torn-down moat

A week ago when I was walking down some bygone road,
on a torn-down moat
in the middle of a rocky clothesline
between Rice Village and Montrose,

I was overcome with sudden homesickness
for the East, my thunderous Thrace
saturated on the base,
Mesopotamia lushing Euphrates to the
black-death torment of Tigris
the land I'd once called home,
𝘮𝘺 place

bah! morose, morose
white vines spreading
unsolicited lips shuttering

Is it odd?
the space for Anatolian geology, unswallowed?

beh, beh
chiseling concrete at my feet
split my feet,
shrivel my skin

a muffled silence broken by the wave of cicadas, marching in a fleet
my knees give way to wailing
from my throat invisible hands pull out chords,
skillfully weave them together to screech in a mid-type moan,

no clamour to sound shrill,
no strength for bulk

a dry, mid-level groan
like if peach married grey,
and made a desert-like puddle that still has water
making the ears want to throw themselves away,
to puncture in or decay

because the water smells dump-ish!
but as you know,
sound cannot smell,
so it only saw the reek,
the claim to a saturation-woven deep

but ears cannot do that
they can only shrink,
to speal o's with supped in lips
like mosquito-bitten eyes with closed-in lids

Indeed so! Veiled fingers make a compact with my split spine, shove out my throat in limp flesh through an opening up my back,
as they do this Pallas herself lands upon my chest
the art of weaving, she says, is

𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦
though it was not I that claimed fabrication
but the cursed fingers that came from
from

it was not I, not I

within me a sore gutter lets go
greets the gravel on the paven floor

nobody stops to gloat
because Houston has no people
who walk about

Rash, braven folly
my friends told me not to go explore

now, don't be afraid to approach,
I once was Ariadne,
until I left my name
an-d replaced it with ch-ch-chiseled wallpaper
pardon me, it is difficult to speak with so many
teeth

untangle me or
or, or
feel you the strings with your visible touch,
those that cover me,
and cut, cut.