MINE SLOUGH

Melika Salihbeg Bosnawi, an author,
upon receiving an urgent, unexpected
and rather odd war-assignment from
Alma Suljevic, a sculptor,
to launch,
straight to Metaphysics,
a mine
!?
thought up:
What an eccentric task!
and then wrote the following:
"I will", I promised, as my heart started filling with anxiety.
"I would", I said,
"if you only give me a little time".
(As if any time could ever bring,
any changes into the mine’s slough,
presented* to me recently by Alma.
And which larva - of a deep sorrow – has permanently settled
in my home, and alike, in my kismet).
To describe it:
A very genuine plastic blackish mine's husk,
taken out from the Bosnian soil,
which the very content of that same case
was planned to bury,
for good,
the Bosnian soul.
A work of the war-art,
exhibited now in a kitsch-coloured beauty-box,
a cheap Chinese hand-made item,
a unique artistic thing
aimed at "decorating"
others'
and my,
decent,
dwelling.
Has Alma already planned to use my password to enter the field of Metaphysics
as presenting me her installation?
is not on me to figure out.
What is on me is to tiptoe through the minefield,
the maps of which she collected,
of the Bosnian war and post-war reality,
and in which,
with every explosion,
of every single mine,
every single tragedy is being transformed,
by the irony of the Celestial Alchemy,
(entrusted to this artist)
into a synonym for a joyful innocence. 
Alma's art-installation called
MINKA M 99
walks now itself carefully that beatific path.
Because, the irony, if authentic, is self-productive.
Only so could Alma line up Sarajevo with the world metropole
Paris London New York
famed for their make-up industry.
Bravo, bravo, Sarajevo!
Make-up?
Yes! Because mines are planted not but in order to, if not slay,
then beautify the Bosnian bodies with a blood-red lipstick,
with the mascara of the hot coal’s colour,
with the bruised-like azure eye-shadow,
or with the smoke-powdered emptiness-colour
(that was once filled with the rose of the Bosnian limbs).