A view from The Middle East

Amongst
Coastal Plains
Desert Expanses
Mountain Ranges
Lie
Power
Religion
Society
Living
Lost Civilizations
Longstanding Regimes
People’s Dreams
This all but a glimpse of the feast
Assembled, on crossroads of West and East

A split in succession
fourteen centuries ago
only after Three, concession
behind the present state of embargo
At the onset of the caliphate
Legitimacy of rule
The topic of debate
The resolve
Fragmentation into sects
Sunni, Shia dialects
Sunnis put Faith in election
Shias in that of divine sanction
But just as soon
Power
Decreed it by assassination
Ironic
fourteen centuries on
each sect’s predilections
Gone
The state representative of each
Practicing against its initial preach
One
An absolute monarchy
Devoid of meritocracy
While autocratically stern
Hypocritically, Pro-Western
Another
Aspects of democracy
Steeped in theocracy
While pursuing policies of self-sufficiency
Unfortunately, only militarily
Side-by-Side
Between them a Gulf
A sectarian divide
They find themselves engulfed.
Though their differences are political
Their similarities, unequivocal
Legislation by clerics
Claiming validation, Islamic
Policies in Contradiction
To that of accepted Islamic Diction
Subversion of half of Society
By professing Women’s inequality
As for the whole
in a plight
at a judge’s discretion
his personal definition
of Human Rights.
Religious Freedom
follows the same Fate
as that of Expressions in Freedom
A Sentencing Date.
As a result
Religion
through its Politicization
from whence God’s and People’s Domain
relegated to Fiction
written by a state’s reign
Fabricated Division
Preached, without relief
Amongst a People practicing
The same set of Beliefs
Disenfranchised Youth
From one of the paths of truth
By the ingrained fallacy
of a State of ‘hypo-cracy’
As for Islam’s face
Interpreted to the World’s Populace
shaped by exercises of Power
by governments we empower
through Our Speeches, long since
consisting solely of . . . .

Yemen
Exemplary of the Strength of Women
Their Weakness
A moot point
Their Actions
Counterpoint
Driving movements of Non-violence
Standing against orders of compliance
Attempting to ascertain
a life Without Chains.
Despite a History of division
United in their position
despite being short
of tangible support
They hold firm
until their views are confirmed.
The first step is down
by a leader of discredit
whose rule is frowned upon
by People embedded
with ability to envision
an improvement in condition
with Voices and Footsteps
entirely in rhythm.

Since the Declaration of Balfour
Irreconcilability has endured
Exasperated by Wars
An endless Settlement of more
In the land of the Holy
Sovereignty is disputed wholly
Borders
Drawn up by Wall
Barriers
Determined to Fall
Precepts of Separation
Stand against Reconciliation
Biased support
Actions do purport
For one’s subsidized life
At another’s strife
Without any Occupation
People lead lives of frustration
Without any Farms
They follow a path to arms
Even against one another
Of their brothers
If only there was Hamas
In order to Fatah
Between them the gridlock
For representation as one bloc.
A renunciation of Violence
For Civil Disobedience
Will serve to Silence
The Drum of Military Ordnance
For Excessive Reactions
Juxtaposed by Non-violent Actions
Will strip justifications
For Launching Operations
The People’s Efforts
Refocused from Stones
Towards
Words
And their Intrinsic Power
To sway
Worlds
Against the Institutionalized Injustice
Perpetrated by Occupation
For the Voice of Justice
Lies grounded in Truths
Veiled by Oppression
Of a People’s Rights
And from a State of Recognition.
Efforts though
For everlasting Peace
Will remain shattered
Segmented to Pieces
So long as focus remains
On what state religion ordains
After all that’s been said and tried
Maybe the solution, after all, may just lie
In middle ground
In theory of great profound
Still awaiting inception
Since birth in the region
Two millennia ago
As Christ conferred
Love thy neighbour.

Syria
Hysteria
A relic of the past
A world outcast
Stalwart of Arab Politics
Practices in Rhetoric
Carrots on Sticks

Suspended Constitution
Emergency Law Institution
Freedom of Expression
Basis of Dissension
Grounds for Detention.
Stifling of Opposition
In favor of the Proposition
The People’s Representation
The Heart of Corruption.
Skewed Income Distribution
The People’s Situation
Unworthy of Contemplation
Distract from Deprivations
With Fears of Impending Invasions
Our Only Salvation
Patriotism in the Nation
Not Love of One’s Country
Lest there be Confusion
Rather Hatred of Another.

For all its Enthusiasm
All it left behind, a Schism
Rooted in Despotism
Political Arab Nationalism.

I-raq
A wreck
Never has something so right
Been done so wrong
But to allow that blight
To define for long
Is to forget what lies dormant
In the recesses of mind
On Plains of Fertile Crescent
The human capacity to find
From unrelenting will
A persistent drill
For the sake of extraction
A Cradle’s worth of Civilization.

Capabilities proven
Not once
But twice
Abilities
Hopefully moving
With aims of thrice

Bahrain
Revolution
Contained
De-Evolution
Sustained
Discrimination
Maintained
Division
Feigned
Counter-Revolution
Unrestrained
Condemnations
Constrained
Resolutions
Refrained
Relations
Retained
Nation
Strained

So here we find
In the Middle East
Attempts to bind
From Medieval Beasts
People’s hands and feet
Weapons of Modern Feat
Arresting, Pulse and Beat
For what’s truly on the line
Are Ideas of the Mind
For from the African North
Lately much has been put forth
For the progress of the region
If we carry on believing
That the Rights of Man
Are as crucial as his Hands
In building up this place
And tearing down what stands
In place of Just commonplace.
It was a Man on Fire
That sparked the desire
He left all behind
Sacrificed all to remind
That a government’s laws
Every article and clause
Should be written with the spirit
Of nothing but..
The People’s Benefit.

Freedom though
While rightfully attained
Could just as easily go
If status quo is maintained
Centuries of results
May be a cause of one man
“Strong”
But now
only We would be at fault
If now
We are not to undo wrongs

A fair, impartial Constitution
Empowering Our Institutions
To wrest Power from one
Bestowed upon all, bar none
Illiteracy
Led to complicity
Universal Education
Enlighten People and Nation
Rote Education
Led to Stagnation
A regional revampment
To achieve advancement
Economies
Based on Commodities
Their shortcomings to be Acknowledged
For a renewed focus and basis in Knowledge
Equitable Income Distribution
To push for the restitution
Of People’s Motivation
In bettering their situations
Our Wealth
Invested in Institutions of Universal Health
For a Higher Expectancy
Of a better Life Mortality
The Sanctity
Of Our Society
Will only be safeguarded through Equality
Amongst the Gender Varieties
Society’s Purview
A Plurality of Views
Their Acceptance, Just
If decided through…The People’s Trust.

