is more naked than me.
The buildings are not all in shards.
They're like fingers or Babel, as tall
as the day they were born. I can speak and I wish
to- these toes
are not mine, mine are smoother not covered in thorn.
Earth. Where is the earth on my feet, where's the
filth where the weeds, taken hold, grow
tenaciously up to the sky.
So coarse and so hard and so gray.
And I am so pink and so mottled with what
could not in conception be dirt. Could be grease
or be ashes. And with gravel grained in
to my soles.
Only the bareness and clutter around me, there once was a time
when our homes carried us in their backs.
They would leak sometimes liquor
that the cat of the neighbor would drink.
And would suffer. It was never the liquor you drink.
Where are the voices that called out
Old Goat at each other next door?
Where are the voices that would not speak Four because Four spoke too harshly meant Die?
The Sun is not fallen the Moon is not taken and dragons don't live in the North. But where is
the Sun or the Moon, I've not seen them,
and whatever happened to Blue?
Babel climbed high to the white of the sky, to the black and the blue and the stars.
But here there's no sky but there's grey.
There's no scraps.
You would think there'd be something,
a cherry or something to eat.
Or a rat or a roach. I remember a time
it was novel to eat little frogs.
It was daring to bite even fried
something lowly like frogs.
The buildings so high and so straight.
The gutters all cluttered with what people dropped as they went and with tin
and with glass and with tires
for fires to warm me at night. The city so naked
I've not seen a night since the last time I saw
I remember a time that I thought
that the pelts that I put on my skin
which were thin pelts would have to be coloured
just so. Would have to be framed so that
others could see what was sex-like on me,
what was art.
I remember a time that the words on my tongue
had to flow very clearly for others to know
what I spoke. With my speaking so garbled and low
even those of my tongue could not know
what I spoke.
A time when that mattered, the cities
weren't naked, my body
was shrouded, there were others to hear
what I spoke.