The Man Who Coughs and Sneezes



At times when someone sneezes
the sky appears to be filled with rats
It isn’t a nightmare it’s a truthful heat
      biting our skin
a darkness not of rain but of silence
not of silence but of beasts who run about invading
      the air in which we live
The man who stops sneezing has an abandoned
      mine in each eye
An ivory cloud of smoke arises from the whiteness
      of his shirt
His lungs are the attic in which the rats
make their city their music and their moon
Behind every door drums make dry the atmosphere
with  their intermittent beats, coffin beats
It is there in long nights of work their petroleum lamp
the bread covered in ash and the threatening
       orange whirlpools
The sky is filled with rats
The trees have disappeared
When we incline our forehead sleep leaves there
       an unusual scar



Fayad Jamis