Arafat is dead and Sharon
visits him
even in the life after
we blink purple
pink perplexity poured horribly from birth to ear
tear me a folded heart and label it
stomach
lung
as we say in Jamaica light
luz
liebe in Deutch
every body screams differently she reminds me
day after day
the television turns channel
four hours on average in Europe
too many here
hurricanes are breaths of air
trapped inside a limited dream
flail on little wind
these walls made of time cannot hold you
the sky will wrap you
cloud and light
sorrow and survival is how we remember
laughter
songs that remind us of a gentler afternoon
Christmas and the beginning of years
and years and
years of silence
paint me a flower
red
indecent like your mouth
comb these lines for truth
greater utterances
micro-cosmos shrinking powerful into wide
worlds of new madness
twirls of new windows old glasses to see through
clear
I miss my old wine and songs of familiar
history
hurts
hasty retreats
and the penalties of other lands
must be paid in space
distance
dollars divided for dirges and deliquents
a poet died last year
in his final days
he needed no polishing
shiny as he was he glowed
into the next life
maybe it is the way we construct
grief
bottled and bruised we buy deep into the ruse
and weep
cry a little everyday
every minute we peddle peace
and print lies
tell it like it is like it is
it is like it is
crazy cluttered
the memories of things past
a thing to come
re-load elusive onto our screens
tiny electronic spleens split bloody
the iron taste/s inside me while the red
seeps from me
a month is a lifetime leaking
affluence into the darkest rivers
motherfuckers be drowning in their own cunts
passing blunts communal like dis-ease
rest with me here
Peter/Rock/steady light
luz/licht
point me pedantic toward
understanding how you could could leave us
so quickly
faster than the speed of things glowing
red/orange/blue
the color of my love marks you permanent
perfect and twenty-nine
you had the gall to pass-over one day before thirty
you promised you would be here
for thirty you said thirty would mark you adult
three years between us
thirty three would mark me Christ
you disciple
and now I can only follow you
in memory
and wish
sieben jahre
we were married seven years
lucky number for me
you gave me life
now death claims you memorials
me widow
who would have thought me
widow dyke
cancer
quick/cut me open in absentia
I miss you
friend/fury/fear stripes me immobile
fiddle me an explanation of why you are not here
drinking the crimson wine I have learned to swallow
do you remember when I drank water
and juice
because I could not weather winters
nor summers under the influence of spirits
I never believed in Elegba
Oshun could kiss my ass
and Christ was all I allowed you to-
say hello to Arafat
Sharon is on his way I hear
leaders are falling/statues
icons of a world imploding
building and bridges tumbling London
and New York
you wanted to see Tokyo
torrential like oceans flooding body and breath
your last moments were contained
I sat outside
the small room and prayed for you
I invoked heaven
for you Poet of the Earth I spoke with a God I was not quite sure
existed
I bet my mutterings on your beliefs
and lost
or so it seems from this end
tell me otherwise
poet send me a sign
a wind
some water
a rock rolling up a hill of your choice
I need something
to whet me tongue and terror
tune me into another world turning
tempered and timeless
come back to me
my blue/boy/girl
every body has claimed you
in death you are conjured
poet/singer/dancer of tunes unknown
sound me a sea/green with the logic of you
sleeping/promise me I am only
dreaming/promise me
I am only dreaming you are
gone...
"in everything
let me recall that love is violent/fleeting
and a thing into which all things can be drowned"
Staceyann Chin
Posted by staceyann at January 6, 2006 09:35 PM