Looking Through Your Eyes

I remember seeing it through your eyes,
my country,
as for the first time.

The tight colorless street
where I grew up
choking with people,
_____now covered with a dust
_____sinful as only humanity is.

I remember looking up
as you raised your head
at buildings that resembled
pockmarks on the face of God.
_____They now rest in pieces
_____on the streets
_____and the face of God
_____is nowhere to be seen.

I remember meeting my family
in you,
sprawling, loud and insuppressible,
spreading over the table like a headache
that shouldn’t be cured.
_____Now the table lies naked,
_____all the colors of the vegetables
_____turned black.
_____Even the flies recoil.

I remember climbing the shoulders of the mountain,
the plain spreading behind us,
patchy and still,
and the valley round the corner,
yawning wide,
like the mouth of heaven.
_____Now it doesn’t shed a tear for us.
_____It had been there when it all began,
_____when men fell from grace
_____and ate each other.

(Originally posted on July 28, 2006)

Let it burn

Let it all dim a bit 

Let the lights flicker and die 

Let the noise chatter itself soar 

Let this chaos wind itself into the ground 

It all shall be...

Let the words wrestle themselves into oblivion 

Let everything exhaust itself 

Like dogs 

Like street walkers 

Like this city 

The trash shall burn, and we shall choke

Someone cannot breath, this too shall pass 

Taste the char in the air, the remains of what was 

Looking back, what does he miss the most?

Or is he beyond? Beyond missing 

Beyond the yearning, beyond the din 

Is he now only a memory, like so many others 

Fading, receding, but haunting 

Every now and then, in the making of the self 

In the unmasking of life, in the crevices of the everyday 

In me, you live in me, whether I like it 

Or die in you, as I would