We sat in the back of science class
bored out of our minds; we'd hit each
other with pencils across our forearms
until we were striped red and white and

we looked like dancing shrimps. We found
comedy in hurting each other, playing
both sadist and *******, feeling
the power of inflicting damage
and the humility of pain.

Years later not much had changed—
the pencils now needles, blood striped our arms.
The classroom, like my home—now a car, we joked
about burning a library in Alexandria. The humor remained

but it had changed; no longer about what lied ahead
we joked about what was;
architects of a fallen temple
that never stood yet continued to be raided.

Once the jokes became stale
I couldn't swallow them anymore
spitting out a poppyseed after
receiving the Heimlich maneuver

yet others choke their whole life
on a hollow humor tumor
benign until malignant
the ruins of their adytum
cover the hill to die on.

Yeah, I can tell you I’ve been finding my intimacy inside of someone else’s skin,
I’ve been avoiding contact with my own garden,
I’m too scared to come back, I don’t know what the flowers will say when they see me, and I’m too afraid that I won’t have enough water for all of them, I don’t want to see them like that,
Dried up and dying, but I guess we all get to that point

My organs have been feeling like empty warehouses with dust and lack of emotional labor,
It’s really ***** around here, and I don’t have enough in me to hire someone to help,
And I don’t have enough in me to fix everything that’s wrong inside of them,
I’ve been hoping that maybe if I leave them empty long enough, I’ll finally get the chance to bulldoze what little is left after it’s all rotted away and grown over with weeds,
And the cracks in my body’s sidewalks will grow thorns too thick to walk through

My angels gave me fertilizer but I’ve been too busy using it on the community gardens,
What I would sacrifice to see everyone else grow

I am living the death of every empty sad warehouse in every town in every city in every country of my body, and I am scared that I won’t know how to rebuild once it all crumbles back into the grounds from which it all came

Instead, I’ll crawl the surface of my body, getting cuts and scrapes from everything that’s become broken, just like that two headed boy back in ‘98,
and I’ll sing my hallelujahs into the open wounds like my magic could possibly heal something that no longer has potential

But it’s all a beautiful kind of war,
Where the guns and anger unlearn dead and relearn life,
Where the bullets are poppyseeds,
And the whole battlefield is lit up with a happy kind of high,
A feel good kind of resolution,
And the blood shed on my body’s soil is like water in the stems of all of the flowers killed by everything that has collapsed and fallen in on them

And when the horses come running, when the bells come ringing, when the soldiers return home,
They will begin anew, and every warehouse in every town in every city in every country in my body will have lights in their windows for the first time in years

King Ahasuerus desires a mate
'One chooses Esther one thinks she's first rate.'
Later he's soppy and showers her with kisses
Then honours his promise and makes her his missis.

Haman gets an earful ; the King's in a strop.
'You're history you hear us. You're for the big chop.'

'Oi, Haman, I'll miss you
Just Like a used  tissue!'
Mordecai's very cheerful
Though once he was fearful
'Oy vey,  I'm relieved
The Jews are reprieved'

Jeer and boo with a passion
Nibble hamantashen
(Poppyseeds are the filler)
That's the gansa  megillah



Miriam Troth 2016