You must love me
Oh, no, but you must, you must!
I am the muse they request to sing
in your old, beloved books
I am the twinkling butterfly
Over a thousand darkened blooms
Life twirls around on my palm
Deathlessness sleeps
Love me, love me
Mustn’t you now?
I have whirled and withered
Since the morn
Of this endless mourn
I have heard all smothered wails

Must you sway
In your precarious little trance,
must you?
You sure do know
A thing or two of heaven
But a thing or two merely
Must you love me, oh must!
I could tell you a dozen more

Death surrenders his cloak
For my dresses
Must you see—
I am a snowy woman kissing
Her mulberry love
I lurk on the vivid edges
Of an infant’s dream

You must hear me,
You must now, you must!
I have pushed my way through
The froth
That settles on the surface of the stirring sky
And I fight on,
Hum, oh I hum
One upon another lullaby
Luring the day to sleep
Must you love me!
Must you not?

Bruised and scarred
I have a hundred tales of beauty
Unheard
Must you ask,
Oh, must you ask only!
You sure do know some secrets
Of godhood, but
Must you ask me about yourself
Ask, ask, mustn’t you ask!

Love me!
O you peace-less, fluttering moths
The sun smirks an immortality away
Must you love me
For a single night, must you!
I wait, I wait
I count your molten bodies
That dreamed of kissing
The mighty sun
Counting, recounting

I wait, I wait
Then curl away in my lone vacancy
I wait
Then bloom again
Uncountable deaths I have died
Reborn only for you
Must you,
Oh, must you love me
Mustn’t you?

I shine a full goddess tonight
See me, ask and ask
I have so much of living
To spare
Oh must you love me
Love me—

Here I lurk
Clutching my shadow
In my fists
It shivers, shrivels, sighs
A flame shushed to silence
On its ashen throne
Here I grasp
Grasp the oozing, burning night
That drips down my fingers
A palm beneath a palm I place
A palm beneath another
It the creamy tiles kisses
And will come to me no more

A rumble wobbles
around the room
Of laughs and talks
And talks
However do I mingle
In these faceless folks?
However do I fathom
All these massless worlds
Orbiting around ecstatic tongues
That birth them
Birth them on and on
Birth them meaningless, and birth them blind

I think,
Maybe when the flood dies out
I think,
Maybe then I will see
Pick up the shells this land could not drink
And read the tales preserved
In their wounds
Maybe the drunken ghosts
Serving all these brightly dressed drinks
Will approach me too—

Not yet though
Not yet

I pull little hymns out of my throat
Roll them around in my mouth
It is there they sway,
There they wilt

A gaze chained to my eyes
Wanders about
Like an injured fly
On one face it rests
On one chuckle stumbles,
A crack skipping down the wall
A high-pitched laugh blooming
In the corner
There is a bleakness, believe me
In this world

A bleakness so pitiless and rotten
Its stench covers all that is born
All that is not
All—
There is a bleakness
And I often mistake it for my own
But I do not now
It is there in every eye
In every corpse hanging between the ribs
It grows up like a sturdy ****
On arms and legs and
Bones
Up and down the aisle it flows
In this classroom twinkling
with childish mirth

Up and down
It pats heads and laughing cheeks
It is there
It is there
And will not still
Will not stir either

I think,
I must warn them
These energetic faces trying
to resurrect joy
From the flesh of stories all skinned alive
Warn them
I must, I must
But the words pile up
And floods pile up
One upon the other thousands
And I lose myself somewhere

The chatter blends in with the chortle
And I cannot tell
The shadows imagined
From cloaked figures swaying around
I would warn them, believe me
Warn them I would
If only
If only I could grasp hold
Of this darkness
That mimics me everywhere I go
Ghost of a black lamb
I once sacrificed for
A purity I loved to violence

