Poetry

Your Poem Is The End of War
---

It has come to my attention
that no one has dedicated
a poem to you.

I am to blame
for many things:

staring blankly

my eating habits

my occasional hippopotamus
heart, bobbing
on the river Nile,

but I am to blame
specifically
for not having written you a poem.

Your poem exists,
but I can't explain to myself
how to write it.

Your poem is the Berlin Wall Falling
and the Perestroika, and neither.

It is a Once-Communist Republic
holding elections for Office of

You Give Me Goosebumps.
Your poem has a chest,

and on the depth of its chest
a small terrorist cell hides.

Your poem is the collaborative effort
of this terrorist cell and animal activists,

It is peace talks and detonators in my heart,
It has a cameo by your dog-to-be, Trotsky.

Your poem is a little girl from Kiev
meeting a little boy from Cuba

with thirteen dollars in his pocket
crossing the atlantic ocean alone.

Your poem is what we were once promised:
the sutured end of the war, our hearts

stitched together, so that we beat unison,
so that I am alive and you are alive, IT'S ALIVE!!

And your poem is a city of bears in your bed.

Your poem imitates
everything about you
that I love:

I love you like a circus
that comes trotting in
to a lonely old ghost town
that's me, I'm the boy who dreams
of the elephants and acrobats
and of joining your circus
as a magician of sorts,

I can make your soldiering heart
hold democratic elections, once more.