All rules break. All loves go belly up.
All deaths become eternal shards
of memory. All countries melt, curdle,
stick in the nose. Or not! That is the truth,
friends: countries, death, love, history,
the whole caboodle, fully empowered
and happy. Laughing songs, carousing
in haystacks, belly flat like the Flat Iron
Building, and youth or old age irrelevant
to betting right on the money
which becomes the host, or the poem,
in the barter economy, socialist return
of true value to true grit, oh lawdy, lawdy,
let us not fight anymore about power or
powerless, and dance in the superstructure,
strum lutes, put on Halloween masks
and get on motorbikes, go for the ride.
Indran Amirthanayagam writes poetry in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. His latest books are Uncivil War (Tsar Publications, 2013), Aller-Retour Au Bord de La Mer (Legs Editions), and Sin Adorno: Lirica para tiempos neobarrocos (Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Mexico). Amirthanayagam won the Paterson Prize for The Elephants of Reckoning. He is an American diplomat posted currently in Port au Prince.
