Year of the Cock (Jackie Feathers)

Lyrics

[Verse 1] All winter the magpies hid in the steeple Dining on yarrow and bol weevil And there were no people except for me I came to the sea to write and to think But I was so small next to my dreams Like a mite who might try and cross the seas In the year of the cock, I began as a flea [Verse 2] Springtime came, no words on the page So the old sperm whale went looking for prey And when I found a dodo as hungry as me I dragged her back to my lair by the sea Pushing forward so awkwardly I laid her bare on the eucalyptus leaves In the year of the cock, it was hard as can be [Verse 3] So I sat on her mantle like an old stuffed goose The artist who says little and lets others choose When at last I tried to finally break loose She called me a skunk, a raccoon on the loot She'd thought I was a rooster with the right kind of plumes But I was only a chicken who had gone cuckoo I was only a chicken, who had gone cuckoo [Verse 4] And when I knew I was meant to be alone I fell for a colt so young and so bold Really? I said, you could love an old goat? Sure, he said, but you're more like a toad Like raging rams we butted our horns I was a female stag kicking down the door But then like a fish let back into the brook In the year of the cock, I let him off the hook [Verse 5] And then mother died, so I flew back to the states And, sister was a shark so the lion's share was weaseled away And when I saw a guy I knew living on the street A hard year went from bad to bleak My skin broke out like when I was a kid It was back to the clinic for tar baths and treatments And the doctors gave the same old speeches In the year of the cock I was covered in leeches [Verse 6] And when at last I made it back to the steeple The magpies stared at this strange man made feeble By a year of lust and lost questions A broken mind receives no lessons If in fact I had fallen and cracked Would I rise like a phoenix from the flames Or was I just an egg made of clay In the year of the cock, I crowed all night and all day