“Poetry is the devil’s inbox.”

But daytime was no time to philosophize.
So we hung about cheap coffee shops
Sipped espressos on dirty sidewalks.

We, five poets with empty wallets,
The modern prophets,
Lived our lives in between big brackets,
Smoked cigarettes,
Wasted sunsets,
Et cetera, et cetera…

Now Time
For the sun to sink into the silver sea
And die.

Time
For the son of sin to feel her skin
For the snake to slither between her thighs
And why
Not post it on Facebook
Or be a Twitter god?

And Time
For us, the poets with bad habits,
To invade the pubs and bars of Hamra Street
Looking here and there if someone’s rolling
Weed, hashish, or Red Lebanese…

But nighttime was no time to philosophize either.
So we hung about cheap bars and pubs
Drinking beer on dirty sidewalks.

And then the girls with no names came,
Their laughter: sex notes
And R&B
Champagne and pain
And misery

“I think that one’s from A.U.B.
I did her at the dorms in November.
She needed money
to pay for her courses.”

“You bastard! That’s my sister.”
A non-poet cried right then
and broke that poet’s nose.

Blood in the beer
A pint of blood!
A toast for our brave, bare sister.
Knives and chairs and broken beer bottles…
A fight
A war
A massacre
In which I did not take part.

And all this time, I was thinking,
Eyes wide open, without blinking,
About how a fellow poet
Could pay so much to fuck
When I was paying for his beer.

–

Also published on Volkov Is Thinking