This imperfect me
a pleasure machine

a bait for chameleons
liars and a thief

waiting by the phone

waiting by the door
the boy with the skatebooard
like salmon
race against the slant

Pass by a black woman
with her plastic bags
full of empty bottles
plans her drunken feast

the boy with the skateboard
asks me
"what are you waiting for?"
and I have no answer

She´s back now
the bottles are full
she smokes and shakes her ***
like an old worn horse

We will all get drunk
and wash away another year

Deceived in men
and seeking
no revenge

Pleasure machine betrayed
by hypocrisy´s hounds

their howling hordes
come knocking on my door

crushed in the mud
like flies
or summer pests

by men mediocre
and their willing slaves

After they tasted the fruit
to hear them swear
"she was a temptress"

to see the fundamental lie
and feel no need
to protest
innocence

The Randomness of things
is inexcusable

How randomly we meet
and part our ways

We fall apart
estranged from what we loved

For no reason at all
and no governing rules

Fresh meat becomes
Leftovers of tomorrow

Fresh love is turned
into a surge of pain

The randomness of days
is inexcusable

How randomly the night
steals us away

And never to return
from its mysterious depth

our eyes
get adjusted to the dark

My blood is marked by genocide
on the two sides
of these Atlantic lines

My fate was sealed with the blood stains
of cotton workers from Marash
slaughtered by the ottoman
and the mixed blood
of conquerors
and massacred
of masters and estranged slaves

The rot of colonialism
lurks underneath
our 15 second democracy

My eyes were numbed
by what I hadn´t seen
after the ***** war was over
after the bowels of the Earth
had vomited
bones in Uruguay
lifeless infant mummies
in the soft heart
of Africa

after the tide brought in
the loot
of generals,
green men of power and no shame

My past was carved with knives
on children´s bones
in the mountains
of Leninakan
with hanged peasants
on the slopes of Ararat

My human pride was dumped
in Rio de la Plata
one summer night
in a death flight
that time when I
had learnt to sing
before I grasped
the word
The word was born
from the colonial rot
under our soil
and under Africa

The word was black
and cast a deadly storm
before the sun

The word was Genocide

I´m building something
that is not you

It looks and tastes and smells
like you

but my invention
has made it
worthy
eternal bliss

I am in love with the you
that I feel
under the sheets
of my dreamworld
across the river

from the you that is devious
and deceitful
and wants me not
though the beast´s
giant mouth
will swear it

I have made you out
into this god of
love and beauty

and blinded stay
to the
mediocre

giant ******
of your soul

Rescue me from geishaland
like a knight in shiny armour

****** me away
like a
dragon in heat

Your paws
across
my heart
better than this

I´d give a lifetime
in geishatown
for a minute of you

Treacherous thief
with the heavenly mouth
A devious Joker
the joke´s on you

let´s meet in the hole
he said
where the ghost of the towers
looms

a friendly face
so long awaited

By rising dawn
the cruise ship pulls in

at Cape Liberty
and there´s the bustle
of anticipation
the excitement in the air

that we will see
the loving face
hear once more the loving words
the only words
that are
in the right language


And all in vain
You have to
stay onboard
Captain Papanicolau said
to honour gynechology

all the things we could have done
in Brooklyn
and Manhattan
and all the New York people
and New York streets
the trumpet players
and the Museum of Modern Art

Meant not for me

this is the new
forbidden land

the immigration officers
its guarding hounds

this is new york
this rubble heap
and the yellow cranes
the bridge and the horizon

and in the summer
I shall go
to the Bermuda Triangle
and hope to disappear

When I slip naked
into my bed of sleep

I long for peace
and then you come along

with the violence
of dreams
that long for truth

Intrude
lie on me
with the weight of words
spoke in a dream
and yet
in vigil heard

To wear my heart
upon my sleevelessness

and wear it out
and off the hinge

This is my curse

this is my bliss