The Sky Some Halfway Blue
By Siettie
And purple, like a deep kind of sadness
Violently black at the corners
some kind of new
Children big and small have gone to school
Even before the first morning dew
Had begun to settle on a leaf, a plant
Out on a balkon, I said goodbye to you
There are kids in a forgotten basement
Sleeping deeply against a cold wall
Better off the streets, even better away
From homes no longer looking for them
In the evenings they come out to play
But stay indoors after dusk
my mother used to say there are jinns
everywhere out on the streets even
the tall looming streetlights
Can't light up their shadows, ghosts of long
gone histories, amnesiac memories,
Nostalgic benevolence and dreameries.
The world has begun to cower in shame
From the grime and grit along its streets
The earth sinking rapidly beneath our feet
People slinking down the cobblestones
Bodies burying old bruises and fears
The sky some halfway blue
And purple, like a deep anxiety
Brought on by this new world order
Mad onthology, metaphysics, psychology
Even the greatest sleepless philosophies
Can't beckon the simplest kindness
There is no more gentleness
No activism for sensitivity
Just dogs out on the streets
The sky halfway black
Still sometimes blue.
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A Singaporean born and bred, Siettie always believes in the symbiotic pairing of Art and Literature, and has been drawing, painting and writing for as long as she can remember. She has taught art professionally for the last seven years, both in Singapore and Istanbul – whose light, love and melancholy she finds endlessly bewitching. She frequently makes paintings and pens poems surrounding this experience that combines both personal and public spaces.
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