my town
where wild flowers grow
between tram tracks.
there was a time when
it was hardly morning,
no bridge into daylight.

walls had ears,
neighbors had eyes
whispering behind the curtains
there was an emptiness in the guts
of the city
and poetry locked in the drawers,
Borges was read under the blankets
while Dostoievski was  a comforter:
demons were embedded.

yeah, people were clapping and smiling
watching the nub of history, numb
they had a life to live,
what can you say?

one day the radio
burst on in the streets
some were shivering in the attic
"we are free", they said
"we are free",
came the echo in trance

"shhhhh"! said others,
let us wipe the blood
don't disturb the sacrificed
so we can sleep
without dreams

it's Thursday in my town
streets are weary
and our souls are
slowly expanding

The late afternoon sun
Whose heat dusk
Would soon to absorb
Sifted through the window
Exposing particles of dust
Lightly strewn
On the glistening cement floor
Of the passageway
It must have been September

Daisied grass beneath my feet
Ladybird crawling
Along my fingertip
A fleet of autumnal birds
On the wing
Above me in their hundreds
Their remedying cadence
Humming and resonating
In my head
It must have been September

Swathed in the air of content
And absence of dissonance
Silently without warning
The light of september
Faded with the light of day
To bore the fathomless
The eruption of chaos
When my coin flipped
As I slept
Happiness or sadness
Out of my hands.

There are bare-breasted women
lounging in the unmade bed
of my mind.
They teach me chords on the piano,
and how to stay grateful
in the face of time;
how it lingers between seconds,
but years go by unannounced.

We don't make love. We ****,
taking back each wasted Sunday
spent talking to G-d,
or waiting for political truth.
They run their fingers over my back,
send me to a sleep
of dried sweat and loving violence.
They send me sunflower seeds and ****

in the post,
so I can bloom by the open window
and feel warmth through winter.
There are powerful women
laying down the law by the clock tower.
They stand up for Syria
and challenge the authority
I had conjured in my mind.

I still care.
Sitting behind the net curtain,
I burn incense to cover the smell
of cigarettes and watch the street
fill up each morning. I may have grown
old and fat and short of sight, but you know
I remained as half a person with a childhood mind.

The bodies come.
Mass graves as far as the eye
can see, and yet still I think of you
and how you patterned your hairstyle
to the changing of your moods. I wonder
how you are looking today, how you are feeling.
Though I am finding grey in my whiskers, I still care.

I paint now.
Nothing special, just irises
from the neighbours garden.
I grew tired of writing  once I found
that there was nothing to show for it.
I am too lazy to tend to a garden that
creeps up around me, I have given up on

trying to out-run the world.
I still care. Somewhere beyond
cynicism and charcoal, I still care.

she wrings the morning
from her paint soaked dress, dreaming
dragonflies hover
becoming sunlight dancing
vast, her fields of flowers bloom