in this country dream is another
name for mockery, you are not free
as caged bird, your wings are tamed
to your stomach, your legs are reasons
for shackles, your voice is a safe room
for silence; how then do you dream and while
you’re short of every means, who minds the sky
without the access to window? i ask you

is this land not to our disadvantage already?
mary’s hands are collages of scars, she lost
a leg at tender age to become a mockery tripod;
at seven she told her class teacher that one day
she would be a physiotherapist making dead nerves
live again, i say every day the road eats up some boys
and put their dream into shackles of impossibility.
at nagoya a girl dream of becoming a veterinary surgeon

and ended up becoming a pianist, at khartoum
a girl dream of becoming a lawyer, but can’t be
anything but a subject of stockholm to the uncle
who touches her as a floweret in the deep of the night.
your own safari was my brother’s hard walk to freedom;
some’s gateway to hell; they dream and carrions dream too.
on their way to live they turn into fine grains of sand,
a gallery of worms and a future site of modern archeology.