INDECENCY

 

         
       In that masked way i would manage to midwife the birth, out
       Of hard-nosed ‘mothers’, of a few left-field ‘home truths’ they might
       Consider taking seriously, and even using
         – Mine was a business of un-addicting people from one
       Stubborn habit, then re-addicting them to another
       – An addictive angle of my own

                                                       Call it my strongest
       Weakness:   it protected me and made me a living, but
       Its false finalism more and more depressed me, until,
       Fearing madness or some other cancer, i quit the game

                                                 ~

          Now, facing the back of a former freak’s head, i shivered
       With relief when – Where to? – my cab-driver-with-a-number
       Mumbled, so that i could tell him the name of my hotel,
       A 3-star joint with yours-to-discover fuck-you desk-staff 
       Who seemed bent on proving i wasn't just Black but black scum
       For having chosen to stay there    

       Raimonde snorted his disgust but drove me there anyhow,  
       Passing the girl with the green ball, now bouncing it outside
       A Lebanese restaurant.
                                          There, the next day, i’d eat lunch
       At a table beside a sidewalk window with a hole
       In its glass which the restaurateur had decided not
       To replace, instead putting a polished wood-frame around
       The hole – To remind people of the hole they be live in –
         He told me

           (from “fatima solagua arterra’s nudes” by Brian Chan)