And when it comes down to it
When we seek to learn from all of it
For the sake of Our Dreams of a Better Future
We should place Our Power in the better aspects of Our Human Nature
In that which no level of repression can extinguish
That which conquers and casts aside any anguish
Which, time and again, has been proven to never languish…
Human Love,
Hope,
Faith,
and Forgiveness.

Mohamed Lamrad
©2012

Today, a poem woke me up.
Dubai, 21st of March, 2013.

Nothing stops when your beloved dies,
not the breath hurtling through your body, even if your
fingers would no longer move.
Not the crescent moon in the silent sky,
smiling its cheesy grin,
poking a silver arrow at your sorrow.
Not even the sun, whom
you think should black out the day, wear a shade of night to
honor departure, a darkness to cradle pensive dreams,
for even rainbow dream-rays of daylight
do not stop.
Nothing stops.

Not the trees gorging on air,
leaves unfurling in mystery to screech echoes
of life, life, life.
Not even the bark chips, or the flowers wilt, or the birds
shut up to admire your pain.
A small “Ha!” in your face, a defiance remains
to taunt the pumping matter that
carefully folds in on itself, inside your body,
and chokes.
Nothing. Everything natural continues to blossom,
as if to spite the burgeoning hole in your lungs.

Nothing stops when your beloved dies,
not the capitalist money systems, not the sweat on backs of women in the fields,
not the budgets of bankers,
not piercing cries of the oppressed,
nor the songs of dismal angels over seas we yearn to cross.
Not the twinkle in the eyes of strangers, nor
the trains that speed them away.
The arms of your lover continue to be warm, and
old pictures continue to encapsulate
light, glow.

Not the civil war slithering around your father’s old house,
nor the decay of lush plants your mother loved on a balcony,
now abandoned.

Nothing stops for a minute to say, I am sorry,
I am so sorry for your loss.

Nothing stops when your beloved dies,
and worst of all,
the very worst of it all,

not even the love.

Enjoy!

To his lost lover

by Simon Armitage

Now they are no longer
any trouble to each other

he can turn things over, get down to that list
of things that never happened, all of the lost

unfinishable business.
For instance… for instance,

how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush
through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush

at the fall of her name in close company.
How they never slept like buried cutlery –

two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,
or made the most of some heavy weather –

walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,
or did the gears while the other was driving.

How he never raised his fingertips
to stop the segments of her lips

from breaking the news,
or tasted the fruit

or picked for himself the pear of her heart,
or lifted her hand to where his own heart

was a small, dark, terrified bird
in her grip. Where it hurt.

Or said the right thing,
or put it in writing.

And never fled the black mile back to his house
before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,

then another,
or knew her

favourite colour,
her taste, her flavour,

and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,
or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair

into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved

when he might have, or worked a comb
where no comb had been, or walked back home

through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand

to his butterfly heart
in its two blue halves.

And never almost cried,
and never once described

an attack of the heart,
or under a silk shirt

nursed in his hand her breast,
her left, like a tear of flesh

wept by the heart,
where it hurts,

or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,
or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.

Or christened the Pole Star in her name,
or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,

a pilot light,
or stayed the night,

or steered her back to that house of his,
or said “Don’t ask me how it is

I like you.
I just might do.”

How he never figured out a fireproof plan,
or unravelled her hand, as if her hand

were a solid ball
of silver foil

and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,
and measured the trace of his own alongside it.

But said some things and never meant them –
sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.

And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,
about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.

THE DEBT OF MY FEELINGS

Love is about forgiveness-
So I forgive you for being you, for being
beautiful and wonderful (all over) and laughing
and giving birth to poems; for being a friend
that makes me howl whenever I dream
about your nakedness- which is so often
I no longer have words for love – only tears.
Yes, crying is the river I walk near when I
think of you.

– E. Ethelbert Miller

QUESTIONNAIRE

I wonder
if tears would remain heavy with salt
if father would still have learnt to cry
if the shape of my center would change
less of a pinprick in my heart
less of an ache
I wonder
if the sun would beat down not so harshly
snow not sting this flesh so sharp
so bitter
if my curls would spring forth lighter
and my flesh shimmer
abandoned in love
I wonder
if the morning wake would be tender
and the future would beckon in arms of peace
if the youth shining in me lost not its splendor
the loves I destroy not split me asunder
I wonder
I wonder what would happen
if you were still
with me
Mother

To Hamra

Every morning Umm Nagi
makes a lousy joke
and stirs our coffee.
We look at her dirty nails,
we hold the warm paper cups and
walk
across streets that are endless
in their endless repetitions,
small labyrinths
we have memorized,
familiar labyrinths
in which we get lost on purpose:

Here is the yellow coffee shop
and another,
and another,
where our fathers curl politics
with their cigar smoke
all day,
and measure poetry
with their sugar spoons
and say,
“The situation is bad again,
it is bad again.”

Here is Modca ,
the ancient coffee shop,
where memories cling to the walls
like a wild plant that sprouts
voices and smoke and small conversations.
Here is Modca,
the ancient coffee shop,
turning into a Vero Moda,
no more spoons or cigarettes or the clatter of cups,
history buried in clothes,
outshone by Starbucks.

Here is the tiny cassette shop
in which the fat man barely fits,
in which the fat man sings and spits,
and nods and nods,
as if to God,
saying business is slower than old age,
releasing Arabic music
into crowded streets that move
to the inborn beat,
here is the tiny cassette shop,
and another,
and another.

Here is the flower shop,
and another,
and another,
they all have the same name
but insist they’re not the same,
a sidewalk of flowers and dust, dust, dust,
and we decide to buy the white lilies,
just because they’re flowers,
just because they’re white,
just because they’re lilies.

Here is the deserted theater
where the bald man sighs
into a red telephone,
then shouts at his wife,
and cries
his bills and anger away,
you’d never expect
emotions
inside the smell of old semen
and posters of movies that never really play.
Here is the deserted theater,
and another,
and another.

Here is the whorehouse,
where the fat woman gathers old age in a chair
and promises cab drivers a good time
with the worn beauties inside,
leaning topless on the bar,
leaning
on memories withering in the smell of cigars,
here’s another lost memory,
and another,
and another.

Here is the leftist pub,
where the grey man smiles
and plays the oud
(could wood and strings reach the soul like that?)
he sings,
and his rough voice sinks
into us like a rock,
Umm Kulthum and Fairuz and Abdel Halim ,
ya leil ya ein ,
the most famous words in our language,
ya leil ya ein
and we clap and dance and hope
the term papers will write themselves,
here is the leftist pub,
and another,
and another.

Here is Universal,
where Nagham the waitress knows
we have lots of lemon in our lentil soup,
lots of cigarettes in our pockets,
and tells us to smile smile smile,
“because smiling is such, such, a nice thing to do,”
and the black kohl on her eyes is thicker
than memories and Turkish coffee
and darker than
the street outside.

