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December 09, 2024

The ocean where many of our songs are maps

By Abigail George

The ocean where many of our songs are maps
(for the Dutch poet Joop Bersee)

    Once, once you were like Persia to
    me. For the last time, show me the ways
    to love. Cue me its despair. It's hardship.
    This deprivation that must follow its
    demise. This starvation that must follow
    its poverty. This progress. This madness
    that eats away at my soul. It twinkles
    like noisy stars, those glam beauty queens
    with their own illustrious alibis, their lunar
    emptiness and subtle-subtle subterfuge.
    No more walking in circles for me, friend.
    No more wishing the past is gone while
sitting in at my kitchen table. I'm over that bridge.
    These stars have their own silent-silent

    moon-sick horses. Moon-sick bones.
    Butterflies in their governing confusion
    leaving scratch-marks on the seawalls
    of my stomach. The red brick walls of
    my lungs. I think your parade beautiful.
    I think you're lovely. I think you're
    Jupiter. Does it matter. Does it matter.
    I think of those Caucasian stars pasted
    on the ceiling of the night sky. I am ready to confess.
    Does it matter that I am only ready to
    confess now. I am trying to erase the beast-monster.
    Monster-beast that has made me suffer so.

    The forest was painted. It even had a few
    wrinkles. Age lines made out of soul.
    Spidery leaves marking the end of time, that
    hourglass country, a hive found there
    in the segmental ruins of the God-supernatural
found in the honey and milk and blood-
    work of the desert. Let's take a road trip
    out there to where the wind blows. That
    infant deed. Can you tell. I'm dreaming
    of those Parisian-syllables. The ethereal.
    The apparition of that high mountain-top.
    That drum. That prophet. God's lions.






Article © Abigail George. All rights reserved.
Published on 2019-05-27
Image(s) are public domain.
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