There was once a country
that disappeared,
no one knows why,
where every day was so much the same
that crowds seethed like a fever
when the world got to hear the howling of a wolf named
Allen Ginsberg.

You were wrong, my heart!
They’ve all gone
leaving us alone in a bomb shelter
that’s sinking inch by inch into the earth
as a voice intones ‘Let the dead bury the dead’.

If I am forced to sleep
who will save me from the border guards
waiting to give chase as soon as I close my eyes?
And who would tell those watching the sea
about the desert that lies waiting
and that the eyes of the drowned
shine at the bottom of a cup
that was once a woman’s heart
smashed to pieces?

Where is the mother whose embrace
can warm you when you have been so frozen cold?
The pain of looking into a face
that cannot see you.

Only the sky has room for all this craziness.
Only the dead can see you.