from the dying room
reading Nitoo Das
Kit Kelen
there is the smell
of strangers on trains
ghosts they might be
ghosts they’ll become
not even child ghosts
can be bought with lollies
but
a bribe of stories
tinselled in rhyme?
today a viola, tomorrow a cello –
who can measure the green of breeze?
a huddle in rag puddles
Houdini hands and handcuffs and
run out of resurrections
good god lie down
and rust with your feathers
have that much decency
once in this while
*
in the cow-dung steeping
light of dawn
Buddha waking
the steamy forest of dreams
innocent eyes –
all that wishing yet to scale off –
party
and then annihilation
*
in the dying room
midnight bursts
like the ochre ripening of breasts
this body I will become
like that perfect lover
in silence abiding
beyond words
or colours
worm to worm
a tête-à-tête
trees just as wise
as each other
*
the ripeness of sight
and the smell of your distance
some bower bird
makes the poem like this
out of anyone’s lines
and everyone’s lines
and just as long
as they’re blue
Kit Kelen, Macao
Nitoo Das. Boki. Virtual Artists Collective, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9798825-4-8.