signs

need some trimming, but heres to beginnings…

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They’re taking the signs, the ones that spoke in stories, in sadness, in second chances. They take words, leave worry and look west.

The tumor festers. You’ll be stopped in the street if you don’t keep moving, if you don’t keep quiet, keep to yourselves and your people. They leave their posts and ask for papers, if they bother to ask. They multiply in division, couple in the streets between the sides, raise their offspring on anxiety, on discord, on keeping to themselves and their people.

Look, they’re getting desperate, they’re stealing signs they’re cherry-picking nationals, hanging banners off buildings. They revise what doesn’t suit – invent ages, offenses, fantasy fuel to propel this last wave of power. Flight isn’t universally instinctive and these, the fighters, work well on corrupted intuition. They fly flags steal signs, shout at the dawn of their discontent, this mutable, uncomfortable time that precedes change.

We stay as such, stray, both disconnected and too close and no one has time to apologize save the faceless. Rush and run in the constant crush, chaos, in sweat and skin and too many bodies. Cut off and cursing, cue to join the crowd, to touch a stranger’s skin. Touch—just barely, inconsequentially—and turn tail, all short breath and flight instinct.

There are those of us that climb to safety; from the sky or water we can see each side flutter behind the times. We, tree mammals at heart, feel the call of ferries on the water, crawling insect-like over the waves, carrying ghosts from hamam to hillview. We nestle with warm glass in the hold, perch on the railing to gaze at the water lapping against the sides. Still and silent, we envy the gulls their dip and dive—how they flirt with the slipstream and fall hard for stale bread softening in the sea.

Changes come and go but this city speaks in more than words. Brand it in any number of silent letters – all it shows is a stubborn cling to an alphabet that speak in shapes and sounds born a scant century ago. All it shows is one exception after another, exceptions born in blood and borders, raised on the steadfast minds of the manipulated. With or without exceptions, the script will survive. Call it a problem call it a choice; have no shame in sickness, even the kind that spreads rapidly, rampantly through children and what their parents say in the shadows.

Look, this city doesn’t speak in script or letter. It speaks in smell and sound and dichromatic sight, in cigarettes and minarets and neon. Skylight dances on the water, our towers glow longingly at each other and the light on the water changes from gold to sliver as if there’s no real difference. Spin gold like summer nights, like the two stars strong enough to peek through the smog. Slip weightless through crooked streets, stained silver like adventure.

We make the signs ourselves, and we’ll climb crumbling stones to paint script on city walls if we must. Small minds breed certainty, small minds are cynical and have ends for means. Our ends run wild, our blood flows with the ambiguity of translation, with a wary trust in ancient roots that grow in threes.

Take your signs, we’ll burn the papers and leave them to the city where they’ll fall to the sidewalks and turn to dust under the heels of the dispossessed. Look, words follow flight, they set to memory on four legs, they burrow between the heart and the mind. The script is etched in stone, made in metal and aerosols, gathered between our temples as we slip towards the sea.