Picture the word Devastation.
What do you see?
Bodies in a motorcycle accident.
Buildings of fire falling.

But that is not it,
it cannot be. Picture the word
DEVASTATION.

                                            ­          What do you see?

I see something so unbelievably
personal.

Devastation must mean my own life
in wreckage. A body in a
motorcycle accident.

                                                        A jump from a
                                                        burning­ building.

I cannot divulge how deeply
this is seared in my thoughts.
Picture the word

Shame
Incidence
Accident
Immolation
Remember
Breath­
Grass
Water
Wreckage

Picture the word Love.
What do you see?
Picture the word Devastation.
What do you see?

Are you surrounded?
Only a few?
Are you alone?
Do you want to be?

There is no shame in any answer.
I do not press my morality on others
but we must, must believe that.
There is no shame in any answer.

just Before
she approaches the counter
to scan and pass
she hears a sound in her head:

‘Don’t take the short cut

because it is convention
because it’s easy
because it’s top technology
because it pleases the tired body’
…

because oh because
kinda excuses  
humming and rhyming  
different ways
of sayings of  a
‘that makes sense’

all meaning the same
sung in a metropolitan opera
by the inhabitants
of this city

makes you up or your body
decorated by a lost lamented self
in a brand new glittery pack
made of your shell

empty inside
belongs now
to some stupid force outside

made existential by the soul sellers
visible to soulless just

you as much as of theirs
and by their approval
need to cross
scary landscapes
to accept the glittery pack
until and  if and when
you can witness
to forgive yourself

and that only when
you’re back
to yourself

again
once more
sadly
lost it all

at the end
of your life
standing still
at the start
of your life story

just
like I
but
who cares the I
if not I

your lives inside  
gone
while years erase a memory
of the futile
search
which could never become like
theirs/
promises /
illusions

so think twice
before you scan and pass

Compared to your heart’s road
how  long that short cut really is
when you are so far away from yourself.