Enough About Us and the Booming Nothing

I.

We became so poor
We started to boil the cotton balls
Then we had nothing to block our ears
From the howling of our bellies, the
Cries fanning the burning bellows
Of those empty hollows.

‘This is just how it is,’ they told us
When we first arrived.
‘This is a poor place, don’t come here.’
But we had no choice
It was here or death.
At least here we are only starving.
Starving but not dead.

Not even a goat will eat from these pastures
And there is no shit even for the flies
And a great booming silence echoes
Off the nothing, or maybe it is only that our
Ears have gone to seed without soil.

We try to speak if possible
And only of matters of the heart
Or dreams, or spirits, ethereal planes,
Planetary matters and philosophy.
We thought once about eating our books
But once they are eaten you can never eat them again
Whereas, if un-eaten, they can be reread
Infinitely, which is like food.
So we ate the furniture instead.
Comfort knows no place here.

The mice have all run away with their love-affairs
And the foxes run wild on the road
Stealing our momentary glances,
Taking with them the possibility of spring.

We built a hut once totally out of hairpins.
We asked for rain and sacrificed the pin hut
To some fake gods we made up.
They took the pins gladly
But we never got any rain.

In the afternoons we dip our feet
Into the mouth of the dry river delta
Dreaming of silt, thousands of pounds
Of raw draining water, water that builds
Islands, water that tempts a thirsty mouth,
Water that moves like women who once washed
Their husband’s linen shirts in it…

Sometimes the dry air, dusty, sun-beamed, in waves,
Reminds us of the way water felt.
But enough about us.

part II coming soon, or maybe never...