentagon I leapt in the air and shouted
yes.
we all sat down and watched – amazed but not in shock
when the second tower collapsed we couldn’t believe our luck
no yeah sure right they didn’t deserve to die if by ‘they’ you mean the people who really did die but then they never do deserve it, do they, it’s the axis of evil who deserve it the real axis of evil who die in their beds of old age maybe they die hard but I bet they don’t I bet they mostly die happy little fuckers who didn’t get to rule the world nobody does but they got to ride up on top so fucking far up on the tip top tip top that we can’t touch them we can’t even lay one fucking finger on them and so we kill our own kind because they’re useful to the people we hate

well not me of course I’m imagining what it must be like
I don’t want to die any sooner than absolutely necessary
not even for you
I’m a casualty too
gut shot

frankie didn’t die right away they kept him in the hospital for about 6 months while he tried to remember his name. then they released him to care in the community and he died after 27 days. I called the hospital about the post-mortem and the nurse started to cry. she had thought he was still alive.