PHOSPHOROUS SIRENS

Author: Rahmi Doğukan "Elaine" Candan, Boğaziçi University

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PHOSPHOROUS SIRENS

Heard any sirens?

Sirens

What sirens

This is

Homer as far as

We’re no one

Odysseus

Shelter

A vault

Sanctions

Ceasefire

Our tempting sirens

STOP

No blaring sirens here

except

Ceaseless

Beatings

Of phosphorous

Rain

Endless precipitation

Exponential

Bombardment

Melancholy

Humanitarian crisis

Cease the poetry?

No, the bombs are as Tschaikovsky

There are no sirens

Just

Precipitous, precipitating precipices

Et Nox?

Amidst the Darkness of…

As if

Ibi suus semper lux

Always light

All-encompassing

Searing

Eye-burning

Light!

Shimmer and shimmer

Simmer and simmer

Phosphorous, embracing light

No sirens to call you to shelter

Not when there

Remains more

Sand than concrete

More

Ruin than apartments

More

Debris than home

The siren is the light my dear

The light at the end of the tunnel.

The siren is the light

The light in the sky

As clusters upon clusters of phosphorus fall

Luminescent, illuminated bones,

White, creamy with thick sauce,

Monstrous,

Explosive even

Phosphorous