The smoke is a curtain
And through it someone sings:
A night of passion,
A morning of empty bed,
Empty purse,
Her few jewels gone.
I exhale from the hookah,
From the bowl of black hashish,
I see the moneylender,
His teeth sunk in my flesh,
A bulldog clamped on my arm.
After a few puffs he is small
And his menaces are little yips.
My shame takes shape in the smoke:
For a moment I hate the love and pity
In my friends’ eyes
As they hand me the money
They will never see again.

I awake on cobbles and piles of rotting vegetables.
Little boys pissed on me at dawn
And scampered away laughing.
A policeman prods me with his boot,
Keeps kicking me till I move.
I say For Christ’s sake, mercy,
And he swats me with his truncheon,
Calls me a dog, a pervert, human offal.
The housewives in the market want to spit on me,
But can’t be bothered.

A woman circles my arm about her neck,
Like a yoke,
And leads me away.
As I lie in the courtyard
She cuts away my clothes with scissors
And pours buckets of warm water over me.
She scrubs me, shaves me.
She returns from the kitchen with a knife
And cuts open my chest, cuts through the sternum,
Spreads my ribs,
Reaches inside,
Feels around.
She pulls out something like a reptile,
Prehistoric,
Gnawing,
Slavering.
She hits it with a cobble,
Crushes it, pounds it to pulp.
She sews me up
And I lie with her.
My head on her shoulder,
She kisses my forehead,
Puts her fingers into my hair.

At breakfast
There is a mirror for food.
A man stares back at me.
He smiles
Because a woman in the courtyard
Is singing as she sweeps.

December 28th, 2006