Plain Speaking
To a poet
They released you, what now?
You look at the night sky, news from the stars, No.
You’d better be dead, real dead, so you won’t have to think
Would better be hanged neck high, a fossil fish in the water net, and
Killed by the acid rains of many old days
They hit the man next to you across the face, the sound of bones, cracked, flesh quashed, a king hit
And the young girl on all four, they caned her, they were grunting “Dog, low life dog”, all that obscenities
They drank whiskey, kicked the dirty plastic buckets across the floor
Hey! Let the fluid of all kinds show its colour! They laughed,
They shook the head: “Talk!” The poor half-swallowed tongue tried the talk
You feel you and the whole mankind go down in shame
You fought the tears back by zooming in the sight of a rhinoceros
The rhinoceros running straight right back
To its last stand, a chalk circle on the dirt
The rhinoceros that howls like a wounded wolf
When the pack of hyenas and the poachers close in
Ground of soft ash of the burned down souvenirs and memories in books
They asked why you want to add one more
“To the what, hey?”
Fighting back false emotions, fake indifference, you now scribble one single solid line
Across the roof of the night market
The rags that laugh crazy in the shaking trees
And the deflated kid balloons hanging plastic black, coagulated red
You may be able to live lucidly in the thick hinds of days blind, breathe stanzas
And you will publish
To the pigeons that do all the droppings (like news of the day)
But now you feel a running scar of shame, you ask for mercy
From those two people who were hit while you were spared
They are larger than your writing, they are larger than you, so you continue, you may continue to
Write, so, in your sleep
Be able to say wishing you a bloodwarm nice curl-up somewhere
Not on the cement but on the cured warm dirt; yes, write:
On good earth, who knows you might not wake up again, and likewise, I.