Only a wretched champion such as myself would know
to the lengths to which you will go,
and keep quiet. Hide it all, and make sure that it is more silent
than whatever used to go on on all the other hills
where you sacrificed innocents, in the name of an image
you so very carefully crafted, all to maintain the staying power of a narrative
that I cannot abide by, under any circumstances.
That you thought I, and no one else, could not identify, even under so many chances.
Guess what?
I took them all, and made them into a little dancing
quest, a reprisal of all of my earlier
dauntlessnesses, assembled for a recuperation of
all that you feared, put together into one beautiful stomping collection
of a very many postcolonial exit cards, grouped together
by pain. By suffering.
By name. Under which your haunting
has no limits, and also no shame.
And also nothing at all; it cannot feign
an actual impact, if no one actually gives a damn anymore
about the things you want us to regret.
I sit on the shores of time, and I forget
why you made me come here. Why you made me inspect
you, to such an insane degree.
Then, I remember, it is only you
who measures things in victories.
I?
I measure things in hopes, and unperturbed dreams.
I measure things in the nights I get to rest, and in sleep.
I measure things in the lives that I get to heal and decompress,
and the hearts, souls, minds and bodies that I continue to impress
with my dignity.
You know, the thing that you keep trying to take from me.
When I go dreamfishing,
it’s your image that I do not need to repress:
it’s your mewling nightmare, that I, and every last fish in the sea
all take turns to applaud for, in so much loving, kind and gentle
jest.