I bet you love
like a refugee
preferring intimacy
to trust

and I'm
a territory
conquered out of lust
and violated by every
hungry hand
that ever picked a fruit
to watch it rot
before it reached a mouth
then withered into dust

bombed out
and poisoned
and turned to civil war
against myself
until all that lays
buried in this flesh
are ghosts of ideologies
and the politicians
and guerrillas I used to be
and some lines of ink
the poets that were me
scrawled in red
against the whites
to map these tired
and bloodshot eyes

so that when you come to me
I'll have nothing left to fight
a state without a border
or a flag
nor a tree left standing
to give you fruit
and you will have to dig
deep into my earth
to find the roots
if you are needing to be fed
and listen to my eyes to hear
the anthems of the dead

until you can confess
that you're a poet too
taking sacrament
by the graffiti you tattoo
into these crumbling walls
with the only truths
that carried
too much weight
to have been abandoned
on the road

and you can paint me
as a whore
in caricature reds and blues
so we are both
beneath the mask
of nothing to repent
where our peace is made
with greys and ashes too

and from the foundation
that once was garrison
empty and splintered
ammo crates await
to be your home
something you can take
when you decide to go
or something that might hold
the things you leave behind

but if your train
will rust awhile
and you will stop
in the territory
that's left of me
let it be
where the treaty
of the sadness and the joy
was never signed
but branded on the tongue
and you can love
however the stateless heart
must love
a land that lost its name

where stories and stars
and dog eared cards
and the little
I have left to give
are treasures
that bring you songs to dance
consulting constellations
over constitutions
to tell how long you'll land
and how long I'll let you stay
with forever
only a wish
away
for us who cannot see
beyond today
with survival valued
just as much as hope

no more conscription
no duties to declare
of social trust
with this
the earth
bombed and levelled
once by lust

only a place to lay your head
and find forgotten dreams
in the way you colour me
with whatever we want to be
in the intimacy
of this anarchy
between the refuge
and the refugee