Warm Colors

In a month among inmates

living in the same cell

their misbaha beads begin

to rotate in synch

The orange smells of sunshine

of irrepressible laughter

of breath heavy from running

after a shuttlecock

of anything but an orange

the scent of oranges is forbidden

by internal regulations

The inmate moves slowly

like a surgeon

performing open

heart surgery

on his own daughter

underwater

with hands tied

using a razor blade

The inmate’s sleep is light

deep

light

and then so deep

that morning inspection

seems a continuation

of yet another nightmare

The inmate’s memory

is turned inside out

facing toward the future

where engraved in fire

burn the first words

enshrined by the last prophet

eet

dun’t die

rite a book

___

Awake for three hours

with eyes shut:

the inmate’s sleep is slow

as everything else

As the blood

from a languidly slit

wrist artery

slowly soaks

the thin mattress

Gathers into drops

wistfully draws polka dots

on the inmate’s face

on the lower bunk

Until the thin

pulsing fountain

runs out finally

too soon

butterfingers you

can’t even croak

lazily fumes the inmate

Rubs the throbbing scar

while crouched on the too

short

narrow

hard

(nothing here is done halfway)

bunk bed

Turns over on his other side

rubs his forehead

shoos away the thoughts

of a free man—

too pure

to be thought here

Sulkily ponders over

the boy who lived

when life itself disowned its children

and about the main character

bound to get mistaken for the author

no matter that the latter

is confirmed dead

deeply buried

forever forgotten