Annie, the silence around here may suggest that others are as stumped as I am. Let me think out loud about it a bit.
Getting in through the transom? A six-year-old? This is the part that's nearly impossible to take literally, since most transoms are placed high up, over doorways. Ditto with "drink the Lucky Tiger"--no one would, especially not a kid. So what else could be going on?
Certainly the poem is about the sensation of being trapped. S2, "that six-year-old red face" is about the realization of how helpless one is, and how one looks to others in that position.
The allusions to cops, to a case, and to crime add to the picture the threat of having "the system" against you.
S5-7 turn much more realistic, taking their details from the act of getting a buzz haircut, an experience that does frighten children. But the lines "stiffened our wills to meet/the close clippers/and heard the true blade mowing/
back and forth" certainly call up images of the scythe of death too.
"You think your life is over? It's just begun" seems to say to the child that he'd better get used to a life full of threats and learn to meet them.
Perhaps this will serve to get other people started on this.
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