Aleppo

grief
in weeks nothing has moved me.
 
i chase something and fail.
 
the screen dries my eyes.
 
no rivers flow in Aleppo.
 
there are no streams, only rubble.
only dead children litter the street.
a leaf falls outside my window.
my father coughs up blood.
 
soon he will die, withering, curling
like an Aleppo-dry flower.
 
the bombs rain in Aleppo. People cry.
A dry shower wets my hand. the light wets
the dying eyes my father wears on his head.
 
my father cannot rise. my mother kneels. she feeds him
water. the people of Aleppo cry for water. they beg. dust
is stuffed down their throat.
 
death marches into Aleppo
and into my home. my mother sits beside the sinking light,
asleep, awake I stand. the birds twitter, the birds twitter and fall
silent inthe night that Aleppo burns.
 
the night floats on the holy blue. the holy way towers into the
holy sky. the holy bell blares midnight to the statue with the arm
and the statue with the face and the statue with the bizarre smile
and the statue with nothing at all but holes. the world gapes.
 
the world is burning, the world needs to be knitted apart.
my house is on fire, the fields are on fire, i run out to face the stars
the shine on Aleppo. the plaster crumbles from the walls. no one arrives
and screams, look, Aleppo burns too!
 
there is nothing to knit me to the oceans of Aleppo
my ocean of grief cannot be contained by sheets dry as
Aleppo’s winds. the sun rises and falls, rises and falls
daily outside the window. the sky cleaves in half and
pools in the puddles on the bedroom  floor. my mother withers and dies
as Aleppo falls.
 
i am silent.
i cannot sing.
there are no words in me.
the spring is bricked.
i am dying, i am dying, choking on bunnies
and grenade-crusts.
 
i freeze and fall, freeze and fall
into the grey spiral streets a labyrinth under the skin
bursting with the birth of a thousand worlds, bloated
with the light of the moon. the moon blazes in the oil sky.
i claw and clutch, claw and clutch the ancient brick walls that weep,
the ancient brick walls that trembled with birth one day, my mouth
gapes in a scream a man in Aleppo screams.
 
how does one write, mother? how does one
sing, brother? father, can you help me? can you make me speak before?
father, can you hear me? mother, are you there?
 
or should i bid my final goodbye, like
the flowers of Aleppo do?