Here we are,
drinking sunset and soup again,
drinking time away again,
time that vanishes like a small white cloud
on a blue-sky day in Hamra,
here’s to another day in Hamra,
and another,
and another.

(published in The Arabesques Review)

The Nameless

What do you call the space between
the written word and the blank page,
names in the distance and distance without names?

I know forgetting. I know
forgetting happens before
remembering.
But what happens after?

Give me a word
lukewarm and not so
comprehensible,
a word that drops
like white shadows
from the sky.

What name?
Give me a name
that melts like rain
and smells like moonlight
on my skin.

(published in Silk Road)

Service

Here in Beirut,
you do not stop
a cab. It stops
you.

Money is negotiable. Silence
isn’t: small confidences in small mirrors,
you have to have time
for that whether you have it
or not. Conversations seep
through the heat, the rain,
along with hands (instead of
signal lights), along with
cigarette butts and

spit.
It takes time, it takes time
to master a driver’s technique.
You have to gather it
in your throat like
rage, and spit it out like
nothing, make it as ordinary
as a lemon on a table.

The car is the streets’ old mistress.
It trembles, it swerves,
it dies little deaths along the way,
as the man behind the wheel adjusts
the word Allah or the cross
hanging from the mirror,
tilts his head towards
the sky inside the puddles,
towards a girl in tight jeans,
offers you a zaatar manoushé , insists,
and tells you to forget
air conditioning.

(published in Quiddity)

I Call It Home

This place where
electricity and water
take turns,
I call it home.

This place where
earth matters,
where we’re dust and sand,
and slip right through
the enemy’s hands,
I call it home.

This place where
we die and rise and
die and rise
again
every few years,
where we fold and
unfold peace
like a paper boat
(and hope it floats),
I call it home.

(published in Quiddity)

Peace Oil

I know what oil is and I know what it means.
“Eat oil and rub yourself with it”
were the Prophet’s words. This sounds
sexual only in English. I don’t know if the quote
is accurate, word per word, but I know
olive oil has healing powers.
Only olive oil. And the olive tree
is mentioned in the Koran, along with the fig tree,
but that is another discussion.

I don’t know what peace is and I don’t know what it means.
I know the world wants peace, and so should I.
I know now that peacemaking involves
olive oil, and I know it is as harmless
as knitting a jacket on the sofa or frying
an onion with hot olive oil, which smells
as good as olive oil and onion does.
I wonder if peace smells the same.
I know we say “Peace Be Upon You” for hello and goodbye.

I know what Peace Oil is and I know what it means
because it is right here in British Homes and Gardens:
three bottles with different sizes and shades of green,
perhaps to indicate the nuances of the olive tree.
(My grandmother says olive trees cannot
have nuance. They have roots and history.)
English, Arabic, and Hebrew inscriptions,
too much writing for an olive oil bottle if you ask me.
What Peace Oil means, and this time I quote exactly, I am accurate,
I have even kept the line breaks to be faithful to the poetry:
“Produced in Israel by Jews, Arabs, Druze, and
Bedouins, with profits for reconciliation projects.
Peace Oil, £9.95 for 500ml olive oil, Good Gifts.”
Just like the Prophet said, healing powers for 9.95 only
peace for 9.95 only, although I still don’t know what peace means.

I know I imagine a world with many kinds of Peace Oils.
Can you hear the music I hear in my head?
Olive oil in Lebanon and Palestine. In Iraq
the black kind that explodes from the ground.
Imagine that in a bottle, I mean imagine
all the colors, the possibilities of Peace Oils,
one could even make mugs, recipes for
peace with parmesan or lemon, advertise them on Facebook
for 9.95 only, with profits for reconciliation projects,
although I’m not sure what reconciliation means.

(published in 34th Parallel)

Headlines
Dubai, 22/4/2010

What is it this intake of breath
the word fuck hissed as if shock was
new to this body
as if this news was new to this body
what is it this slight widening of nostrils flare, tongue bloated inside
lips drowned in despair, too laden with history to
envision present, what is it, this gaping stare at jumbled remembrance-
-deported from west bank to gaza- IDF pass law- apartheid
state blossoms- this bodies shoveled by bulldozer to mass graves- this
girl, 12 yrs old,
found dead on way to market-
this sniper tshirt draws belly of arab womb is target
twice successful-
Where do all the tents go?
- land grab graphs- walls through a father’s face
sullen concrete of his seed-
what is this plume of
white hides shadows of the daily exterminated we-
from where does it rise up, like bile, like vomit, like
acid- this surprise?
Surprise?
This has always been the way it is,
this has always been.
In 1983,
a 5-year old refugee slams her body on a warm bed, revolts a tantrum when
adults kindly confirm…”They have to call it Israel now, honey”… what does that child
know of stolen family?
Children learn.
What is this
this intake of breath at headlines gaza ramallah jenin
-netanyahu dines at white house- clinton says security first- abu mazen seeks presidency-old man dies of lack of electricity-
I have heartburn where I once had pulse, I have
spasms of stomach too full to chew this new
news I digest no more,
what is it, this surprise…”how could it possibly get worse”

-fuck-

The Matter
Dubai, June 15th
On being bored in the desert.

Somehow, recently, I have lost meaning.
By meaning, I mean
the image behind the image,
the fable behind plastic,
the dream behind indelibly mute inner noise.
I used to be boisterous. All alone.

The bed was history. Arms craned, feet
curled
up thighs, necks extended and whispers
made poetry,
personal. Sheets longed to be soiled,
pillows squirmed under tugged curls
and all of the moment was a moment,
repeated,
the same,
singular,
mass experienced and individual,
art or desecration, pornography
a show,
or love.

The table was abundance. Crumbs of everything we spoke about
dropped like a fairy tale trail. Falafel,
chicken, avocadoes. I was always hungry.
We dipped French fries like they were
finger foods of gods.
We slathered sunny side up
eggs, on orange lime-green purple afternoons
like every weekend was a vacation.
Like your face was ice-cold cocktails, and my giggling, the ocean.
The way he ate was laughter, and I,
sipping on lady-like morsels of prayer.

The couch was a garden. We live
in the desert, but who was to stop us?
Somehow, now,
that fact creeps into our habits.
Sinews
draped on color, I buy
silk and sequins rustling
hoping peace or orgasms reverberate with
innocent fat-tummied contortions of bodies,
the repose of the lovers who have witnessed years atrophy,
middle-aged
gymnastics, watching clocks tick on walls,
watching time move for so far, nothing.
Your hand clutched my waist,
mine on your hip. Your head
nudged my nape. My knees curved into stillness. Sang.
Little sequences of motion created dance,
jittered, wordless.
We may lie in silence, or speak devil tongues of a thousand
sentences bequeathed
to ancestry. The folds of our bodies now rest, everything else
is seen from a window,
distant and not dangerous. I do not move much,
breath heavy.

