The technician squeezes the bulb to tighten the cuff
To take my blood pressure for a second time today
Next to the professional scales I stood on that showed I weighed enough

A Narrator will read the numbers and text aloud starting with this statement:

1. Three spotlighted women stand stage center on an otherwise dark stage. Two of them elegantly dressed in black, the third naked. All are white-haired, in their fifties or older.

The city sleeps with the lights on.
The insomniac wants it to be morning.
The quadruple amputee asks the night nurse what time it is.

I wear a suicide belt I detonate
And make my City of Light 
A coprophagic tomb. 

I turn into the man they photograph.
I think I’ll ask him for his autograph.
He’s older than I am and more distinguished.

You wonder who in the world are the people who actually use stool cards.
They’re the very same scum who sell drugs to little kids in school yards.
The doctor tells you do this, do that.

Putting my lenses in, I see No Man’s Land in the mirror—
Which makes me think of times in Tokyo so long ago 
When, on some subway station platform, in a crowd,

I was walking down Roupell Street,
Avoiding all the drunks.
I live in a little house 

Snow is falling on Broadway 
Through weeping willows of fog.
I know that my Redeemer liveth  

You’re born that way—or else you’re not.
It’s snowing—or else it’s hot.
It’s like the strangeness, that’s also natural,