I want to be close to you
Beside you in sleep
While we dream
Without distinctions
On black-and-white streets
Amid glowing trees
Past our childhoods
Dancing and always watchful
For the embarrassment is vast
The shame enormous
The fear gigantic

Who wants to be rejected?
Who would ever answer yes?

Through our dreams roam lions
Lions with hearts of love
They know no fear
Love knows no fear
Love lives fearlessly

That’s why we stay
Here, where all the lions are
Where all the love is

Green are our paths
Surrounded by stars
Always for the moment
In the wink of the good

I became one of you
When I found the corridor of light
I became one of us
Here in the corridor of light

The birds are silent by day
It is the life of night
The life of nights
Born from the cries of birds

Once I burned in blazing fire
My eyes stared like flames
My pointed hair caught fire
In the mirror of amber

Where are all the brothers?
A great flood buried the quarter
While well-mannered, decent people
Deliberated at bright window fronts

The cries of the birds turned to
Sand
The birds flew away
I became one of us

Frankie is dead
Dump exploded
K.B. died of an overdose
Evidence seal on the apartment door

Walls remain
Forests are still there
A crow caws from the street sign
Mothers carry children and water

My eyes
Your laughter
A passenger
Beautiful words

Above the stairs lies light
That I’m alive is a miracle
We walk up the stairs
A day turns to evening

The state returns
It was never gone
Forgotten

Forgotten under a garbage heap
In the deep West
Between head and skin

Of soul there is nothing there
Stones and sand
Neon-green acid

The state returns
From the pyramid room
Between wall safe and key rack

The shelves are empty
Because of the resident
Who dwells in the head of the West
Though the pyramid room was built in
The East of the skylines

Below the pyramid room
An avenue
Through it he wound his way
To ceaselessly get things done
Ceaselessly

The state returns
It firmly refuses the
Refusal of life

The state is back again
Down with the past
It remains a red door
Fading

The pyramid room
The state
My body goes to ground
The children stand around it
Silent
Counting
Illuminated

The state

All battles have been fought
A red door remains
The pyramid room
The state

Will you stay until the end?
Be here at the breaking of day —
Writing

Because the flood has passed
Virgins have died out
Swamps have claimed the land

Stay until the end
The night is a Roman
Trade mirrors for embers
Sway on ponds of sunglasses
In a picture frame of lies
So that planets may be born

So it will have been
Yes
Everything is fine
Creatures trample beds

Kingdom of truth
Thieves from the blood of angels
Hands cleansing soiled hands
Here the water is clear
It is fragrant

We are dying
We show no fear
Give me your hands
So I may cleanse them

At the edge of the green stillness
Where children hop in circles
Glowing dragonflies all around

My daughter among them
Her heart inside my eyes
My eyes guarding her heart

Cut from you
Like the cord from the navel

You are close to me
Your songs drift through dreams
You are wind
I am storm

Where are you?
Today the South thundered
Far from Moses’ tower blocks
Cold heart
A head made of stones

Statue of a desert child
Board before the face
Born of mirages
A life made of illusions

Blind and deaf and mute

Where are you, my child?
I miss you
I want to hold you in my warmth

I miss you

Fear slips from glaciers of
Childhood
Where a film was once shot
Just a dream

I spit blood
In the face of screaming apes
I am not one of you
Do you want to take me in?

A clock was stolen by a boy
Who came from the ice’s light
An eternal prehistoric glow
Born of the dead

Fear came back to us
Not to Ashima
Not to Branco’s doghouse
But it came back