In Dubai, summer wilts my breasts, my eyes, my belly.
I have no words behind words, no photo behind
repeated consumer snapshots.
A muse found in stupor earlier
recalls palm trees and now barren,
dissipates into civil wars and
awkward quarrels about love and duties.

And, nothing.
The bed a bed. The table a table. The couch a couch.
Wood, plastic, fabric.

Salt-water songs
Dubai, 3/2/2012

Lyrics swim in the forefront of your brow.
You concoct theories, radical,
you insist your heart is proof.
You lay claim to facts, such as,
salt dries faster as I bury more moons.
As if the body, shaking, holds on to its water.
As if drought makes eyes solid.
Teeth may chip but the gaze dams the pump,
builds borders against all that love left behind.
The sun shrivels what once evaporated slowly.
As if the body understands minerals are precious.
As if the soul knows weeping’s worth.
As if those who died in our arms were practice,
the hardening of impulsions, the
quietude of ache.
How noble, composure.
That grace under whirlpools.
That elegance in the undertow.
Pressure that doesn’t mount, a new world entire.
But, no.
Fiction slaps you, hard.
No one ages beyond the need for tears.
One nighttime song you may have forgotten,
slinks in, wrapped in sex and
laughter,
smacks coercion from faces adamant, hell bent on survival,
once a buried coral-hard reef,
now a lone rip current, free.

I Am No Palestinian
Farah Chamma

I am no courageous,
Fearless, valorous, gallant,
Proud, adventurous,
Selfless patriot
I am a soul in exile
Expressing my thoughts in
All languages but mine
” Hi…I am Palestinian”
” Salut…Je suis palestinienne”
I cut my mother tongue
In half
نصبت المبتدأ و لعنت أبو الخبر
كسرت الضمة التي ضمت ما بيننا
Palestinian poet
Rafeef Ziadeh was right when
She said
”Allow me to speak my Arab tongue
Before they occupy my language as well”
Well… to that I must add
Allow me to be the Arab
That I am
Allow me my right
To learn, to travel, to pray
Allow me to walk through any
Foreign street without having
To feel this shame
Without having to think twice
About my clothes, my face, my name
Or the visa I had to work
Day and night for the claim
Because at the end of the day
I am not the one to blame
For Bin Laden, 9/11, and all your
Other schemes and games
I am but a soul in exile
I am in no hall of fame
I have to opt to be
Someone I am not
Just to fit in your fame
Despite the agony I went through
Despite the struggles I overcame
Despite the diplomas, the degrees,
The awards I acclaim
I am still no Palestinian

No matter how many
” I love Palestine” stickers
I stick on my car
No matter how many times
I cry over Gaza
And argue over the Israeli settlements
No matter how many times
I curse the Zionists, blame the media,
And swear at the Arab leaders
I am still no Palestinian
Even if I memorize the
Names of all the Palestinian cities
Even if I recite Mahmood Darwiche’s
Poetry and draw Handala on my walls

Even as I stand here tonight
In front of you all
I am no Palestinian
أنا مش فلسطينية
And I might never ever be
And that’s exactly what
Makes the Palestinian
In me…

Infinite
(For everything that is over)
Dubai, 01/02/2012

crush of lassitude
longitude of screen solitary, electric
impulses
don’t glow that one curve of smirk your lips anchor
on my neck,
once offered,
or your fur brown of eyes unaccustomed to
open language
and its pitfalls
that abyss of my violent hands moving to fool the body into rigor
how the ashtrays fill up so quickly
throat still hollow
how wasted were all those muscles yearning
in my face
whether grimaces I sobbed haunted you
or smiles bewitched sadness
I robbed of your dreams
how nothing shifts in sleep scapes
dawn, no longer narrow,
how fat everything feels
the swell of fingers repels dry
exteriors
you could always find your path to stroke
my spine
reclined
as swing for merriment, my skin,
pool of aqua in my waist when all was
once shed rotten red
and sick yellow,
how even the trashcans fill up so quickly,
and I have more evening
and I have more morning
cheeks sallow
conversations in logic regurgitated
masticated in that gift of
infinite delicacy
of
friends who
empty out junkyards in my ribs,
who insist, despite the seeping bellow
that logic will stamp code rules on all this sorrow,
how I keep explaining of feet bereft, still peeking
behind stumbled movements of white
grey numb collision,
once mellow,
all drab setting of teeth ground against reason,
against limping to bedrooms empty,
mornings silent,
that peculiar lassitude of shoulders,
embraces, counted,
treasured,
now stored parchment crumbles,
age old love letters you never agreed to send,
hunger barking in stomachs
reading,
words, cheap,
words infinite,
vile words that twist, flare and echo.

Barren
Dubai, 28th, Jan 2012.

It is meant to be the animal will
the divine right
the one cry of my aging aunt against the light
the cupcakes in smeared chocolate
the small hugs in the dawn
the squeezing of hands at a doctor’s assessment
the unflinching fear of disease
and betrayal
the alarm clocks for school
the every every day of sameness
comfort and death in every
ritual
the one demand your Arab parents make
guilting you into procreation
and the flurry of midnight jaunts
now impossible
now absent,

the reason our thighs intersect
make musical wars
tempests of drums blaring pleasure
the only suitable adornment for my chest as skin graces skin
as gods would
laugh
or touch one another
or playfully banter
as heaven might feel under your feet
as only sleep can bring salvation
as morning sun is to forgetfulness
as the moon is to private weeping
all one day,
swept away by the toothless
miniscule smile
stamped by DNA
tarnished
or sane,
all loss diminished by a first word
or a tottering step of hesitation
and that mesmerizing ability to suddenly read,
upturned eyes with expressions interpreted best in
holy books
written in water
only by mothers
and fathers
perused for eternity by the type of love words can’t define,
measured by sacrifice prisoners of conscience
dare not put into memoirs,
spun silk like fingers clutching,
toes, five little perfect cherubs, drawn in grand design
I cannot will myself to decipher.

It is meant to be the meaning of woman
and man
the solution to decay
life ongoing, ever moving, a
machine so rampant
I am breathless at its beat,
at its harmony,
its brutal candor,
its bludgeoning of the senses, deprived of logic,
or rationale
or mathematical symmetry
or even humor.

