I am being hunted by a dream
You can call it a nightmare if you like,
but I don’t believe in the term.
It goes like this:
I’m in a dark, smelly room with everyone I’ve ever loved.
A fire rips out from the blackened walls of my hovel—
I always wake up just as it’s my flesh that starts to burn.
Every night my mother screams in a different language;
new Agonies twist and shake in the local style across my brothers’ eyes.
Our clothes reek of the sea, of sweat, of sewage, or spice,
and my father begs at the feet of the god of mercy.
But one thing—every night, inescapably, is the same;
underneath their helmets, the men outside wear my face.
The humorless laughs as they throw
gasoline on the door from
bright red cans is mine.
Their filthy black boots are caked in stinking mud,
and blue smoke of a dozen cigarettes
curl away from fractals of a single crooked spine.
Irony Poison 