Will you stay until the end?
Be here at the breaking of day —
Writing

Because the flood has passed
Virgins have died out
Swamps have claimed the land

Stay until the end
The night is a Roman
Trade mirrors for embers
Sway on ponds of sunglasses
In a picture frame of lies
So that planets may be born

So it will have been
Yes
Everything is fine
Creatures trample beds

Kingdom of truth
Thieves from the blood of angels
Hands cleansing soiled hands
Here the water is clear
It is fragrant

We are dying
We show no fear
Give me your hands
So I may cleanse them

At the edge of the green stillness
Where children hop in circles
Glowing dragonflies all around

My daughter among them
Her heart inside my eyes
My eyes guarding her heart

Cut from you
Like the cord from the navel

You are close to me
Your songs drift through dreams
You are wind
I am storm

Where are you?
Today the South thundered
Far from Moses’ tower blocks
Cold heart
A head made of stones

Statue of a desert child
Board before the face
Born of mirages
A life made of illusions

Blind and deaf and mute

Where are you, my child?
I miss you
I want to hold you in my warmth

I miss you

Fear slips from glaciers of
Childhood
Where a film was once shot
Just a dream

I spit blood
In the face of screaming apes
I am not one of you
Do you want to take me in?

A clock was stolen by a boy
Who came from the ice’s light
An eternal prehistoric glow
Born of the dead

Fear came back to us
Not to Ashima
Not to Branco’s doghouse
But it came back

Do you come from the eyes of the crocodile?
That lurks on the windowsill
In the east of the city
Away from the gardens

Near a safe
Where a note is hidden
Protected from the eyes of the uninitiated
The safe belongs to whisperers

They stand in circles
Circles of love and envy
They open restaurants everywhere
Are you one of their children?

They are secretive
You are often silent
Do you belong to them?
The crocodile belongs to me

24/7 with its mouth wide open
Where a colossus and his son live
In the east, away from the gardens
Separated from the bottom of the sea

Who are you?
I think
I would love you
If I knew you

That’s the problem, you say
For the first time, you lift your head
Break your silence
Wanting to understand everything, you say with a sigh

That sentence dissolves everything
You and me
The whisperers in their circle
The maw of the crocodile

In the evening I will pray
To receive answers
My thoughts are stained
That’s why I search for truth

The crocodile sleeps
East has become west
Day to night
Good night my love
Sleep well

I will stand guard in your dreams
Anyone who disturbs you will be destroyed by me
Now you have a protector
Sleep well, my angel

The winds drift through the heart
Bodies made of tattoos
People in a jungle of masks

Masks of past lives
Like Makabaja
Branko and Ashima Abraham

The journey begins in a droplet
Where people practice forgetting
Because they have mastered stillness

Stations full of silence
Shadows and cool glass
Sounds in memories

On walls stand punctuation marks
A sick man wrote them in blood
There are no children here anymore

The time of wars is over
From the storms of madness grew
A good tree reaching toward the light

From the storms of madness grew
A tree into the light

The Seven's Gone
We spilled out of basement crawlspaces
Where we’d been hiding
Like alley cats in daylight

The Seven was floating in the water
Near Moses’ apartment blocks
Cops were digging through basements
Looking for his sketches

The Seven jotted something down
While broken-hearted men
Ran the corners
Day in, day out

It’s been seven years
Since the Seven got stuffed
In some college kid’s backpack
He’s been sleeping through it

But the basements stayed wide open
Moses ripped off every hatch
The cops are long gone
And that endless water keeps on flowing

No Problem
From the garden of restraint
I come
My path is made of dust

No problem
The tiger rests in my lap
Fingers circle over furrowed brows
The beast snores

No problem
Everywhere phantoms eavesdrop on us
Their grimaces are black and lonely
They remain silent

No problem
Earlier a sunbeam wrote to me
A stateless person
She fights

This path is made of dust
And I am no one
Of the described
Forever in the chamber of pyramids