It’s the completion of my breath,
the atonement of all sins,
the mirth of glee familial,
agony of responsible admonishment,
that unique creation of spirit separate from your body,
the frantic fear at every second
of every street intersection of
departure
and danger lurking
in even small plastic objects,
and in shadows of
bombs heralding horror,
and for those in war zones,
trees aflame
sky ablaze
the ground a funeral
not a playground,
not a landscape natural.
How do they do it?
How does skin extend?
How does the heart bulge to encompass lavishing nurture?
The pocket as deep as thoughts can grow?
The mouth vessel for wisdom
for punishment
for the lyrical naming of animals,
and clouds,
and clothes,
and continents
and galaxies,
and the explanation attempted at
feelings primal,
alleviation of hunger,
vital
for the type of caretaking without deadlines
or schedules
or tangible compensation
or fame
or fortune,
or the keeping at bay of real life monsters,
how do they do it?

I think of you
I think of you, my love,
that bed you sleep in,
those pillows I gathered,
far from my restless center,
the way our love created only embers,
the way our love created only questions,
unventured,
your brown eyes in memory
slowly diminished,
once proud,
sky bent,
now
as dull and as quiet
as chopped greyish lumber,
splintered
silences between us,
the lines forming on my face childless,
nothing but fear cavorting in our
dusty corners,
the hands we dislocated from one another,
the way our feet don’t curl up
in slumber,
and how
how do they all do it?

Maybe there really is no planning the future.
Maybe even poetry is incapable of committing to a suitable answer.
Maybe slow steaming love is decisions made
in afternoons of somber
sober reflection,
a careful ascension to personal thrones
of lineage
as grandeur,
and not that furnace we flung ourselves into,
lit brightly,
briefly illuminating a universe entire,
to be then a charcoal portrait
a work of splendor,
inanimate,
frozen,
extinguished and without name,
barren,
forgotten, without even a tremor.

For the days are all my own,
and the nights are all my own,
and I am as far as desire can go,
and as lost as the calling of wind takes me.

In the Womb
(For those with a penchant for ludicrous laws over my body)
Dubai,
16/01/2012

Hey you,
yes you, with that smirk on your lost face,
that beard you hide behind
those eyes of yours shrunk like whatever manhood remains
that manhood you think
can be inflated at my expense,
yes you, you
with the preaching
and your hemlock words
all that insidious pretentious posturing of wisdom you drape like a
sodden halo around your tired sense of self,
you think anything can stop my rampant galloping body?

Hey you,
yes you with the temper tantrum and the clenched fists,
you with the turgid failure that penetrates nothing but spaces of rape,
yes you, with your holy books
stained with putrid bigotry,
yes you,
you with your weeping failure of a mother,
and silent father, and your sons, faced glazed over with loss,
and daughters too pummeled to speak,
you with bank accounts as fraudulent security,
your nepotistic presidents as ammunition,
and guns as loudspeakers chanting faith,
and what you decree as heresy,
You,
you with your idolatry and persecution,
living on myths of what your ilk considered history,
consider this. Consider it at length, and with fear,
and finality.

My body can croon children to sleep,
to laughter,
to satisfied bellies of ecstasy,
can tumble through serene mountain slopes to rivers angry,
can jaunt across all the mental spheres you don’t notice
in your hurry, in your business suit, in
your pathetic finery,
can tell the world of love only glimpsed at in your stale heartbeat,
can tell time, and space and the angels to write poetry,
before banishing all that to
relegated abandoned memory,
can sing,
can dance like the moon never stopped rising,
like the water never dried,
like melody never had to stop pulsating,
like fruit hung off my tongue at every crossroad
of thighs, thrashing,
this body can thrust and yield,
can donate life and
can eradicate it,
can careen off the stars to land on your lips,
foolishly whimpering,
while I entwine the trees in my fingers,
my palms from heaven,
a rhapsody,
this body can conjugate verbs,
differentiate math equations and understand
biochemistry,
can bark orders at will, and embrace for eternity all disciples,
this body can run,
and swim,
and offer a thousand strokes of a smile,
healing medicine and witchery,
can laugh till all thunder dies down,
and can storm a lightening love wail to drown all our misery,
can reach across the table and hold the hand of a friend bereft,
can sew, and stitch all the places ravaged by lunacy,
can dream up constellations and sink to ocean depths of
harmony,
can revise all your sciences to a single snapshot of
the face of
mothers baking cookies,
and can inscribe political slogans of anger you
dare not even formulate, no matter
the savagery, the battery, the tyranny.

Hey you,
YES
you clamping to your skin what you may think is the word
NO
To all my unrepentant sluttery
sisterly
motherly
womanly bravery
all my effusive Arab prowess and seductive history,
you, you who may think
shackles become me,
or modesty,
or invisible self inflicted misogyny,
you who doubt that I can smear war paint
on my eyelids
at every bar in town,
slam dunk sentences of reprieving answers to
every cunning attempt,
every violating treachery,
you who think I cannot find my way home in the dark,
brandishing battle scars and
flourishing integrity,
yes you,
listen,
from your apathy,
snap open your slothful slumber and
barge a battering ram into your patriarchy,
fuck it,
send it slinked to a wormhole of contempt,
and our collective mockery.

This body,
my body,
was sculpted for months in a miracle in my
mother’s body,
was breathed out in a moment of sanctity,
was embraced for decades by her matriarchy,

how the fuck do you ever deign to suppose you can harness me.

Had you met my
mother, you
would bow your head in respect,
relinquish arms,
retreat,
sunken so called masculinity between useless limbs,
your terror arrested,
your decrees of lawful honor nothing more than
ancient tales
of useless
insane
banality.
Yes, you,
you
you aflush with that murderous lack of bravery.

Hinges
(For Damascus, whom I disliked, until she began bleeding)
Dubai, 24/12/2011

Today, in Damascus, they disgraced all memory of Jasmine,
they planted two sapling suicides to blossom not so far
from where my father thought the last
few breaths would be fragrant.
In a cycle of misunderstanding of all that is body and kisses and sunlight,
and the power of energy, and the harnessing of danger
into thoughts malignant in countries sodomized,
dying.
We never had a country.
Mourning one is a learning curve,
steeped in dazed arrivals and the whispered phone calls,
wondering at the I.
I have been dreaming of another old man, who by now is steeped in snow
and cataracts invading sight of skyscrapers baffling.
It was the beginning of winter, and the end of my journey,
and New York city a moody bitch lover, haranguing.
Somalia had been sinking, and in it, youth, and laughter.

I could not count on five fingers, the reasons for awakening.

The sentiment of yearning was atrocious, for
everywhere was dirt on streets, prevalent,
the tourists hungry.
Who was I, young once and inflamed by limbs orgasming on motion?

