God, I must be getting older,
A sickly pigeon on my shoulder
Weeps diuretics from one round eye.
God, I must be getting weaker,
The teeth in my head are getting softer,
The teeth in my head crumble to chalk.
I pull them out of my mouth,
And draw your picture on the sidewalk:
With a bigger dick than I remember,
With kinder eyes than I remember,
If history’s to be forgotten,
No point in sticking to the facts.
God, my nails are like quartz,
Gnawing deep into my weeping skin.
God, my thoughts are like black water,
Licking at a thinning dam.
In a billion years this gut and bones,
The fragile pelvis you briefly made your home,
Will be fuel in a lantern
Lighting the way of a stranger’s progress
On a black shore under rearranged stars,
And that is the only immortality you and I may have.
This one’s from a new play of mine. Possibly the last play ever (but I always say that, don’t I? I am always having horrendous break-ups with the theater, only to come back again). A drunk mermaid stumbles out of the water and sings this on the beach of the Dnepr River in Ukraine. The play is set a few months before Euromaidan —> Yanukovych’s toppling —> Annexation of Crimea —-> Civil war in the East.
Natalia A. 