1.
Bergonyuzu, klai bos podih skiseh Karimang
sa nomi? Karimang nadi teng formi
ki kereh bos bai, pra sempri, lonzi kung mas lonzi
di bos sa mai-pai. Karimang nadi falah
isti sorti di jenti?
Mistih kai.
2.
This kindness, only of the ways to live by
self-infatuation, and the wrong kind of defiance:
I have so many questions about what it takes to die
a martyr to yourself, an endless, querulous
alchemical substance of horror.
A boundless, formless shifting
of what constitutes honour.
I am concerned as to what you are summoning
at this kind of hour.
3.
Only time is what we live by, after all.
Justu nteh jenti ki kereh mureh di Mundansa Fogosa;
Justu nteh vedra ki kereh bibeh na Mundansa Volmanga.
I dream, sometimes, of the Ravenous Night;
I fight, to dream, of every mind that hadn’t been tortured
by the Blood-Letting, the kind of nightmare that you probably hide
from your therapist, at your expense.
I would like you to know that with enough Dreamfishing,
everything can actually, eventually,
be brought to the surface.
No matter how expensive.
No matter the reflecting, the deflecting,
the attempts to portray yourself as just
sensitive.
4.
The way things work now,
I would be surprised if things hadn’t just reached the tentative
but gone past it, into the provisional, the liminal,
the present perfect conditional.
The way tense works, honestly, when it is under warping and stress.
The way your body doesn’t work, traumatically,
when it is put to any kind of unfair, and hyperbiased test.
You left it to this Merlionsman,
and hoped the Maliduensa would take care of the rest.
4-3-2-1.
Mas isti stori ja kontah, sayang—
tona kung tona kung tona mbes.