Record Tracklist

1. The Community of Hope
   The Community of Hope
   
   

   Here’s the Hope Six Demolition Project
   stretching down to Benning Road
   a well-known pathway of death,
   (at least, that’s what I’m told).
   Here’s the one sit-down restaurant
   in Ward Seven. Nice.
   Okay, now this is just drug town,
   just zombies, but that’s just life.

   The Community of Hope.

   Here’s the highway to death and destruction,
   South Capitol is its name.
   The school looks like a shit hole –
   does that look like a nice place?
   Here’s the old mental institution
   now the Homeland Security base.
   Here’s God’s Deliverance Centre,
   a deli called M.L.K.

   The Community of Hope.

   They’re gonna’ put a Walmart here.

2. The Ministry of Defence
   The Ministry of Defence
   
   

   This is the Ministry of Defence
   the stairs and walls are all that’s left
   mortar holes let through the air
   kids do the same thing everywhere;
   they’ve sprayed graffiti in Arabic
   and balanced sticks in human shit.

   This is the ministry of remains
   fizzy drinks cans, magazines
   broken glass, a white jawbone
   syringes, razors, a plastic spoon
   human hair, a kitchen knife
   and the ghost of a girl who runs and hides.

   There’s the bus depot to the right
   levelled like a building site
   those are the children’s cries from the dark
   these are the words written under the arch
   scratched in the wall in biro pen:
   This is how the world will end.

3. A Line in the Sand
   A Line in the Sand
   
   

   How to stop the murdering? By now we should have learned –
   if we don’t then we’re sham, bad overwhelms the good.

   What I’ve seen – yes, it’s changed how I see humankind –
   I used to think progress was being made, that we could get something right.

   When we first got to the camp our supplies were not enough.
   I saw a displaced family eating a cold horse’s hoof.

   We set up tents, brought in water, air drops were dispersed.
   I saw people kill each other just to get there first.

   What we did? Why we did it? I make no excuse –
   we got things wrong, but we also did some good.

   I believe we have a future to do something good.

   Enough is enough.
   A line in the sand.
   Seven or eight thousand
   killed by hand.
   They stepped off the edge
   they did not step back.
   If we haven’t learnt by now
   then we’re a sham.

4. Chain of Keys
   Chain of Keys
   
   

   Fifteen keys hang on a chain.
   The chain is joined and forms a ring.
   The ring is in a woman’s hand.
   She’s walking on the dusty ground.
   The dusty ground’s a dead end track.
   The neighbours won’t be coming back.
   Fifteen gardens overgrown.
   Fifteen houses falling down.

   The woman’s old and dressed in black.
   She keeps her hands behind her back.
   Numbers painted on the doors.
   Posters on the locked up church.
   Imagine what her eyes have seen.
   We ask but she won’t let us in.
   A key so simple and so small;
   how can it mean no chance at all?
   A key – a promise, or a wish;
   how can it mean such hopelessness?

   A circle is broken, she says.

5. River Anacostia
   River Anacostia
   
   

   Oh, my Anacostia –
   do not sigh, do not weep –
   beneath the overpass
   your saviour’s waiting patiently
   walking on the water,
   that flow with poisons
   from the naval yard.
   He’s talking to the fallen reeds.
   What will become of us?

   A small, red sun makes way for night –
   trails away like a tail light.
   Is that Jesus on the water
   talking to the fallen trees?
   What will become of us?

6. Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln
   Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln
   
   

   At the refreshments stand,
   a boy throws out his hands
   as if to feed the starlings
   but really he throws nothing –
   it’s just to watch them jump.
   See the people coming,
   lumbering over the grass
   to squeeze into plastic chairs,

   near the memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln.

   Three notes, a bugle call –
   a black man in overalls
   arrives to empty the trash,
   hauls it to a metal hatch,
   a doorway opens up
   to the underworld.
   The boy throws empty hands –
   the starlings jump,

   near the memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln.

7. The Orange Monkey
   The Orange Monkey
   
   

   A restlessness took hold my brain,
   and questions I could not hold back.
   An orange monkey on a chain
   on a bleak uneven track

   told me that to understand
   you must travel back in time.
   I took a plane to a foreign land
   and said, I’ll write down what I find.

   Beneath a mountain’s jagged shelves
   cloaked with snow and shadows sheer
   plates tipped up upon themselves
   the pain of 50 million years

   and mules and goats were running wild.
   A happy chaos carried on
   and old men and young boys smiled,
   and worked until the day was gone.

   Packs of sandy-coloured dogs
   walked streets that looked like building sites,
   but piles of rocks and dust and smog
   could not block out a different light.

   When I returned I ran to meet
   the monkey, but his face had changed.
   He stood before me on two feet.
   The track was now a motorway.

8. Medicinals
   Medicinals
   
   

   I was walking through the National Mall
   thinking about medicinals and how they used to grow there
   when the ground was a marshland, undisturbed by human hands,
   and I heard their voices;

   the sumac said, We are always here
   the witch hazel – We are always here
   the sassafras – We are always here
   bluestem grasses – Always here.

   I looked about, what did I see?
   Medicinals growing around me rising from the gravel.
   The sumac and the witch hazel, come to soothe our pain, our sores
   come to soothe our troubles.

   The sumac said, We are always here
   the witch hazel – We are always here
   the sassafras – We are always here
   bluestem grasses – Always here.

   But do you see that woman
   sitting in the wheelchair
   with her Redskins cap on backwards
   and her plastic bags swinging –
   from inside a paper wrapper
   she sips from a bottle
   a new painkiller
   for the native people.

9. The Ministry of Social Affairs
   The Ministry of Social Affairs
   
   

   See them sitting in the rain
   as the sky is darkening.
   Three lines of traffic edge past
   The Ministry of Social Affairs.

   At a junction, on the ground
   an amputee and a pregnant hound
   sit by young men with withered arms
   as if death had already passed

   through every alleyway and left
   a million beggars’ silhouettes
   near where the money-changers sit
   by their locked glass cabinets.

   What’s happened? Let’s go and ask
   The Ministry of Social Affairs,
   near where the money-changers sit
   by their locked glass cabinets.

10. The Wheel
    The Wheel
    
    

    a revolving wheel of metal chairs
    hung on chains, squealing

    four little children flying out
    a blind man sings in arabic

    now you see them, now you don’t
    the children vanish behind a vehicle

    now you see them, now you don’t
    faces, limbs, a bouncing skull

    little children, don’t disappear
                        I heard it was twenty-eight thousand
    lost upon a revolving wheel
                        I heard it was twenty-eight thousand
    all that’s left after a year
                        I heard it was twenty-eight thousand
    a faded face, the trace of an ear
                        I heard it was twenty-eight thousand

    a tableau of the missing
    tied to the government building

    thousands of sun-bleached photographs
    fading with the roses

11. Dollar, Dollar
    Dollar, Dollar
    
    

    A boy stares through the glass.
    He’s saying, Dollar, dollar.
    Three lines of traffic pass.
    We’re trapped inside our car.
    His voice says, Dollar, dollar.

    I turn to you to ask
    for something we can offer.
    Three lines of traffic pass.
    We pull away so fast
    all my words get swallowed.

    In the mirror glass
    a face pock-marked and hollow
    is saying, Dollar, dollar.
    I can’t look through or past
    the face saying Dollar, dollar
    the face pock-marked and hollow
    staring from the glass.