Dreams to Persepolis
by Nima Babajani-Feremi
#1
Edging past
shallow
waters
towards
the world that survives, potential melancholia.
Death of
an arid lake.
Across
its
s k e l e t o n,
enshrined in silvery light,
a doe drinks through
all remaining remains.
#2
my soul drifts atop
subconscious
sea.
Desolate ruins
island
around me.
You are just distraction for
the dervish.
#3
My spine lurches
forward.
the shade of its tree
paints me.
The cold well
falls,
wet behind my eyes,
I fall forward.
#4
The machinations of flesh
have hierarchized
the heart,
partitioned
digits,
each to their
lonely task.
Signal stimulus,
whereby
automatic hands breathe
through
a limb,
and lungs
move down
your body.
#5
The burial of the Huma.
The solid ash of its tears
sprout columns,
supporting open-air cage,
erected as Persepolis died.
O Huma, tears of my heartland,
have we drank through
the moisture of your garden?
Buried where no streams exist
to unearth your voice.
Have we killed Persepolis?
O Huma, when you touched
the Earth in Shiraz,
your labour as Atlas ended.
We were flattened.
#6
Burn no bridges!
Burn the water.
Pour all thoughts
in the light.
Die unexpressed.
Hands burn
reaching
through
or out
this tar-river.
Let thoughts burn alone
in festering pits
of reddened eyes;
that is your anger.
Reach towards society.
Be rejected.
Mouth
forever agape,
once opened with hope,
now
closed with kerosene.
Burn no bridges,
burn the water.
#7
There is only the one image.
I have
burned it.
there is no time,
I am god,
resting
a restful rest,
where the dreams of Gods comes easy.
The spires of my church
are consecrated
after I think.
As long as thoughts
flow endlessly,
breathlessly
flat,
nothing leaves.
The ephemera outside.
I am god inside.
As long as
fluctuations
from nothingness
to fullness
are sequential,
I sublate to God.
#8
If your blood could grip my blood,
as I looked down
the gentle slope of your jaw,
I could think of just you.
blood has flown off to make
lush the field of scentless lilies.
#9
-firstly-
Each word is dragged
through the spine
of the still
-alive poet.
The vertebrae split open,
hacked rather,
in two,
gingerly
the body still beating
the bundle of exposed nerves
feel all.
That is how the first word is written.
-secondly-
[redacted]
#10
Speak into the
full plastic night
all those things
you want,
all that
stagnates you.
The electric-shrill of nerves
speak back to all time.
#11
(Translated from Farsi)
They took many breaths
with them,
as their shadows
stole the Earth.
Tired from counting seconds,
we soldier life on shoulder flesh.
#12
When you finish counting and
land on a number-
the universe only tallies the last breath.
But I
I am obsessed
with how your neuron clusters
moved between
each
number.
#13
In a world without you or mirrors:
I sink teeth in flesh
frozen.
I find reflections
in blood.
Sketch silhouettes
with darts.
-funerals for words and me.
#14 Jade obelisks stare back,
your desert threatens starvation.
The impossibility of movement
mortalized.
I palm for
where
I misplaced
myself.
#15
In this state of infamy:
tired eyes close onto
tired body enclosing
tired soul where
the visible world
tired of the weight
of tiresome bodies;
betray their weight
brought to surface
where
tired body enclosing
tired eyes close
onto words.
#16
After Mallarme’s Swan sonnet
There was an accident last night:
I went to look up
“what is poetry?”,
but my eyes made love
to the numb palette
of the day
and by pure incident
I ascended
with swans into a frozen lake.
#17
I have felt this before,
this
tying up of
arteries to the
esophagus,
stitching close lips
screaming out
through eyes.
#18
Perhaps the world will end during the next set of secret
funerals, while the corpses for the last one are being found