Adrienne Rich - Delivered Clean lyrics

You’ve got to separate what
They signify from what they are distinguish
Their claimed intentions from
The stuff coming
Out from their hands and heads
The professor of cultured dynamics
Taught us this They’re disasters in absentia
Really when supposedly working
Look at the record:
Lost their minds wrote bad checks
And smoked in bed
And if they were men were bad with
Women and if they were women
Picked men like that or would go with women
And talked too much and burnt
The toast and abused all
Known substances Anyone who says
They were generous to a fault putting change
In whoever’s cup if they had it on
Them always room for the friend
With no place to sleep refused
To make what they made
In the image of the going thing
Cooked up stews that could
Keep you alive with
Gizzards and onions and splashes of raw
Red wine were loyal where they loved and
Wouldn’t name names should remember said the
Professor of cultural dynamics what
Messes they made

The building will be delivered vacant
Of street actors so-called
Artists in residence
Fast-order cooks on minimum wage
Who dreamed up a life where space was cheap
Muralists doubling as rabble-rousers
Cross-dressing pavement poets
Delivered clean of those who harbor feral
Cats illegals illicit ideas
Selling their blood to buy old vinyls
Living at night and sleeping by day
With huge green plants in their windows
And huge eyes painted on their doors

(for Jack Foley)