Brand New Darkness
This time, a brand-new darkness has made an appearance,
possessing a perturbing density, in such steady footing,
sheltering everything, even the visible things that were familiar
once, to all our appendages. She has transformed the known voices
which had, besides their own music, the sounds of imploding
kisses and cosseting.
To recognise this darkness, a child had arrived
whose sleep was intruded by a horror:
A woman and her etiolated face, held a mirror
a man dismounted his bicycle to watch her
wondering if he’d lost his way.
Where my Country Stood
A few days ago, where
there was once a way,
stands a wall;
Where our desires stood
only avarice attends.
Where there was once a yearning,
lust flares on.
Where there was happiness,
a thick umbra of sadness reigns
Where all courage existed,
complete powerlessness.
Where my country stood,
there, stands a market.
Whatever sits there, and looks like avifauna,
Isn’t quite the same thing. A fish with iridescent eyes
slithers in the water, is actually a useful
weapon of war. Neighbors, ordinary people
are government spies, gathering our particulars.
And the clerk, sitting in the corner of the bureau
does the kind of work these days
that is too big a task for his stature- noting down the names,
making a hit list. The state that seems to represent me
is not mine, my country is captured by another.
It’s quite the limit, when what
was once seen there
is not so, when what was once there
isn’t.
Autocracy
As of now, as ever, all the water
trembling, the oceans quiver
no masquerade of boiling over,
truly, it all roils there
is a premonition, of all
that’s about to occur
in a while, the globe could be in ruins.
As could every democracy, on it.
He, too, who lost all that love
is awoken, in a bid to fulfill
the void of its absence.
Together, together all water
shakes. Who knows how
it appears to its own fish.
How does it salvage anything
as it moves, it’s important,
no — necessary to mull over.
Actually, it was a slug’s
speech, under the soles
of my feet, that leaped
at me, and said it’s the entirety
of the water on earth
that shakes within, without
as if it were a country
in the belly of its own
autocracy
