“When Clay Weeps”
A poetic tribute to Gilgamesh and Enkidu

Beneath a sky of burning stars,
Uruk's high walls gleamed like scars
cut into time—immense, precise—
where kings were gods, and men were dice.

Gilgamesh, carved out of storm and sun,
two-thirds divine, yet wholly undone,
bored with power, drunk on might,
wrestled shadows in the heat of night.

Then came Enkidu, beast-born and bold,
with eyes like flint and hair like mold
of forest boughs, of untouched place—
the wilderness written on his face.

They met like meteors—fierce and fast—
and fought until their rage was past.
Then, laughing, stood where blood had pooled,
and in that moment, gods were fooled.

They crossed into cedar-scented gloom,
to fell a giant, shape their doom.
And when the gods struck back with grief,
they cleaved the world with disbelief.

Enkidu’s breath fled in the dark,
his voice a ghost, his limbs grown stark.
And Gilgamesh—stone turned to skin—
sought death’s edge to pull him in.

He wandered roads where no man goes,
spoke with alewives, fought with crows,
and found the flood that washed the land,
held time’s seed in his trembling hand.

But life, a serpent, sly and thin,
stole the fruit he held within.
So he returned, not with the key,
but with the tale of what can’t be.

He carved in stone his city’s face,
a wall, a name, a time, a place.
For though we die and dust returns,
a soul may live if someone learns.

~
Sugar wife,
slipping husband,
massaged honeymoon flesh
wrapped in cellophane.

The sound of a water clock
cascading down
her mysterious frontage.

Handprints on
the glass pane
opaque with remnant steam.

Let your eyes
be your guide,
when dressed in
the tiniest temptations,
she catwalks into the room
with a novel idea for two.
~

Osiem metrów wysokości.
Pośrodku szczelina.
Rzeźba dziecka z betonu
obok kontury ciała i pustka
po bezbronnej istocie,
której już nie ma.

Szorstka struktura szarości
rani delikatną skórę.
Głód. Choroby. Samotność.
Świat zapomina o tych,
co nie krzyczą głośno—
o tym co najbardziej boli:
o miażdżonej niewinności,
i olbrzymach pilnujących
orszak przestraszonych wielkich oczu
w małych, wychudzonych ciałach.

Pamięć nie jest wygodna.
Ona fizycznie boli.
Uparte rany nie goją się.
Było.
Jest.
Wije się w sąsiednich otchłaniach Tartaru.

Aksjomat przyjęty przez aklamację:
„Tak ma być!”

Cisza.

Na scenę wychodzi syn ocalałego.
Łamiącym się głosem szepcze:
Tata przeszedł piekło, ale kochał nas.
Przeżył, napisał pamiętniki.
Dał świadectwo.
Rozumiał ten wykolejony świat.


BROKEN HEARTS

Eight meters high.
A crevice in the center.

A concrete sculpture of a child
and the deep void.
Once there was another child,
now gone without a trace…

The rough grey texture
hurts fragile skin.
Hunger. Disease. Loneliness.

The world forgets
those who do not scream
and what hurts the most:
crushed innocence
guarded by the giants
watching the procession
of terrified wide eyes
in small, gaunt bodies.

Memory is not a peaceful place,
it brings physical pain.
It gnaws from underneath.

Stubborn,
festering wounds,
they refuse to heal.

It was.
It is.
It will happen again
by axiom,
accepted without question.

That is how it must be.

Like a venomous snake
slithering near the lands of Tartarus.
Endless sacrifice, leaden silence.

And then, the son of the survivor takes the stage.
He speaks in a whisper:

My Father went through hell, but he loved us.
He wrote it down—
a testimony of a derailed world.

He knew what it meant to be human
when it hurt.

He survived to love and to be loved.

slurs the woman in her cups
when I tell her I write poems
late in the lonely evening.

She waves at the air conditioner
that mulches silence to hum lull,
"it's all just chemicals, physics,

actions and reactions, man."
Hard to argue with logic birthed
betwixt brain and frothing marrow

of glassy pint, so I tell her sure, ok,
& move the subject back to her son
who snaps time-lapse photos of ice

abandoning the toes of hills.
Still, her self-certainty rankles:
when I leave I pause and gaze up

at the sprinkled smears wetted
flat across the matte night melt,
any of which might be pouring

purring stanzas from radio teeth,
long-wave nigh-black rhymes
if we had ear enough to listen.

I heave homeward on clock feet,
blackbirds gashing the fog hedge,
as raw verse gnaws my thought.

Invisible handshake
& a red rose
are like a white cloud
floating in ecstasy
in a wide pillowed infinite sky.

Sometimes raining
sometimes chased
by a summer sun.

~~