RIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TV
RIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TV
RIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TV
RIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TVRIP-TV
2004-11-08
Yasser Arafat (b. Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Hussaini)
B. 8.4.1929 Cairo / D. ? Paris
Something to do with blood
But there’s a terrible alarm outside
a whooping clanging loop of bell and siren.
The night’s become a gong.
The ones I feel for are the cats
the ones in here and outside in the courtyard where it’s ringing off the brick.
Tender ears I cannot spare.
Not like the time my downstairs neighbor Gilda and I went into Petland and the electronic door alert double-chime was kaput in the worst way, ding-donging every ten seconds, door open or not. Following the torture to its source I found a speaker mechanism draped from a nail just above the row of rabbit cages. Then I knew what torture was. All the rabbits were wide awake and lying on their sides, one ear each beneath them. So I made sure no Petland employees were watching and then I reached out and unplugged the thing. Come to think I haven’t heard it since and that must have been Eastertime.
But this I'm powerless to silence.
Which rankles me with this alarm
that I’d been very mellow in the wake of my decision to no longer follow politics
but now I’m getting very tense again.
A horrible alarm, at heart a yelp of pain replayed to echo
and something like a single snippet of a choked involuntary cry repeating in the mezzo role.
I’ve finally shut the windows
even though I know I’ll forfeit some of my reward:
the reward of when it stops.
Released into the night sky with a weightless leaping.
Consolation Site: Heart Him or Hate Him