How long have you been looking
for a crazy man? you asked, and:
Maybe satan was just an archangel
with depression, I replied.

Crazy-angel-man, you appeared from the ether,
an annunciation that filled me
with an insane quickening-
an autogenesis of loco dreams,
a miasma of madness, both beautiful and biblical;
of plans insane and wonderful.

Now I play the murdering music for myself,
and no longer are you there
to ask why people are trying to kill you
with their beautiful songs.

Still, somewhere in the traitorous world,
you are there with your pain;
somewhere in the terrible world,
where there is no home,
no country for you,
you continue on in a country like a tomb,
an infanticidal womb,
inside your sad, sad skin.

Some stranger plucks at an oud
while Souad Massi's mournfulness keens and croons
from the corner of my winter room.
Somewhere in the world, you might be listening
to Ghir Enta's excruciating gloom:
only you...only you...only you...