Here again, and again, was the subway, careening
off dungeons imagined,
bequeathed to nothing but rats and the silences of strangers,
private tiny suffering held in Pathmark booklets of
coupon cutouts of cheese rations,
and the homeless mingling with the high, and the beckoning
of brown arms sexy,
preaching
the crisscross of the Brooklyn child’s braids as
her watery eyes connived understanding of the
words,
safe, danger, mommy.
I held my belly, its roundness gesturing all that is female,
and torpor, all that is
enveloping organs pumping thought matter
shattered as splintered coke cans squished by teenage
boys oblivious to but her temporary parted lips,
how the gloss
on them tempting made sucking noises when they
dove in for the kiss, public,
and how resurfacing for air amongst a hurtling carriage
was akin to an opera of pining.
A young man in dreads wrote a poem,
misspelt on his smart phone, his ignorance
forever divine in the attempt at memory, lucid
harmony of all his melancholy.
And then I saw him,
I saw the old man in rush hour, and I
stifled physical interference in the natural play
of place taking, sitting, standing, the breathing of
stale air and humidity,
the restless shifting of eyes surveying a jungle
in a carriage meaning
swollen feet could throb a little less,
hands that jittered could be subdued,
the daily hustling rested on metal
and other warm skin, the race perhaps on pause,
the thievery of hope,
reclining.
He hobbled softly, a slow move
towards the one small seat left, panacea- oh, thank god-
balm, resurrection, justice, equality.
I may have had blood
lust jousting between my eyes and all others watching.
I dared them make a
move to his little haven of repose,
and the sanctity of aiding the elderly.

He must have been well over eighty.

His hat, pink and frayed, said
“20 years anniversary for the walk for Aids”.
I wondered where he got it, a thrift
store, the trash can, the memorial for his
nephew blighted by new diseases and all this modernity.
Oh and then. Then.
He sat. He sat. He sat.
I noticed hearing aids in
hairy ears flapping against lined cheeks, crusty skin
denoting a New York life, far from simple, far from levity.
I kept staring, as
tremors of faith shot up my arms, swelled
my flat chest,
gave forth to a smile, the weight
of bags I carried, a burden
lightened, a thrill
so minute, so infinitesimal, so pretty, I did not speak,
nor prayed, nor sang gospel songs of
gratitude, but a mere
breath let itself fall for the first time that day,
as the old man clutched his tote bag closer to him and stared intently at nothing.

Suddenly,
he saw my eyes gawking at him. Instantly,
and without thought, within a split
instinctive second of brevity, he stood up and offered me his seat,
chivalry,
love,
god like bravery, simple everyday kindness and mercy,
majesty.
He must have been eighty.
Oh Father, how I loved you.

And I trembled and I startled.
And I gasped, assured him with pure physical idolatry
that- never never- he sat back,
-please sit sir, never never-
down and looked away, and I,
had healed Africa, returned my
mother to her sunlit window in Damascus
to read her DH Lawrence, had given my father
a new contract for youth,
I had witnessed the revolution of peasants against monarchy,
Palestine was a beloved land,
nothing but honey seeped from her blisters,
and nothing but morning silence yielded dreams on
faces of mothers and fathers and
vanquished was the power of their merkavas and money,
and my sister was but a doe-eyed dear flitting in forests serene,
my lungs alchemied nothing but serenity,
New York had not been raped,
Iraq had not been raped,
and every man I ever loved had
never cried because of me,
there was no nuclear bomb to fear,
and there were no cluster bombs left
in Lebanon, our bodies were revered,
and suddenly suddenly,
suddenly suddenly, we lived
forever, and glare in the harsh day we feared
was pure reflections off children’s
faces,
running wildly, never having known a ghetto,
or rancid poverty-
Suddenly, suddenly,
I stepped off the train in a daze,
there may have been an escalator, New York
at Columbus Circle on 59th, was all
Central Park beauty,
flourish, wealth and complexity,
the road had flowers instead of arrows,
people kissed instead of hissed
on turbulent phones,
and as the wind cuddled
leaves bursting fertility with yellow, orange,
red fire of heaven and all her
palette of divinity,
I could not feel my feet as
they tread paths, silent,
all inside poetic,
all purpose clear,
my heart, steady, steady.
Be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a battle.
What cliché,
what truth,
what calamity.

than to be sweaty and flushed with words in the lap of a hot writer, elsewhere.

The following is how I feel about moonlight. You get a silver star if you finish it. I wont bet on it! I will have to chop this rant in half, soon.

For you, the moon.
Iowa City, October 2011.

I love the dark.
The mental synapses can be illuminated in ways that
matter,
open are foreheads to the galaxies.
To the birds, the trees, the trash littering rivers,
imprint in sobriety the flower you couldn’t believe bloomed
there.
But,
but my physical body seeks
contrast,
pockets of spillage,
light leaking to haunt you.

Skip behind little flames.
Light a candle for all that you have lost.
Weep whenever you can.

Let him touch you where he wants,
the flicker of motion gives renewal, both
light and your bodies have much in common.

You can proclaim love,
hidden behind bobbing lanterns on a river if you wish a
postcard for the moment.

Let the humid summer night insects glow occasionally to
guide you.

The street corners are shade,
are temples of all your familiars. Undress as you should,
the skirt barely lifted by a breeze, his eyes burst with
recognition
premonition
a love story can be born in cracks of walls,
by alleys, hushed
voices their own galaxy.

The sun benevolent to his brown
face while a shadow protects all that
alabaster in her, and on
her, and in her spring,
the steps she takes,
a clothes line,
fluttering she is,
pinned
to it are her half-snapped photographs,
the woman is a phantom when you tighten your
chest to remember her, the dart
of her glances is all answers.

 
You know she was singing.

 
You send prayers to the light changes, for her
appearance, savior.

Think of sunsets.

All the many you promised yourself you’d stamp on your
inside
forever, while they slipped
to the necessary
housekeeping of the soul.
The sun dissolving into a palette without borders,
degrading into space,
now you can start.

In a poem about love in the dark,
one cannot but display the word,
lurk.
Yes, lurk around the hallways of his privacy.
Leave a glimmering part of yourself to mesh with his
interiors,
the walls he has are now only places where she has
existed,
no more than that.

Stare at the face of your child in perfect darkness,
you might still learn forever the contours.

Perhaps the way the window pane reflects his eyes is
answer,
in a slash of light errant.
There must be welcomed intrusion of
day, refracted
the way his eyes crinkle at the edges, reminds
you perhaps of your first love,
the one that was not and yet you are so full of being,
staring at a window, thinking of a tattooed woman
reading poetry to her last love.

His knee should be dipped in darkness,
his not giving bare the stripped body in
noon light but a fortress
of somber shadows to adorn it,
the way I could move like a ghost in your bed,
slithered vital
conversations, half a dream away.

I would rather, my love,
the infinite repose of soles in sand on
afternoons where kissing the sun
is possible, her molten lips simmering, warming
yours like that one grasped soft hand
under the sheets, asleep
in December.  You can
lick the sun, when
the world is behind us,
our day vanished, like another planet.

Give the physical body not
the laboring of midday excursions, where baring the self
is endemic, the loss of power.
Their faces bleached by the direct rays
and when they rest,
to breathe, they
sweat,
maybe silent.

