Bad Dates, Dead Monkeys.

The market stank of endings:

dates collapsing under their own sweetness,

flies waltzing over their wrinkled skin.

In the corner, two monkeys,

once kings of laughter,

lay stiff in their cages

little fists frozen mid-swing.

I pressed a date: it sighed and bled.

Best before yesterday, the sign promised.

A woman sniffed, shrugged, bought a kilo.

Hope has no nose.

What is life but a basket of bad dates,

a menagerie of dead monkeys?

Rot behind the laughter,

flies behind the feast.

The old man selling them grinned

three teeth, none in alliance

"Fresh batch tomorrow," he said.

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow is a shrine to rot,

an altar to spoiled sweetness.

Still we buy, we eat, we bury the pits,

we hoist the dead monkeys on our backs,

and march like kings through the stench.

Calling it a festival.

Calling it life.