Just Doing As I Am Told

Together They’ve Got To Fight Through Hell Until The Fight Is Finished

Love for a man, when a man
loves a woman, the love a man
has for a friend, he’s a real man
who loves dogs, be a man
for once, for once

I have seen a lot of relationships
in my life, he said distantly,
he said it the way that men
talk about war.

When cousins are curled up in closets
and fear is flying, wives are crying
and you can’t flash forward to forty years
from now when everything will be real calm.

Once you’ve decided on something
it is very easy to undecided it
it is very easy to dream these days
these days the American dream is so elastic.

It is much harder to hang
on to the clarity of a memory,
to remember why you did it
in the first place, why you’re you,
you Americans.