City Boy
By Yair Hoenig

If it is a dream, how is it possible that I am engulfed in horror?
The main existence of a dream is that it’s part of a fantasy that lives in me
Like the sound of my thoughts
What I felt the day I was born is flourishing in me like
Butterflies in the wind
And is screaming
Letmeout
Let me out
Let - me - out

In the dream, I am cuddling with a pink fuzzy leaf
On muddy ground
I smell the misty air full of wisdom and ancient myth
I touch with my fragile fingers
While I spread my wings like a new born bird
I am touching everything around me in childish oddity.
Wondering
Thrilled
Driven to feast the air
As an apple in paradise

I kiss a rose and wave goodbye
The sky above reflects the spirit of this immaculate balance
Of love within life
In the dream I feel complete
I feel strong and gathered
I am flying away

Then,
Noises of city traffic, I hear
And I start falling
I am falling to a bottomless reach
When I land,
I am at the same place I was
Like a déjà vu in hell

Atrocity surfaces
Smoke starts coming out of my hands like sweat,
And the smell of my burning flesh drives me insane
I hear a door slam behind me as if life
Has left me in my shadow

A dark light shadows brightly on my wanting to be
I look at my body, and my wings are
Gone
All my feathers are on the floor
Gazing at me in blame
They are looking and wishing that I will pick them up and fly with them
Throughout the smoke to a place full of life

I am reaching for them as if they where kids in a fire
I count them one-by-one with individual love
I hold them close my chest,
Next to the pound of my heart
Like a mother and her first son

I look at the dark light
I can see myself reaching through the smoke
I recoil
And drop my feathers

Grandpa once told me
How he saw five hundred babies gathering around in a gas shower
As my feathers are falling on the ground they cry in pain
They are so far for me to reach
And the smoke is weakening my strength
So I look up,
I spread my naked wings and whisper in tears
Let me out.