You held me by my puppet stringsAnd made me dance on stage.You tweaked my limbs in their plastic jointsAnd cast me in childish plays.But I shall resist your despotic controlFor I am not a doll.You wove my hair into ribboned braidsAnd put rouge on my cheeks.You dressed me up in pretty clothesWith roses on my feet.But I shall shake off your stifling holdFor I am not a doll.
You painted my lips a smiling red,My eyes an expressionless blue.You hid my face in a porcelain maskAnd my soul in a lacquered shell.But I shall learn to weep and cryFor I am not a doll.
I shall learn to take a leapAnd land standing on my feet.I shall escape your glass displayAnd see the naked world. I shall rip off your puppeteer's stringsFor I am not a doll.I shall leave you and not returnFor I am not a doll.
Slouching by the roadside, half-forgotten by the man who sells beer and snacks, mere distractions to the beautiful game on the idiot box, the stool: worn and grimy and rough like the hands of the late night foreign labourers that sit here Fridays and pine for home, red and faded as if hundreds of Chinese New Years past compressed themselves into this one night, touched the bodies of the countless faces in the crowd like the whores who sometimes take a breather here, sticky and sick of the smoky air. This crack here the passion of the S-League fans when the home team wins, this stain there the tears of the lonely alcoholic locked out of home again, this scratch the intent of the corner gangsters and their petty disputes and broken beer bottles. Each cockroach, each odour, each stale cigarette butt tells a maybe insignificant story, but the stool knows each one. No big wonder therefore when the man takes it in after all, dragging it (the pain of his divorce echoing in the sound of the road on its legs) into his coffeeshop and pulling the shutters down. Because this stool, dirty, spoiled, worthless, is his most precious possession in the end.