Swallow Song No.2

A swallow yawns,
eternity is glimpsed.
A hole is punched,
a tear is torn on
a black expanse.

Only the swallow sees. Black eyes on black face on black head on black neck on black body on black wings on black tail on black chest on black feet.

A privilege bestowed by a god who’s first thought-of word
was freedom.

On air on a wing a prayer is answered.

Retribution

You broke the spines
of the books
I keep in a white cabinet.
painted over, twice over,
once lacquered brown
now hospital white.

The pain can be seen
through glass panes:
writhing paper bodies,
bruised, wounded, mangled,
bleeding dry ink.

This crime must be paid in kind.
you must agonize,
learn the pain of writer’s block.

I will pick your eyes out with pencils,
stuff down your throat
pages of pulp romances,
starve you with cancelled stipend.
Grant? What grant?
You will never write again!
Your fingers will turn to springs,
the kind in spiral notebooks.

You will pay.
That will teach you to mess with my library.

Sins of September

Past summer, September,
we were born.
A season neither of us
has seen.
Autumn was waiting
at the end.
It’s on a different time zone
we haven’t been in.

Senses yearn, unfelt;
we don’t talk anymore.
Everybody’s talking.
Letters, souls disguised,
masked, given the benefit
of the undoubt.

It was tense. It got worse.
I left.
You wanted to hang me
for someone else’s crime.

In this land, borders blur.
Men are men. Women wicked.
Femme fatale your ego.
You like that don’t you?
(Mata Hari got shot.
This id is for you.)

Getting even is never easy.
You take as much as you give.
Justice collects its dues.
And September comes every year.

The Cheshire Woman

her smile is the only thing that remains/if you stare long enough into her eyes/everything else vanishes into the blank wall/in unexpected seconds they flash back/to whisper her Eurasian features/she is adamant/she won't stay for long/her tribe is not eternal as the fleeting clouds/you might like to know who her creator is/sad to say in a festivity/he is long dead and gone/to the watery hole that spat him out/whoever watches patient enough to ask/knows he himself will pass/run as fast as your feet would let you/the foreign dust which sticks to your soles' stride/is the lone company fate will allow/don't try to whistle/let alone sing/winds are beginning to be pushy and cold/a raincoat won't do/sleet and rain are having a fiesta/while we snore a siesta/a lady is hard to remember in the middle of a struggle/she has been painted as liberty and equality's flag carrier/one french breast exposed to the battle/sneer at her precious back with punk/panacea is just a stacked pharmacy/mix a new drug to make all others obsolete/cross it with gunpowder and pull the trigger/violence over sex/dance over song/whichever way around/mama mother nanay mater madre/everything means the same/all the rest is the gibbon's business/would she go out of style in the test-tube baby boom?/how does candy taste with the wrapper?/do you make love with argyle socks on?/quiz me baby/this is the era of returning truths/flashbacks and hitbacks/the comeback of tarzan and musical extravaganzas/the return of the carpenter's son/will he be mugged and whacked again?/not on the hair of your chinny chin chin/the greatest legend ever rumored/the making of an international blockbuster/today is tomorrow's breeding ground/alice came limping back to wake up/the cheshire cat is just a puss with a fancy grin/THE END