What if I refuse To mourn death And colour all its walls and windows With rainbow colours And smuggle all its fears and decay Out of language And burn them with scented candles? What if I distrust love And expunge all its oily legends Out of hearts, books, and songs And poison it with carbonated tears Until it turns ash grey out of factories And leave its carcass rot outside lovers’ village With wolves protecting the rotten flesh What if I walk back And climb all the time-beaten walls From where history rolled down its films And desecrate all nature’s laws Until I step back into the primeval cave And tell our ancestral hordes Of memes and atom bombs What if I abandon My dreams and poems And let the termite bite out of them All the sugar and thoughts And donate my books to soldiers And lead them back to the path Where they sold their souls to generals What if I break All the laws, doors, and watches And unleash all rejected creatures And miswrite deviously Our world as heaven And erase all memories of war and hatred And drown the fears of hunger in stone. The writer can be reached at rosseautolstoy5@gmail.com Published in Daily Times, October 27th 2017.