She stands
On the parapet
Of the bridge
Staring down
At the sparkling blue
Of the water below
Her body slices
Through the stillness
Of the pale morning
At one with the air
Shimmering
And translucent
She descends,
Greeting the dawn
She is ethereal
She is a ghost
Who slips through the cracks
In your consciousness
She bids you farewell
She no longer needs you
She exists now
Only in dreams
And in fragments
Of memory
And in the stories
You whisper to your children
On long, dark winter nights
No feud is enough to keep me from you
I brave the barricades and the border guards
And you appear so near now. I journey
Through memories in dark and restless sleep
A bleak borderland, a stark, dry terrain
Where suicidal strangers meet.
We dwell within the ancient walls
Of a forgotten country, scorched and frozen,
By turns; haunted by a history of hatred
A decimated island on which matchstick
Children stand, tormented by the sun
And praying for death.
This is a vulnerable state, on the edge of hell
Sandwiched between two superpowers
Clinging to an impossible peace
And all around there are pillars of salt,
Crumbling statues of fleeing citizens
Who dared to look back.
The father says, ‘Son, take this gun’
And sends his progeny off to war
And he carves curses upon stone
Primitive and inglorious
Hit by one calamity after another
We are all crazy here.
So Sick of Drowning 