Say something

“Praise the dead more than the living, destroy the sick until they break, get stronger or die too, and hell might seem familiar enough to understand the suffering of devils.” said the one holding the knife in a mouthful of saviours.

Now it’s waves arriving at the shore leaving the shore, untouchables but changed, not the same anymore but not one either now it’s waves arriving at the shore and leaving while the shore watches the sea. Say something.

Did you want a warrior to burn through tears and fears? Is that why you left a wave to die while watching, knowing it wouldn’t die while it crawling? Liquids melting dissolving fading under skies trapped in guilt and shame. Say something.

Is that the teaching dripping with blood you’re leaving me with, I’m leaving myself with, half-dead when I remember, or was it just thinking, hoping, wasting, waiting, wiping too? Now it’s a bright spring day, seen but barely felt. Say something.

Why wasn’t I killed instead? The gift of hell as heaven, I didn’t think you’d dare, I’d dare, but the shades of hate have left friends and enemies like dry sea.

Now there’s a medallist of tortures when it’s waves arriving at the shore leaving the shore, untouchables but changed, not the same anymore but not one either now it’s waves arriving at the shore and leaving while the shore watches the sea. Now it’s not right or wrong when silence covers the mess it’s wondering when will the warrior see and feel again.

Say something

No heart left to kill in these empty eyes

Mirror drops

Breaks

It was our heart.

– Say something when we don’t make it.

(Dedicated to migrants and homeless, very unhappy ones.)

“I find him in the garden. Staked tomato plants are what
He walks among, the apples of paradise. He is eighty
And stoops, white-haired in baggy serge and braces. His
Moustache
Once warrior-fierce for quarrels in the small town of Zable,
Where honour divides houses, empties squares, droops and
Is thin
From stroking, he has come too far from his century to
Care…
This is his garden,
A valley in Lebanon; you can smell the cedars on his breath
And the blood of the massacres, the crescent flashing from
Ravines
To slice through half a family. He rolls furred sage between
Thumb and forefinger, sniffs the snowy hills; bees shifting
Gold as they forage sunlight among stones, church bells
Wading
In through pools of silence. He has never quite migrated.”

– David Malouf