As the day is bled into the river
I watch the coming and going.

Place me in them
each one has a name like me
a home and a family
where their mind work laden
would have a heart to anchor
children to love and care for
a night to stir the fire
to burn all the bitterness
and be reborn the next morn
to shuttle one bank to the other
of the wide river.

I marvel at the chance
of meeting them once
suffering the absurd pain
of never crossing their path again.

one of the Orient’s oldest
and most beautiful important cities
inhabited for thousands of years
by generations after generations
of craftsmen, merchants, artists, dynasties,
famous architects of all styles and religions,
the western end of the old silk road
home to over 2 million citizens
until not long ago

a few weeks of modern warfare
were enough to destroy
what hundreds of generations had built
for their living as well as their sense of beauty

     rockets exploded churches, temples, and mosques
     artillery pulverized ancient palaces and new houses

     barrel bombs and poison gas
     killed the people

on tv we now see acres of urban wasteland
miles of rubble with no life
except for occasional tanks and soldiers
proclaiming victory over these ruins
in the name of a dictator whose regime
has become a puppet in global power games
no matter what the cost in lives or things

     to destroy is easy
     building things up is hard work

     with friends like these
     who needs enemies

On the outer
carapace of it,
     all seems ok
I am held
together by
single dry thre
                        a ds
like wire
and strips of
sinews
they keep me
tightly-wrapped,
a package of
molten powders
secret dynamite
waiting to
    e x p l o d e  in
exotic ticks
      of clockwork
but one scratch
beneath the surface
reveals my
inner truth:
How I wish,
by those
whorled and spiraled
powers above,
for the gently fluted
forces of my being
to be parted
like sacred seawater
with my psyche
   f l o a t i n g
just beyond
the zing of
       my brain,
no rational
           understanding
required
yes. I long
to be ever-slowly
           unraveled,
layer by layer
cell by cell
until all that is left
are the platelets
pulsating between
this heart
           and yours
each beat
betraying an
acute intensity
of how
I felt it,
      this tender
electricity
that crackled
        through and
                 between
            our bones
          from the
        very
      beginning
of
    our quiet blaze
our pinnacle
our quirky
metallic
     textures
our breath
mingling over
airwaves
         in heated
                 fluidity
   hotly drenched
in the iridescent
  dust of our
     star-marked
                     time