Song of Aylan
Three columns of scratches on the Ishango bone start the song of Aylan.
Forty nights of incessant rain, one lost sheep and remaining ninety-nine,
Thirteen heads on the hill, four bellies in the cow make the song of Aylan.
Only in middle school am I so sure about numbers.
Uncertainty is a dragon – seven types of doubt? Eighteen shades of skin?
Half a million dead make the song of Aylan?
In Egypt: number ten: a rope; hundred: a coil of ropes; thousand: a lotus;
Ten thousand: wives, concubines; one million prisoners.
The sound of colliding atoms make the song of Aylan.
In Syria: ten million: refugees; in the heart of sky, a billion
Years before the sun shall die. Who needs numbers to testify
We were here before we were lost in the song of Aylan?
Perhaps there are patterns in the sky only some will ever decipher?
Perhaps we are gods floating on holograms? Perhaps it’s kismet
We learned to count the dead before we could write the song of Aylan.
Perhaps Odin – blind in arythmancy – will decrypt our passage
Through time? Eight ways to swim the seas. Three days
In the belly of fish. Twelve ways to sing the psalm of Aylan.
Perhaps the blue horizon will bend and Saturn
Will walk on rooftops closer to the sky. Someday in the shadow
Of Yggdrasil, someday we will find Aylan.
Perhaps the universe will open to new ways of being
Perhaps the new ways won’t demand as much helotry. Perhaps we will meet
Again by the sea, bent over and dreaming like Aylan.
Crouching Caveman Hidden Cellar
Someone says a patriot caveman
Lives inside me and I know of him.
A caveman with deep desire for respect;
Crazy about walls, doors, fences,
He wants to put a lock on everything.
His eyes are fixated on everyone else
And searching
The smallest shadow of doubt, indifference.
Eyes so large they could pass for craters
In a cave-wall, facing other cavemen.
Of course, that’s scary.
I am scared.
I am seeing a shrink.
She points to the sofa and fishes out a plastic helix.
The caveman is actually a gene.
Just like dopamine,
It can give you a high, sometime.
The almost burn, the almost ecstasy, you feel
In and out your arteries rewinding memories
Rooted to the place you were born
That’s not your soul suddenly stirring out of turn,
Not even consciousness
That’s the caveman, squatting on his haunches
In prayer, releasing incense.
Enough.
Enlighten me. I say to the guru.
There is a rainbow behind your head you can’t see.
Inside the cellar the caveman is crouched in half-lotus
Chanting mantras; mouth wide open
Shooting a glow, that streams through, invisible to you.
As in theatre, you know he’s there
Performing to a script, yet you dream along.
If you show respect he will let you in.
Down the stairwell – a whole new world –
Bread, wine, music, myth, also history
Like fattened figs, soaked in opium honey.
There is nothing more to do. No one else to see.
I take the train.
Look out into suburban backyards –
The sky darkens; clouds gather,
The window flips over
Revealing a reflected sky-lit-portrait of me –
Looking into the shadow –
Rainbow around the head –
Eyes popped wide,
Looking straight out and never blinking,
Mouth slightly open.
I open my mouth wide, wider, more wide.
I try to touch the stairwell with my tongue,
Feel the caveman crouched in the cellar.