Strangling Me With Your Lasso of Stars.

• Author: Waldman, Anne
• Position: POEM - Poem

Strangling Me With Your Lasso of Stars (Aime Cesaire) Night In its rush Of words Caught The words were totems The words were beasts Day slowing down Against a mode of survival The words were mistakes The words were pleas The words were asking "stuff' Stuff of reason Floods and famine War and strafing Pace of the day A culture of helicopter Hunted, haunted by And sound is a menace Tatter, make sense of Obstacles stabs of reason No language you understand Arable land? What is authority Tiny fragile human What is it Pity authority Against tiny fragile human The words were ambiguous The word were closures The words were a necklace A lasso, a rope Linking zones, these are words To represent a field of meanings You would reckon a pitch Not a meaning A whirr a world You would reckon a sonata You would never sleep Copter's blues Never sleep And razor wire Hiding as a specter What is it? Your shadow, a specter A knife Then water Then drowning Drowning child Drowned The words were continuity Or fear The man with guns and keys A refugee, a spectator O come to Balzac's Paris Long ago Come to the skyscrapers New York Stack up here Or disappear, down You can live vertically And create sound False cybernetics You can hide You can blend in Yearning Animals at riverbanks You can never live The high pitch, New York Fever and money Among strangers Words were travelers Gentler animals And their sound The Scandinavians open To close down They hunker down Everyone is a dossier Everyone is hungry Shelter is post-cultural Come come from South...