nilly deen

your face became mine 
last night
in the Empire's Music Palace

wandering through me
you wondered through me
what god really had in mind

was I a lemon tree or a stone, 
you asked;
does the tortoise stick out her neck?

I am what feels the tasteless fire,
I said,
of the hungry, hankering dead.

I had dined alone again that night
upon the string beans of the world -
this world the whitefolks made
with a dagger and a prayer;

I would turn it upside-down,
I said,
if my feet could keep the ground. 

trite the kingly music
and frail the matchstick stage,
we danced a bedevilled tango
around the desperate, flashing room;

I'll learn to feel the pain,
though it drives me out of sane!

you left me in the morning
to the fear of Time forgot,
words grasping at some meaning
in the curling, crazéd cloud;

to the doctor's jail!
to the animal pound!

ghosts looking for a peck,
the tortoise sticks out her neck.

Leeds, UK // April 2025