I reach for the edges to hold on,
faux paint in tawny yellow,
Nordic blue, forever-green and lipstick red, sliding off
my roguish tongue. Rancid now but I
keep swallowing colours and their shadows
off my dining room wall. Some paintings
are framed and never move.

I asked him once if he ever noticed how the edges
of all things are lined in tears, like
viscosity, like luminosity never
quite falling or flattering the guillotined neck.
Even the primeval forest
knows the lion's roar in China will not
last two thousand years. Not since Christ died
and Rome choked in his blood.

Tears of rage bite me. Why do some children play in
designer bathtubs and some get raped and killed in yellow
buses on their way to my eyes and ears? It isn't God who
touched us on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It wasn't the devil
masquerading. Only humans create war from nothing but
imagination. Only humans build boxes with walls and
call it geography and ethnicity.

~~~~~~