#605 - two poems - talking to myself again, is this the most dangerous place in the world?

 

29.viii.21

605

2.240

talking to myself again

 

hope was in a house

and we’d live forever

 

I always thought

there was something else I ought to be doing

there was someone else to be

 

precepted

 

let the day

and days soak in

 

take voices

push back

feel as others feel

 

take to imagining

see a self out

see through

see the mirror in

 

is how

 

I found myself

in a library

far inside a book

that was mentioned once

in a lost translation

of the poem

really a lyric

tune to heart

 

it was all a kind of vanishing

just to be me again

to be sure

I’ll stick with the wonders here

 

 

 

 

 

is this the most dangerous place in the world?

Kabul

at the airport that won’t be named Hamid Karzai much longer

 

and these people

clutching passports

trudging through raw sewage

with all that is left to them

 

thinking only a life is over

does one escape with a skin?

 

the world watches

a few seconds here there

 

well wishing and atrocity

for these people

 

which of them is the suicide bomber?

 

and are they really?

life is cheap for them

 

here’s what money couldn’t buy

 

desert doddle, the surgical strike

better by drone behind screen

 

torn between truths

and who we are

 

these are the pawns fallen from the board

there never used to be cameras, lights

joystick

 

here’s their state failing

whose fault?

you cannot blame these people

watch for a cameo

 

others gather in the palace square

where the press conference

and the peaceful transition

 

empires come and go

no one waits for barbarians here