Ever Inwards Outwards
Thick oily fumes of rumour
choke passages, screw with air,
maybe his files are somewhere out there -
it’s a battle to draw breath
and underneath thinning hair
thatching a liver spot pate
his tumor grows and grows,
issuing direct threats to the frontal lobe -
vogue, let’s get to it, nothing to it,
strike a pose and scalp.
Meanwhile at home, accept a plate
of warmed over, leftover
chicken. She’s sweet, he’s sour
wanting nothing so much
as a buttered cod, chips, beer,
she replaces a grim news with a loud cheer
of some nightly Filipina gameshow and -
finish up your food dear.
He’s sulky, rotavates rice with a fork
in push back, doesn’t feel the need to talk,
wishes he didn’t have to walk
the streets of Al Sadd
after she’s washed dishes feeling thrifty.
She secures his wallet with a grin
slips him her arm in
and therefore linked
closing doors, he thaws
because she’s so much smaller than him -
but fierce.
That night, the national emergency alarm
keeps him tossing, awake -
shrapnel tumbles upon Muraikh
drawing blood and unsheathing
as his missiles streak the sky unleashed,
drawing cat-claw scratch lines
across night's blackboard
in something like awe and ire,
but in the morning - ceasefire.
Good
ReplyDelete