Burning Down Houses in Havana

We used to go riding around

Setting the matches

Poor boys

Poor boys in cars

Just trying

To keep themselves busy

I had bottles of everything

In my backseat

And I never had a car

Go so easy on me

When I think of—

When I think of

What I put it through

Driving it around

Like it was a racecar

I won’t tell you

What I paid for that car

But it was a little bit more than nothing

And it lasted me all through school

And then some

Almost drove it to the mainland

Right into the water

And I bet it could’ve taken it too

I gave it to my cousin

When I left

And I don’t know what happened to it

After that

I don’t know

What happened

To my cousin either

We used to set fire to houses

In and around Havana

Stupid shit

Stupid boys

Stupid poor boys

With matches

And who gave us the matches, huh?

Who thought that

Was a good idea?

They weren’t houses with people in them

We weren’t psycho—

Nothing like that

We’d find these empty places

Fill up a bottle with, uh—

Put a match in

A lit match
And boom

There goes the house

We did that for years

You believe that?

Nobody ever came looking for us

Nobody asked

Nobody saw reports about it

My friend—my best friend

His father worked for the army

And we always thought

If we ever did get caught

That his father would either help us

Or kill us all

But what else was there to do?

His father worked for the army

But that family was still poor

Because the father had a few families

Although we weren’t supposed to know about that

We’d go to the hotel near his house

And watch the people coming and going

The Americans

The ones that weren’t supposed to be there

The women—you could smell them

From a mile away

Their perfume

Their suntan lotion

Their boredom

I used to dream about marrying a woman like that

Now I’m on my third American woman

And none of them smell as good

As those women at the hotel

We only ever got American girl

To come drive with us

She was a friend of a friend

Doing some research project

On the political bullshit going on

We took her to one of the houses

We’d already lit up

One of the ones

That hadn't burned

All the way down

 

We sparked it again

Just so she could see

What we did for fun

Her face in the fire

Looked like compassion

Never saw anything like that before

It was like she felt bad

For the house

And for us

The boys who had to light houses on fire

Just to waste some time

And set a smile

On the face of a girl

From a country

None of us

Were ever going to see

No matter how close it was

She left two days later

And I left three years after that

Never been back

Or set a fire since

But I sometimes I wake up at night
And smell smoke

And perfume

And sometimes

It’s just

Smoke