Filiad
To Lawrence Ferlinghetti
By Pelin Batu
Sing Goddess
the anger of our age
its charred meat and wondrous greed
in fake lashes and nails painted pink
sing
of wars waiting
cocooned in silks,
calculating as they come
cold as milk
the wilted lilies
of our love
to break
the bread
of unforgiving.
Come let us burn
swan and all,
no innocence spared
no opal uncleft
so animals reclaim
their forests again
and plastic seas team
with the dance of silverthings.
Let us take
to new continents
down the staircase of vanities
to the salon of the de-thorned rose
where our past no longer stings or stains.
Catching crayfish, your golden boy
will make song
out of the anarchy of clean sheets.
Dining with blue-haired gods of Babylon
he’ll be reborn out the cloaca
of his fur leaves and cobalt flowers.
Yes, we will meet again.
Come let us pray
on this day
a new beginning
let your laughter ring
with poison wines of forgetting
so we,
uncouth grasses of acrid winds
sail out of our mothers
combing our regrets,
killing the fathers
with their false hope and teeth
to be unborn
unsown
untorn
between unsurmountable wants and needs.
I the looter of lost
I the sacker of dust
will leave you this:
an open mouth that you may speak
(without freedom singed)
a prickly heart to eat
(goddesses, they say, work quite an appetite)
and a river of words to swim
with all that salt
to breathe
us
new battlefields.