I like to travel, read, write, dance and pretend. At the moment I am suffering an insufferable phase of self-aggrandizement, premature maturity and lack of wit.
If you think you can help me out of this funk, write me at idaman.z@gmail.com
La Petite Morte (What’s a Little Death Between Us)
2007-11-30
I shall leave you Egypt. Egypt. Egypt.1
A scored mask over scared mots* Memento mori2, darling
We cower
In terror of the horror of daily errors
What’s a little death between us?
Today tinkling teacups terrorize
Maybe hearts will break
After a hearty fast-break
Will I dare to finally ask
“Why?”
Still we sit
Agonized by options
Doubting our selection
Of butter over jam
Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die3
Last night
Unasked questions fog up glass
Boiling desires
Filtered, translated,
Muted by the coarseness of our gestures
What if
Clawing paws
Reaching for a meaning
Beyond this means of our escaping
Shatter our smiling masks?
Would I dare step off the kerb today?4
And be Isis to his Osiris?
Or shall I only throw a shilling into the Serpent?5
What’s a little death between us?
Still you sit
Agonized by options
Doubting your selection
Of eggs over ham
What’s a little death between us?
* French, words
1. The deceased Angela of Virginia Woolf’s The Legacy scored the words “Egypt. Egypt. Egypt.” over pages of her diary, presumably to cover up her intimate relationship with B.M.
2. Latin – “Remember mortality” or “Remember your death”.
3. Isaiah 22:13 “And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for to morrow we shall die.”
4. Angela in Woolf’s The Legacy committed suicide by deliberately stepping in front of a moving car.
5. Clarissa Dalloway in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, in a moment of introspection after hearing of the death of Septimus Smith, “she had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more. But he had flung it away.”