And longing never became
A shackle so well

I think,
maybe when the flood dies down
I will breathe,
I will breathe maybe
Here we lurk
A slave upon a slave rests
A slave beneath still
Two ghosts I birthed,
Two lambs opened up,
One will not love me
And one will not not—

Not a seat is left here
For your gentle grief
The ritual started a breath ago
And has not tired since
Not a glass is empty,
Not a plate unused

Now meet him in the quiet shadows
Of the garden humming
Itself to sleep
Now dance on with the beetles
You two,
For the hall in here is full

Not a gossip chirps the name
Of your long loyal lover
Not a searching glance
Birthed for him

Here, the ladies sparkle around
And spices giggle on tongues
Here, kings now stumble on their crowns
And goddesses
Painted on windows
Smile the lambs once killed for chastity
In their altars

Did I not warn you, beloved?
Did I not open the moon up
Vessel by vessel
And weave a castle out it all
Did I not surrender?
Spared a throne for him, I did
and a thousand ones for you
in my bleak little hall

I watch you sneak out into the night
Pearls kissing your cheeks,
And teasing your lips
Slipping down that slender neck
Shining a dawn
in the fading lights
Oh, how I envy
the silliest of things!

Precarious dresses
And grasses smothered
Beneath flushed soles

Oh, how I wait and wait
In the hall I slaughtered to silence
For your peace
The stars I invited, drunk on boredom
And sunlit teas
Warm no more
Oh, how I wait, I wait
My breaths away!

Not a dove dares mimic the grace
Of your beautiful grief
Not a moth dares look

You swirl about his finger
And the world does
About you

I sewed myself a dress
Made it prettier than spring
Oh, the laces hiss like golden snakes
And winter sits, a heavy shroud
Did you not prefer frozen lakes over
Golden flowers?
Why then, why then—

And as the dreamy plants
Whisper soft verses to your dress
You sigh happiness in his
Melancholy embrace
Oh, I know,
Not a shadow is left here
For me to blend in

How I wish I were him
your sweet, gentle grief
Oh, how I wish
I were a nameless goddess
Buried in the glass window of a rotten hall
Swaying to the sounds
Of your laughs

Sometimes, sometimes
I will sit in my own room like a stranger
I will gracefully drag the chair out its den
And run my fingers through the white fur
That is white no longer
It lies there inviting
But I prop myself on the table instead
Head just touching the shelves above
Books kissed by dry dust
College notes never noticed
An empty fruitcake box
A candy wrapper
I run my gazes up and down the walls
Up and down
Up and down

A disheveled slave girl bare—
Still for me
Someone has covered her wounds
With poems ripped out of forgotten books
Her tears slide down like curious cracks
Beneath the silver veil
A bottle of Kerosine oil sits patiently near the pallet,
Rows of paint tubes
Children’s beds in a quiet, orphanage hall

Unfinished canvases awaiting a god
Brushes scattered around
Scattered like arms and legs
and skulls
In a tired battlefield

Sometimes I reread the stories
Scribbled on the doors
Quotes as bullet shells
abandoned
and hollow

Like a stranger
I admire the designs on the wall picture
Leaves of all the races
And the blueness beneath
Like a stranger
This silent, beautiful girl I see
For as a lover I have long ceased
A shy dove scared
Quietly humming a tune
I have never known

I look for the person who smiles in the pictures
The girl who’s known to talk to the walls
But the bed is empty
And folks in the photos
Will not meet my eyes
The verses swirl around in the air
And fumes of the oil
Rise up
Slow as the arrival of blooms
Slow as a withering moon
Till they are everywhere
A horde of soldiers
Marching down my throat

There is no one here
Somebody once taped the roses to the window
And painted suns on pieces of stray T-shirts
hung them up as tapestries
But they are not here now
The walls reek of aridity
A slave girl who will not smile

They like to preach to us to
Always be ourselves
But who are we—
Some fancy clothes wrinkled on the floor
As if passed out after a jolly evening
A fidget spinner
Spinning spinning spinning
In my hands
The fan groaning—
A symphony struggling to scream
And fumes rise up

