Lauren Beukes - Zoo City, 10 [tekst, tłumaczenie i interpretacja piosenki]

TYRONE JONES
Corcoran
USA

It's crazy in here. I know you can't tear a man from his animal. Ain't right. But some of these niggas got real wild animals, man. One guy's got a Cougar. You can't tell me that's right, letting a prisoner walk around with a Cougar

There's an order to things, too. Don't matter what you did, you got a bad-ass animal in here, you're a bad-ass too. And it don't matter how many people you killed, you got a Chipmunk or Squirrel, you're gonna be a bitch. Way it is

Then there's me. I got a Butterfly. Keep it in a matchbox. I outta be pissed off, man. You can guess what it's like being in here with a Butterfly. Except for the stuff it lets me do

See, when I go to sleep every night, I wake up as someone else. For the time I'm asleep, I live the day of someone else on the other side of the world. Man I've been kids in Africa and India. I was once this old Chinese woman. Mostly I'm poor, but sometimes I get lucky and I'm rich

What I'm saying is, I can't hate the Butterfly. Butterfly breaks me out of here every night

Excerpt from Caged: Animalled Behind Bars
Photography and interview by Steve Deacon
HarperCollins 2008