DUBLIN III

 In the summer night

I sit listening to distant complaints,

this voice that just won't stop,

while my mind is full of relief

and gladness

over two foolish escape artist

felines back in the fold,

and your birthday

is approaching,

and I should be listening

to you, not this poor being

imprisoned in a prison

cell of his mind,

with an unlocked, opened

door and he can't leave,

because misery and suffering

is the safe

iron maiden womb

of his existence,

and he can't leave

its spiked shelter

for the uncertain world,

because what would

he be without his pain

and fear?

Instead of this,

this act of playing some kind of

Catholic priest listening to

litany of hopelessness instead of sins,

this occasional saying

of a word in the flood

of his endless repeating

of the same dreadful things,

instead of listening

how there is no way out,

how this being

has no rights,

again and again and again,

I should be doing

something for you,

and he just keeps repeating

the same things

I have listened to

since November,

but someone has to,

even when this clinging

being, this desperate suicide

artist, will never

leave that cell

he beliefs

he is in.

Because who I am

to send him to

his death,

this moth circling

the flame,

when I have sent

people I loved?

03.06.2021