The World Is Too Full to Talk About
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Lust for Life<br />
My lust for life is modest<br />
you and I, cigarettes and coffee<br />
no fear.<br />
dreaming and plotting for some sort of liberation<br />
for workers never dizzy with the horror<br />
of their children’s hunger.<br />
of the inborn, later s<strong>to</strong>len, human dignity<br />
res<strong>to</strong>red.<br />
* * * * * * * * *<br />
it <strong>to</strong>ok me some years<br />
not many but some,<br />
<strong>to</strong> understand the size of life<br />
it fits on my bed, naps after work, the essence of living<br />
it fits on a bench with a friend smoking a cigarette on a day swallowed by rain<br />
listening <strong>to</strong> a song, 500 years old, still sung the same way<br />
it fits in my lunch plate, filled with rice, vegetables, pota<strong>to</strong>es.<br />
it fits inside this dead man’s dizzying harrowing book of poetry,<br />
the continuous horrors of his home, the barefoot children, his pregnant wife, his<br />
failing lungs<br />
poems I read alone at night, there is life.<br />
* * * * * * * * * *<br />
I am born and I will die in a place not made for laughter or growth<br />
a place whose building blocks is anger and a hatred of the skin<br />
and always I thought I had <strong>to</strong> wait, life was <strong>to</strong>o large for this body and this city<br />
it <strong>to</strong>ok me some years <strong>to</strong> see the commonness, banality of life<br />
and when I finally realised I had loved you in the most private way<br />
I unders<strong>to</strong>od the size of life. a song and your face for a week. You cannot ask<br />
for more.<br />
all things are passing and small. you cannot ask for more.<br />
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