The Burning Bush 2, issue six, February 2014
In Syria the lost city of Qatna
I’m a teenager in Qatna and I’ve lost my glasses in eternity. That is why this is not very legible, Then there are the motes of dust settling over me. Any words I’d write, more dust on a dust floor. I’m as full of life as a late tax return Gladdening the spent eye of revenue. I’m hiding in an alcove as the houses round me burn down This last street with a ferocity I didn’t think credible. Trees explode. Smoke blinds. Burning flesh. I can’t see. Can’t see, I’m younger than you will ever be For all your gigs. Male teenagers dreamt of me, It’s likely my entrails will know your rollicking member in me. My brothers ate their last bony supper with those ossaried before us, Shored up the tomb. Nothing left now but blazing timbers falling. Chaos and its chorus. Hittite, Israelite, Egyptian, our own, - what does it matter who wipes us out. My brothers, they scattered their last coins on the ground round our lot. I’m plucked by the hand from this alcove. . . I must be one of the last young slips. By now my brothers are dead, their heads severed. I find neither rhyme nor reason to this existence. Plucked by the hand, O yes. In other times It would be out to swathe the dance floor With my near nakedness. This tenderness, Dragged palm to palm can’t bloom long. Hittites this time are making a clean sweep of us all. If you’re interested, you’ll be lucky to find a bone of mine. After all These years I still haven’t found them, not even their scent, My five brothers who fell fighting one by one, or my parents. You, you’re not praying hard enough for me. I’ll never belong to your band, Your God channel. I’m so lonely. Can’t say I was great as a teenager. My tastes in sex were catholic. Yet (thank you for thinking of me) I reached out to, held whoever wanted close to me. But your scriptures say no. I can’t play in your game. What we’ve in common, commoner, after the war games, Is a human numbness close to the end, then the flames. John Ennis is the author of thirteen books of poetry. His most recent, Postponing Ásbyrgi (poems in response to Sìgur Rós), was published by Three Spires Press in 2013 and launched in Newfoundland at The March Hare Festival.
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