The moon, in its monolith state,
watching the earth as it torments itself alive.
The flames, sprinting house to house,
building to building-
cleaning the flesh and bones of the fleeing,
while it feasts on their names.
"Father! Father! Why are they doing this to us?!"
"Son...because we... are aliens..."
"Father?..."
...
...
...
Chains are put on,
running through generation to generation,
feeding on revenge, rage, and trauma-
down to the ancestral, cultural r’üts of the race.
Until then, the oppressed stares into their ancient scars.
Only seeing their own hands
dripping with fresh bludhymn
for the actions that are not
yet-
committed.

Clouds pass overhead.
Time grows ancient.
"Is it because we are devils?"
-centuries of clouds pass-
"... because we are robots."
-centuries of clouds pass-
"They imprisoned - the humans."
-centuries of clouds pass-
"Why am I born as an angel?"
-centuries of clouds pass-
"Why am I... different?"

These voices echo throughout the sky-
into roots that remember
every life they've ever swallowed,
into blood that refuses
to forget a single drop,
into threads that
can never unravel,
into...
upon...
its own...
endternal...
reflection.

Thus, built upon oppression,
                                        after oppression–
                             after oppression–
                    after oppression–
          after oppression–
after…

I come from stand-up strong tea, delivered before 7 with a ‘don't think about sleeping in’ fading down the stair. I come from cornflakes with full cream benefits and fuller if you got down quick, before Dad shook the milk.

I come from warming up the telly in time for Crackerjack and Crossroads and the nearest of us having to get up cos we had no remote control. I come from snooker in black and white and the thrill of the shouts of wrestlers' faux fights. I come from aerial adjustments to the family seating in unity before the fat, three-channel TV.

I come from tempers and broken locks, with threats of knocking your block off. I come from being ******* at sports and seeped in feelings of coming up short. I come from hereditary parenting, watery eyes, and the cushion of mum’s white lies. I come from family trips with back seats sun-baked, and travel sickness triggered by the waft of St Bruno Flake.

I come from first gen suburbanites, budget tensions and dad's three jobs when things got tight. I come from the garden turned vegetable patch with biting rhubarb, rubber runner beans and the stench of stewed cabbage. I come from a street in open plan, common homes and gardens, one good-or-ill clan.

And if I could, I’d plan a street-long celebration: Party Sevens and Tizer and shades of beige food for every occasion. I’d put on the gramophone with Joe Loss All Time Party Hits and no room to spare, with the kettle on repeat and mum's Tupperware full of broken biscuit bits.

And over mis-matched tea mugs, I’d tell them I’m okay, I’ve moved to find my own way. I’d assure them that blood is still thicker, but do me a favour and get over me living north of the river.

~
She is not our shrine,
she prays differently
with eyes wide open,
fingers on votive offerings,
preferring her solitude
in the Tea Garden, drinking light

Tomorrow on the tarmac
one flowered suitcase,
stamped for the city of neon people,
will travel to her song,
the pilgrimage of anemic lovers

Her hoisting from water,
(ampullae in hand),
and the unique boutique
growing out of
an alabaster chamber
bring monks out of hiding

The center line of her,
where the flower blooms forth
and learns by observation,
is still an unvisited temple

Until in season of calligraphy,
when she releases the Kogai
from her hair and sits with friendly toes
outstretched in the warm intimacy of
shared water
~

Notre-Dame, she is quite old: although she may
bury Paris, which has witnessed her birth, one day
But in thousand years or more, Time will make recoil
her heavy body, like a wolf does with a bull
and twist each iron axon, each of her neurones
to gnaw alas, with its blunt tooth, her bones of stones!

Many men will overflow the island in the Seine
to contemplate the barren ruin, the last remains
dreamers, re-reading what Victor Hugo has seen ahead:
- Then they'll think they see the old basilica
as it was, mighty and magnificent, a Gloria
rising up before them like the shadow of a dead!

every time
i speak my own
name i taste
the blood of
my mother's bit
lip (&) held tongue-- a self shed
to take rein

o' my father's flatiron
sur/name:
the blood, reigned (&)
i remain—
sanguine & ruddy
after all
(these broods).

In another life, my father
must have been a blacksmith.
Essential in his village
Essential to be needed
(otherwise what’s the point?)

Swinging his hammer in heat, in smoke,
content within his St Bruno haze, suspicious
of anything lighter than black leather
anything lighter than brass fittings

- comfortable with sweat stains and scattered ash,
scars and deep bruises marking him
a man’s man and breadwinner,

- relaxed with the air blue, the tribe white
and his iron laughter echoing with every strike,

every blow shaping his son
into his family’s likeness.

~
Hark!
He knocks.
Time, it's time,
the Kuroi Jukai within me.

Finding an unordinary
drifting off to sleep point,
a hollowed-out spot,
where I can let
God dream for me.

Whistles in the wind,
in lullaby the sky and sea
seem to trade places,
bending around me
as vertical blanketed surges.

My carcass is a colonization (of bones)
for my dearly departed ones,
forbearers of migration,
seeking endless sea,
until like them,
I settle upon
their ancestral shore.
~

One day you left your home
Among with all you hated most;
You left old lullabies unsung
And swore you'd lose your mother tongue
As shivering, small hands still clung
To one life free of ghosts.

After your ghosts had been released
You filled up all the holes.
You lived a life of mostly ease
And never knew you paid your fees
For ghosts are mostly memories
And languages are souls.

Sometimes I stick out from my friends a bit - I think. It’s the French in me. Americans have this excité-ment about things - that’s, well, exhausting.

Sometimes, when friends are jumping about, they practically plead for my engagement. I think I have a genetic, French reticence, an observer gene.

True, I have my moments of bitter COVID lock-down angst but I'm doing better than some friends. Maybe because the French live slowly - life is just moments - once a moment has passed, it’s gone.

I wait, in my secret gardens, like a cat on a settee, sipping small pleasures. The poet in me refuses to zone out - there are poems in the stillness.

A borrowed history
A second-hand life
A true heritage denied.

This stranger sapling grafted to your family tree.
And the story told, to them and me;
" You were chosen, you are special, we were lucky..."

So you won.
Here's your prize;
A commodity baby, a charity child
Love conditionality and gratitude implied.
Woken from connection and amniotic peace
To a secret story of threefold grief.