For me, the languid talk of dew, the desert evening,
dark skin a mattress,
my fingers a scorpion.

 
The nurtured annotations on my scarred skin are mine.
For you,
the fantasy of shadows.

Words can be chosen to lighten
and
fasten all the loose ends lost by this fluid
dance in the dark I love.
And you could say anything to me.

I can listen
and even the bed sheets do, and that bottle of lavender,
the books steal your lines,
and our invisible sleep.

Cluster to one’s self in daylight, where
the face prepares for night.
Release of its alertness,
the jumbled colors have left the sunset to swim sepia
over your smile.

I can see your tongue peek
out, so very
faintly,
rumbling in my chest is awareness
of its taste.  You can
still see love, in enclosure, black.
Silver.
 

Grey
Yellow ripples
Moss green, color of rot
sometimes, are the brushed strokes of
nighttime.

 
Do not speak to me of your mistrust of darkness.

Look,
bathe in orange by the street lamp, restless
to throw its body
around yours, hard metal to all her curves, the hardness
within you,
eroding.

Find
the nearest wall,
pin a moment,
your feet firmly planted, the
night- suddenly, lava.

Consider existing in the night. Consider language.
That unwinding of
all that is responsible,
all those allowances-
please fall into yourself, you
have lost all the clocks they gave you.

Bury work,
that gnaws at your 2 pm hunger,
and the daily sandwich,
coffee a respite in that loop you may find yourself in,
but the night, well my love,
the night knows
how to have its differences.
A fingerprint.

Even you, touching my thigh absent mindedly
reading a gorgeous
book that isolates me, even you,
beautiful sleepy you,
aren’t here tomorrow.

 
Try living in the shadows, in the
backs of rooms perhaps,
letting poetry tell you in huddled stolen
stories, eyes sting
and wonder, all you
could ever need to muster
of a sudden understanding of the other,
and the smallness of physical separation,
and solitary exhaustion,
fall into a poem whose words can fit her hips, when she
sleeps.
Remember.

In the dark, some plants glow.

In the dark, plants can grow,
and music is made
by millions,
to save you. Try listening to the same music in
moonlight,
and keep only few
around,
note the sensation that you are altered, possibly
transfixed in one plateau, or suddenly
able to hold her hand, or
toss her on a bed, or
crawl up her navel,
smash sofa edges to the mercy of her stretched neck,
where only that
and music, is a planet that you own, a
home that can save you, the continuous burning of a
resurrected altar.
 

Every night, small awaiting of finitude,
dreams
little deaths of the daily I, who
are we, those passengers of tales we
ascribe to our inner, constant elusive of all your
hallways in the personal architecture,
giving the night only palor,
and ardor, and fervor to claim
the word “shadows” beyond the etymology of
mere parlance of the word
Sunlight.

The night
and its dark is separate
cellular matter, a
universe, the rules once attempted, now
a drifting planet
where you are creator, and yet also the murdered by dawn,
conquered.
 
Give me the cool of your language at dawn.
The half profile of you,
sentences tumbling at discreet intervals, my
parted sides contained by the way your eyes are a mirror.
Touch me,
I can see you.
For me, give me the nights you could not sleep,
and not the mornings after,
not
the days where death openly saunters,
mocking our expressions,
our dry eyes unblinking,
squinting,
parched for the possibility of water on the moon.

Wild Geese

Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Iowa City blues

Iowa city, 17^th Sept, 2011.

That river, once blue in your mind’s eye, is swirling mud green,

you can feel the squelch in your toes and

the vile teeth of creatures that mean you harm, even

if distant, even if voiceless.

The clouds are in gestation, their grey omnipotence harkens

whirling gusts of sorrow.

Please rain. Perhaps that will distract from

a small desert I have put through a sieve,

inside my gathered splintered spaces.

There was a promise once made to never write of nature, but

a midwest rakes a brow,

unending,

and there is an understanding of why they wrote of birds and flowers.

I would like to write of your shoulders and

other homes I have relinquished.

I would write of wars enclosing,

and even your words would be part of that assault.

But the clouds are pregnant with witness,

I share a landscape with no one but my sobriety, and on days like this,

the flushed rose of hips is alchemy, now blubber, where

beached whales of my perception of self are choking on a bed,

charting an ocean between us.

I promised to not write of the river, but

but water is reflective, and

it has not rained.

I wanted to write and tell you about Pittsburgh and Sonia Sanchez. Her genius. She is 77 years old and put on a roaring show. The energy vibrating through her was ricocheted all throughout our bodies and smiles. She eats macrobiotic food and hugs everyone. Called me sister. Is there anything more beautiful than the African American habit of calling each other sister and brother?

I could have told you about the audience. And how shiny I felt, on the inside. How many people loved Palestine and came up to me in tears after, to say so. What a blessed experience. I don’t have the will power and the inspiration to write a lot today.

I have fallen in love with Stephen Dunn. It is official. I always suspected it, but now it is confirmed. I don’t care if he is in his fifties, married, with kids and way out of my league, I have fallen in love with Stephen Dunn. I will write something this week about how he took over my brain for two days, probably why I am not in any shape to write much today…

Here are some poems. It is impossible to pick ones that would explain how reading an entire book makes one feel. Its not fair, to choose a couple. I have previously posted some of my favorites. A little (lengthy) stalking of this blog will send you back to them. Yes, yes, I know I should start tagging. Sigh.

Sister

The sister I never had
enters my wife when I am
sleeping next to her.
So many times
I’ve watched my sister
come from her separate room,
the room that long ago
in a house of brothers
was an extra room
down the hall from where
I would dream her alive.
She climbs into bed
on my wife’s side
and I touch my wife awake
for now my sister and she
are the woman I must talk to
about incompleteness and love.
Awake, she doesn’t know
my sister is in her,
she doesn’t know why my embrace
has so much gratefulness in it,
why my questions are all
whispered as if
a father could overhear us.
She thinks I want to
make love but I remove
her hand and hold it,
ask another question
about high school and loss,
the kind of loss
that repeats itself every day
like being born
without a leg.
I watch my sister leave
as my wife takes me
in her arms, says hush
you’ve been talking again,
sleep now,
and I curl into her
as if it were possible
she could be everything to me,
alone like this,
just ourselves.

Beautiful Women

More things come to them,

and they have more to hide.
All around them: mirrors, eyes.
In any case
they are different from other women
and like great athletes have trouble
making friends, and trusting a world
quick to praise.

I admit without shame
I’m talking about superficial beauty,
the beauty unmistakable
to the honest eye, which causes
some of us to pivot and to dream,
to tremble before we dial.

Intelligence warmed by generosity
is inner beauty, and what’s worse
some physically beautiful women have it,
and we have to be strapped and handcuffed
to the mast, or be ruined.

