𝓐 𝓦𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓘𝓷 𝓜𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓵

Sleep Thief

When you sleep
you keep
your secrets
each discrete.
Your breath
its depth
confounds unspoken

self.

I Will Not Be Rescued

Can you rescue me
from demented outbursts?

My fragile lexicon
is not getting better; it's getting
worse, so much worse.
I do not fully
understand the aesthetic
of the obsessed. I am not yet dead
and yet and yet, I am ready
for the transition: be it brutal, be it gentle.
I conjure a mop ( a map)
that will cleanse me, deface me,
rescue me, oh finally, ah, kindly
from the curse
of continuity.

Saviouress

If Oskar schindler could save
one thousand Jews,
surely I can save you.

Swan Girl

Your Boleyn neck
stretched until it could withstand
no further torture.
Like an impossibly long-stemmed
tulip struggling in deep shade,
animal-vegetal metaphors
undid you until death
arrived, bloodless, polite
and without a hint of rancour.

Girl in the Green Spring Coat

It had to be
in May when the grass
could never be greener,

not even in gentle June
or lush July
I saw the girl in the green
spring coat.
Only a child model
in that intoxicating zone
between homely and divine
as crisp as celery,
as dangerous as absinthe.
No matter who is posed
besides her, she will never pale
although she is paler than a garden variety ghost
a hidden scheme, a shameful scene, a spurned dream

no one left to derise her.

Unknown Forest

in whose forest
did you get lost?
was it at dawn
or was it at dusk?
Did you nibble on treebark?
Did you repose upon moss?
Were you a gone girl
or an invisible guest?
No matter, no matter,
You were killed by your quest.

She Threw Me

to the hybrid dogs.
She threw me; she threw me.
Her cheshire cat face
as silky as milk all the while.
Did she know

that she threw me,
or was it a case
of deserved disgrace?
Begone ragged misfit.
This is not your place.

Two Chairs

Are two chairs
indeed better
than one? Yes? No?
Perhaps a divan,
a settee, something
one could use
or even own?
If I furnished my hovel
with mismatched seating options,
would that make me a designer
or merely a nervous squatter?

Your Algorithm

does not attract
mine. We've debated this
endlessly:
the prosaic vs. the sublime.
You dared to die;
I dared to defy.
In the end,
there is no end;

only distances

don't die.

Go Slow

Go slow, girl,
go slow. Do not be seduced
by cognitive bias.
The rush
does not exist. Repeat:
the
rush
does
not
exist
Carousels come,
and they will go.
Just like memories
and yarns of yore.

Pale Boy

pale boy trudges
through winter slush.
eyes downcast,
thoughts amuck.
He struggles to recall
the starkness of Narnia,
instead holocaust
images assault

his inner crust.

Neither Dainty Nor Delicate

these scars
attest to the most brutal of tests. No rest
for the wicked, no rest for the saintly
no rest
no rest.

A Taste of Memory (for R)

Your memory
not tasty, yet tasted
repeatedly. We cannot go back
you asserted

assertively

yet here we are

not you, but me.
I carry your multiples
casually beside me
in a leather

case
battered suitably
The problem is,
my darling,
you never stopped suiting me.

House Remembers

House remembers three
ungainly children, greedy
for sweets, toys, attention.
House is shyly proud
of a sunken living room, rosewood basement,
Louvre shutters a yard once
resplendent
in the days

when Master tended,
gently ruling, placating a morose
wife with woes unending.

Your Life or Mine

In the end,
the end has come and gone.
Is this your
life or mine?
Will you defend
the atrocities unending
or are you able
to condemn
cheap questions sent
by proxy unrepented?

such

such simplicity
reminds us, no, presses us
up. flush. against the wall
of history.
all of you who
have died
I will (re)join you
even if only
according to the dividing
line: living-line-dead.
There you have it
or not.
I'm a meaningless person,
but even I understand
the arrogance of Absolute.

Confessions are cheap,
be they sincere or not.
How will you end
your puny life?
Will it be swept away majestically?
Oh, sweet heart, unlikely.
Once I had
a Mother and a Father,
two good folk
who kindahadtoloveme.
And now? And now?
I am the quintessential
Neanderthal Girl
who lost everything
while questing Something.
Post Script:
If you think your death is consequential,
think again, non-friend,
think a

gain.

Geography Unknown

no one visits
their ancestors anymore.
Ghosts don't lie,
or do they?
Why must we choose
each time: Israeli or Palestinian
Jewish or Muslim?
Dead or Alive?
We are the half-and-halfs,
the quarterlies, the fly by nights
the eternal refugees.

Team Other

You
who would be clean
I accuse You
of being
just like all the rest:

one of us
or not one
of us but a member
of Team Other
Friend/Enemy
in the end,
it's all the same:
Living, Dying
in your own
small bubble,
You struggle;
you blame.