OBEMATA
UNDERCOVER
There are
no neighbours to wonder
who you
are, what you are doing…
– Li-Young Lee, With Ruins
Crossing
the open sea
I have
come to live in the open streets,
without
a name, without a passport.
The
streets have eyes
so I
lie beneath spider-webs.
The
streets have eyes-
the
cops, cameras, hawk-spies,
so I
lie beneath hedged fabrics,
intertwined,
invisible,
and the
spiders shape the distance formed
between
the eyes that spy from streetsides
and
where I lie,
here is
my cover, without border.
The
streets have eyes
I lie
beneath spider-webs
caught
on kerbs or flowers at the street-edge.
I am
beneath untiring legs,
spinning
to the core of my refuge.
There
is life at the core,
there
is life like no other life,
I
assume my old ways anew,
I
assume new names, my pseudonyms in an old way
I teach
my tongue new rituals,
I speak
in a manner, masked to the core.
In time
eternal,
between
webs and my prayers
I lie
unknown, unwanted, undercover.
Obemata won the 12th Sentinel Poetry Bar Challenge, July 2005 on the
theme of paranoia.
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