But I don’t want to talk of inner beauty,
it’s the correct way to talk
and I’d feel too good
about myself, like a parishoner.
Now, in fact,
I feel like I’m talking
to a strange beautiful woman at a bar, I’m
animated, I’m wearing that little fixed
smile, I might say anything at all.

Still, it’s better to treat a beautiful woman
as if she were normal, one of many.
She’ll be impressed that you’re unimpressed,
might start to lean your way.
This is especially true if she has aged
into beauty, for she will have learned
the sweet gestures one learns
in a lifetime of seeking love.
Lucky is the lover of such a woman
and lucky the woman herself.

Beautiful women who’ve been beautiful girls
are often in some tower of themselves
waiting for us to make the long climb.

But let us have sympathy for the loneliness
of beautiful women.
Let us have no contempt for their
immense privilege, or for the fact
that they never can be wholly ours.

It is not astonishing
when the scared little girl in all of them
says here I am, or when they weep.
But we are always astonished by what
beautiful women do.

“Boxers punch harder when women are around,”
Kenneth Patchen said. Think what happens
when beautiful women are around.
We do not question
that a thousand ships were launched.

In the eye of the beholder? A platitude.
A beautiful woman enters a room,
and everyone beholds. Geography changes.
We watch her everywhere she goes.
-Stephen Dunn

Waiting with Two Members of a Motorcycle Gang for My Child to Be Born

by Stephen Dunn.

I was talking to “The Eliminators”
when you were born,
two of them, high as slag heaps and
uncles to be,
all in black for the occasion,
All you wanted was out;
you couldn’t have known that you
were Life;
when you came, or that your father
was let loose
from graduate school, a believer
in symbols.
I expected “The Eliminators” to
disappear, snuffed out
by a stronger force, a white tornado
of my own.
That’s not what happens, though,
in life
as you will learn. They smiled when
they heard of you
and shook my hand. And another time
it might
have been my head. May you turn
stone, my daughter,
into silk. May you make men better
than they are.

some things i wanted to say to you

If the horse that you ride

is blind it’s good

that it also be slow,

and please stroke it

a hundred more times than you would

the powerful dazzling one.

To be generous is one thing,

but there’s a clerk in some of us,

quick to say yes.

Worry about the command

in the suggestion.

Worry about smiles, and those men

whose business is business.

There are joys and enigmas

of an evening alone

to appreciate.

There are always the simple events

of your life

that you might try to convert

into legend.

Did you know

a good dog in your house

can make you more thoughtful,

even more moral?

And sex without conversation,

sex that’s erotic or sleepy…

oh don’t let anybody tell you

there’s a wrong way to have it.

Tell your lovers the world

robs us is so many ways

that a caress is your way

of taking something back.

Tell the dogs and the horses

you love them more than cars.

Speak to everything

would be my advice.

I wrote this poem a few days ago, not sure why. I am on my way to perform poetry at the City Of Asylum Jazz poetry festival in Pittsburgh. I have to choose a poem that a jazz collective will play to. Sounds a little frightening. I havent chosen the poem, I cant seem to. Should I be Palestinian? Or a lover? or a mourning daughter? or none of the above.

You get one shot to claim a persona for an audience of strangers. I might leave the choice for another person to make.

It is dangerous living with nothing but poetry on your mind. Everything real is so distant and I know the crash is coming. But what delight to have the labour of your day fulfilled by emails for poetry, blog posts on poetry, plane rides for poetry, updates to letters on poetry, and the reading of poetry on airplanes, turbulent.

I may have died a little and gone to language heaven. It will be a rude awakening come November.

Shower

Iowa City, Sept 6^th, 2011

I have littered the room with cups of coffee,

all bits of bitter sludge

in the attempt aftermath,

all almost-but-not-finished.

At night, the scent of hazelnut- fake chemical- is noxious

in the room, but I keep them,

thinking maybe less sleep

is a gift given or dream interrupted or a chemically induced state of

resurrection of self.

Instead,

I have vacuumed into my belly a hundred poems today

in torpor and angst

the arms ache from shaking across screens -transcendent lines-

whose words now combust with the radioactive

remains of all that brown sugar and late night thoughts of kisses I digest,

but even after this cleanup,

nothing is clean

not yet

sentences wobble on dust motes

the sun is phosphor glowing through

drooped eyelids stubborn but the rain would have told better

stories- I know, I have read them-

I tried to sleep

I am not sure if the poem is what always awakens you.

But the body must rise,

brush off the orange and purple

glance discreetly at the mute TV where they can sell me myself,

when I have lost everything. The body must rise and not stop to wonder-

who are these people yanking and shoving and screaming their lives out, like soda pop water, my mother used to always warn…It’s nothing but water and sugar and will rot your teeth..here, some fruit…how could they also share a world where your remembered lips are still so round, little tongue, mango fuzz,  clean, little slip triangular at my unbecoming blushing, the dismantlement of all resolutions of resolve, the opening of thighs for life anew -

the body must rise, even to cold coffee cups and

a swollen tongue,

lingering of bitterness, teeth shooting complaints, fire.

Unfetter the eyes from glasses,

the hair from wrapped entanglement,

run water

run water

run water on everything you could not heal with a hundred poems.

Be naked with the silent TV, outside your

bathroom, where you question

your waistline

and how far your fingers can reach.

Then you must paint.

And

sew

and lace the body further -prettier, smarter, softer, healthier, stronger, better, feistier, forever-

set the sun outside for yet another meeting

of literary minds

who will speak of such calamities- of thousands killed in buildings that reflected another sunset-

your own longing

is minute now, a tremor.

Perhaps, you think, I can still learn something,

which is not read by a sorceress from the remains of a

coffee cup, the

way your grandma used to –the passing down of her Nazarene dreams,  her warnings-

you should be able now to hear the door crashing behind you,

don’t forget your eyeliner -armor-

and you must then

-this here might need some preparation-

say thank you to the man who opens the hotel front door,

and you must find the right sentence that commands thighs to other motion,

and you must walk,

even after having spoken to no one,

even after being without.

(I only realized how appropriate the title of the full poem was, till now. Magic, it exists. I swear.)

September Notebook: Stories

Robert Hass

He found that it was no good trying to tell

what happened that day. Everything he said

seemed fictional the moment that he said it,

the rain, the scent of her hair, what she said

as she was leaving, and why it was important

for him to explain that the car had been parked

under eucalyptus on a hillside, and how velvety

and blurred the trees looked through the windshield;

not, he said, that making fictions might not be

the best way of getting at it, but that nothing he said

had the brute, abject, unassimilated quality

of a wounding experience: the ego in any telling

was already seeing itself as a character, and a character,

he said, was exactly what he was not at that moment,

even as he kept wanting to explain to someone,

to whomever would listen, that she had closed the door

so quietly and so firmly that the beads of rain

on the side window didn’t even quiver.