babylon: la petite mort

II.
We die little deaths throughout our existence
wrapped in an unforgiving cocoon
of unknown pretense.
Pretending life to be what we dreamed.
We die little deaths ensconced
in the resemblance of remembrance,
withering away on the yardstick of imagined fulfillment.

A memory mourns in my conscience,
a hesitation to compromise spells my doom
which comes tumbling down from the Euphrates of euphoria which is saddened.
A sickness grows in my tumor,
worsening with my nostalgia:

Of course I remember!
Of course I remember!
I hate sad poems…

III.
Lovers still stroll here
where we used to sit.
Lovers still embrace each other
calling to my melancholy a silky remembrance.

And some days,
someone else smells like your apparition.
Approaching my resistance with ignorance;
only a half-formed moon
dejected by the evening stars shine here,
sinking to get afloat is an issue,
only a single star shines in Babylon
where all my woes come from.
Only a single star shines in Babylon
where my Euphrates meets my Nile.
I die the second death.

IV.
God I hate sad poetry
that washes through my memory
leaving only recalcitrant
memoirs of coiled emotions
subtly shelved in the corridors
of my imbibed sadness.

Green is not green in the darkness,
but an unappealing patch
of swaying leaves sings to me
in this garden of imagined redemption.
Where I dream of your return
to assuage my aching soul
with the priced balm of Gilead.

I hear the sultry laughter
drifting from the
hungry throats of overfed lovers
as they unknowingly approach
my lair of depression
I wrap around myself…

V.
I wrap myself with your words
in your poetic absence
that speaks of incumbent dejection,
though my errant dreams
do not interpret the
dearth of my resurrection
which sees it
ending in the beginning of my redemption.
Delayed.

I wrap myself, poorly
in the confirmation of your eyes
that spark of gales and storms
of passions now forgone
For you have a boyfriend
and my manhood
hesitated at your fleshy entrance

VI.
Little drops of iambic premonitions
feed on my parched soul
with inherent sarcasm watered down
with versions of romantic apocalypse

Slowly, but with restrained resignation
I fade to Assyria
where my Jordan flows backwards
through Amazon.

This is reflection of passion
hidden in stony stoicism
embittered soul…
I cry in solitude
and,
smile in multitude
     Desire is the awakening of doom
          Hesitation is the birth of gloom

VII.
Of course I remember!

VIII.
Babylon is the mind of the unbeliever,
Utopia is not an Ethiopian Nile snaking
through the deserts of Egypt, unhindered.

IX.
Who are we in the maddening sequence
of Mediterranean fiction we perceive as life,
which flirts with conscience,
leaving Carthage in a rubble of Gaelic words,

my Persian thoughts
defeat a fleet of Greek persuasions
leaving my African descent
in pandemic despair,
I wail for the lost me,
unraveled,
captured in Nigerian Israel
and left to wither beyond
the fields of ingenuity

yes, my Israel flows with milk and honey
but I never find peace
because my promised land
is desired by mental Canaanites,
who call to my little death.

X.
I seek forgiveness
at your fountain:
naked, here I prostrate
wash me in the rivers of Babylon:
for baptism is second death,
and Baptism is little death.

——————–
Poetry © Idem Emmanuel
Image: Pixabay.com remixed