"Don't let the bastards grind you down." A red dress under false light. "Blessed be the fruit" — the room goes tight. Eyes on the wall, the wall has ears, the air itself rehearses fears. "Under His Eye," they say and pass; I count the exits in the glass. Janine in pieces, still singing through pain — she taught me how to smile in the rain. Don't let the bastards grind you down! Don't let the bastards grind you down! Not prayer, not mercy — a scar in the dark! A match in the night, a crack in the arc! Don't let the bastards grind you down! Don't let the bastards grind you down! If they take my name, they don't take this: the taste of the words they meant to dismiss! In the Commander's house, everything's clean, the terror polite, the surfaces keen. I count the small cracks in the grammar of fear. A body can vanish, a voice can stay here. I learn to lower my face, my breath, to live between obedience and theft. Small as a match in the cupboard's gray — one line, one wound, one thing they can't betray. “May the Lord open.” Or may the lock. Better never means better — it means a locked dock. A counted son, a hollow prayer. But something in me will not kneel there. Don't let the bastards grind you down! Don't let the bastards grind you down! Not prayer, not mercy — a scar in the dark! A match in the night, a crack in the arc! Don't let the bastards grind you down! Don't let the bastards grind you down! If they take my name, they don't take this: the taste of the words they meant to dismiss! Don't let the bastards grind you down. I am still here.
