Without Numbers

Human history lags behind all its zeros.

Palestinians are extra numbers, and this gray

cloud of summer and genocide keeps deflecting

a shadow of our unknown beauty. The world counts:

we are “more or less” but the quantities outside

the count are the secret number. They keep

pushing us toward the center of a mass

grave. Is there “a finished feeling” for us

anywhere?

___

These scraps, I carry around wherever I be. What

are they? Parrots repeating the chatter of my past?

A deck of cards to pass the time? Tarots, 

a glimpse of the future? If they are anything at all,

something outside of myself must decipher

the message they carry. And I remain stuck

in two forms of madness: one by choice

and the other by circumstance. Could there be yet

another madness I can apply to these

                                                                         wounds?

Let’s leave it to the headless wind! I wasn’t nothing

when I was born. Do you have to hide me

as soon as you think you’ve discovered me—

            in the mist of insignificance?

 

___

The unfinished business of creating—is me?

The only thing that remains is never an object.

Words are turned into a book, or carved on

marble to make statements about our cherished

“humanity” and “history” and “civilization” ... etc.

“Art” as my mother’s lips defined it—when she saw us

eating her creations, the labor of her hands—

“Art,” she said, “leaves a taste, not a mark.”

___

Maybe the flowers we leave inside a book are our

first step into murder: why not let the thing die

and wither on its own. Between pages, its dying 

is prolonged, suspended, mad with the fantasy of butterflies ...

Doesn’t “art” require—after all—

violent hands?