I jump off the table
And slide the window open
The city, a worried lover, rushes in
It kisses the room
Its beautified bruises
Washes her with light
Air jolts the calendar awake
“Are you here?”
“Are you here?” It seems to ask
Are you here, are you here, are you—
And the walls nod their tired nods
A practiced, perfected ritual

Sometimes, some nights
I will tread through my own writings
Trail touches down
My own drawings, looking
For myself
Looking, looking,
And forever on search

Sometimes, sometimes I will realise
that no matter how many plants I hang
And words
I nail to these walls
To make them mine
I will always be a stranger to this room
Searching the stalls for another anklet
that will smile a star
in her next alluring dance—
A slave girl
And her golden crown.
Dah

The dust storm
Whipped the world red
Trees all freaked out, I and my brother
We climbed up the solar panels
On the roof
And laughed
In the face of the sky

The city swirled
With the drunken stars
And lights bled
In our flooded eyes
Laughing does that to you
We did not weep
For the sky did
And darkness
Was a horde of wasps let loose
It devoured our sweet,
Ripened day

I grabbed his wrist
And spun him around
Our feet kissing
The grumpy, old ground
We blended
Like ink in milk
Stirred round and round
And round ran the heavens

We laughed
Laughed our stomachs
To painful exhaustion
And the gusts hissed on
Rain sneaked down our clothes
Ran soft touches
All over

Do you ever settle down
On the edge of the world
And watch the beautiful
Oblivion chase itself?
Do you ever laugh
Even a dog moves on from its tail
After a while
Or whisper
“Will you not stop? Will you not stop
For I am here
I have climbed a thousand peaks
And slaughtered many a ravenous
Creatures
In the valleys of time
to get to you
Will you not stop?”

A gust of hues.

It says something
And you grasp it, you
Grasp it almost
Almost
But what is it
If not an oblivion?
Unfathomable

And a voice comes
From around, inside or
Maybe somewhere in between
Maybe
Maybe nowhere at all
It ruffles your hair
And pats your cheek
Have you forgotten your place
Little human?

Winds then shushed
The clouds away
From their beloved sun
And gold gleamed
Up, below, and in between
Every pearl that plummeted,
Blushing
I watched the sunset
Peep out the night
And I wondered
If rain was overrated

Have you forgotten you place
little human?

Because when the euphoria dies down
And cold begins to bite
You watch the raindrops
Beat the world to silence
And day breathes its
Last laughs

You wonder
“What now?” What now?
You wrap an arm around an arm
And shiver
What now?
Even a dog gets tired
Of whirling

What now?

Nothing,
The hues whisper
Now sit on the edge of oblivion
And we will do our magic

And maybe the world
Still chases its tail around
But you forget
For a breath or two.

You know, this woman
Never fails
To astound me

She is mixing the ladies’ fingers
Chopped and fried
With sautéed, spiced onions
And I watch
As she dips the pan
Toward herself
And all the oil runs over
Like a lost child
At the sight of his sister
In a crowd

With the other hand
She pushes those vegetables
Into the awaiting ***
Places the pan aside
And grabs hold of the ***
Twisting her wrists
Working up the magic

She flips the greens
Over the crescent onions
Mingling them up
And in front of my eyes
She has cooked up a dish

Then she spins the wheat dough
In between her fingers
Nimble as a dove’s beak
Tossing it from palm to palm and
All of a sudden
It is a flattened sun

She turns it around on the griddle
Before exposing it to the flames
It rises, rises, then falls
A breathing thing
And
Goodness be ******
She doesn’t even burn it
Not a single mark
She cooked the sun over blue fires
Turned it into a moon

I wonder how she does it
My mother
Master an art she doesn’t even like
While I—
I fiddle around
With my pens and brushes
The smug blankness

Of neglected canvases
And unfilled pages
Mocking me of a fairy-light child
I could not become—