The Dark Pages of Time

It was half dark then.
We walked when we were awake,
hoping to find the everlasting
day, warm and bright.
The moon our lamp and we
did not know why or how
it got there nor why
it was so stingy with us.
Was a long time before
the first fires, still longer
until we took the leaves and branches
and lit them up, threw our heavy coats off and still longer
until we stored the dried up brew
from the massive cups of water
we had to drink against our wills,
our platforms sloshing, animals rutting
and most of the draught too bitter to swallow.
Still it was even longer
before we said our graces
so intent we were, on survival,
our eyes glazed over at the flickers,
no need for memory or prediction,
which came next. Our pictures
made of blood and boiled roots
splayed lonely in the sooted caves
once we left them but we hoped,
we did hope for a companion
who would search us out on our trek
which we called with our tongue
the bitter enemy or simply,
the deliverance. Idiosyncratic stories
cropped up and helped us to settle
the places of reap and sow. Fighting
began slowly over putrefying fats,
black pools of no return that lit the way.
Cess pools of death and destruction
where each fire was a tiny star
between fantastic distances,
each star a little soul or a village.
The fuel of the fire, man
it said. Some of us listened
and some of us were instructed
by the melting stones appearing
from the sky in strange, indefinite interims.
We hoped to catch the brittle cracks
between the smokes above our heads
to no avail. We named the hopeless condition
war and the fullness of our caves peace.
Language a weak reminder
for the darkness we thought to leave behind.

Wish You Were Here

This week has been to hell and back,
the Battle of Siffin, seventy thousand dead
and a box of turkish sweets from the man below,
a gift from his mom in Homs.
Our movements restricted today, the Ouzai
a swamp of irritated driving, taped up
Datsuns and big black Hummers,
entourages at three, who was that?
The big boss somewhere and the way they go!
Little painters and plumbers flying
out of the Combine. To hell and back.
I tried to get off but it just wouldn't let me.
Like all rivers, it has a mind of its own.
The daytime bewitchments, the billboard girls
their silly panties blacked out. Their languid
stares and adornments, tall cowboys
smoking cigarettes, and roadside tomatoes, -
which one, which one! Racing to heaven
or to hell, trying hard to get off it
but the eddies run into back alleys
and stay in corners full of more back-up,
what the city ate for the day.
Makes the Siffin look gorgeous.

rerider

Next to Ginsberg
I sat next to Ginsberg in the Sacred Heart,
saw King Fahed being ushered into the ER
wrapped in a pink blanket to disguise him,
he pee'd on my friend in the ICU.
Jack Nicholson ordered coffee from me once
at the Little America Truckstop in Flag,
a pack of cigarettes rolled up
in the sleeve of his black t-shirt
(then he started marrying waitresses).
I lived next door to a man that was
beheaded for building Apaches.
My husband ran into Gene Hackman at the Taj Majal
and Elvira let him encircle her for a picture
down in Atlanta at a convention.
Someone I know told me Goldie Hawn was a real bitch
in a five star hotel and Kurt was as handsome
as he was in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
(which I mistakenly called, The Computer War Tennis Shoes)
and Steve Pearl told me the Dalai Lama would visit
the city park and I hoped to be able to pet him.


A poem about ignorance and destiny. Sad but merry at the end there.
In Memory of Paul Johnson, beheaded by Al Qaeda operatives
in Riyadh. It seems many years ago now.

Uncle Jafar the scholar of Nahjul Balaga serving tea with his father beside him. 

BEIRUT ASSASSIN LEAVES MARK

The cocks were storm-crowing that morning
after a real long spell of total
environmental darkness. Two broughams sped by.

(In the land of the prophets
the angels talk out-loud,
people pretend not to notice.
Here it is the status quo.)

All the clocks whirred with quick sighs.
At sunset the clouds were full of the dust.
On the sand hundreds of lovers were kissing
out in the open. Everyone was buying
flowers and the coffee carts were brimming
with hot fluids and stale remedies to the skies.

Then everything just stopped. Windows fell
apart and people ran home, started looking.
Zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out.
I felt around for my watch to note the time.
School was letting out and I compared JFK,
that unholy day to this one. Must have been similar.

Shapely forms felt their way toward the horizons
and the same herd of goats crossed my path twice.
No more luck, no more money, no more beadsmen.
The predictions are always keen to usurp everyone
and the last unlucky man born will tremble
near a pitcher of water and a set of lost keys.
This benediction quieted all the kinfolk
and the rich slept closer to their quarters
but it does take some time, perhaps forever.
The poor remain indifferent.

One man was found two weeks later in the rubble,
pointing in one direction, holding his cell.
No one called out the dogs because it is said
the canines ate the corpses in Sabra and Shatilla.

I wonder.. to whom he was speaking,
where was he pointing?

Of Cantaloupes and Rings

The origin of cantaloupe rooted
there with the fallacy of rings,
ring bearers, divine right
and the House of God, those heirs.

We were at the end of grocery billing,
past the lettuce and onions,
past all the paper and cheese
when he looked up and declared,
"We paid a penny more for the tuna
than we should." Treaties,
oppressions and misers, fat kings.

As the army neared Kerbala
circling around searching
for water and aid and shelter
Abbas, nine years old at the time
only nine years old and nubile,
as nubile as David in Rome,
he'd lose his head and they, the ring.
Long time ago now.

Shammam. This is a shammam.
This one is for fifty cents,
this one is a dollar. This one was grown here
the other is frangee, an import.
How much did you pay for the shammam
she said and I answered her, a king's ransom.
"Yet they are both the same!" as she shook her head.
Any old ring and the same old melon.

Where is the penny and where is the ring?
A young man is hurrying to a station
in the deep south, determined to ship out.
They've no money for his ticket
and he comes back. In Kerbala
they fed camels the rinds of shammam
and one wore a ring.
When at last he will travel,
this young GI to Kerbala, he won't know
the origin of shammam, won't know it from the ring.

http://tattoosinblue.blogspot.com/

Highly recommended poetry here. Tastes good and it's good for you.

Welcome to Carmen's blog. Carmen is a cat and I have to type for her, write for her and take pictures for her. This is what she sees about the world she lives in and she is one well travelled cat. Welcome to here.

Carmen was as usual sitting at the computer desk and discovered this blog:

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

She thought it was a wonderful idea and thought there were many funny things that people say in secret. You might want to go there and check it out and maybe even, tell them some of your secrets. My secret is that this isn't really Carmen's blog. I'm just saying that because I am ashamed of blogging. Bleck!

Got Milk!

Got Milk!
Originally uploaded by barkdog_sa.

Some guy ripping off the Milk Council.

Druze Leader Walid Jumblatt

Walid Jumblatt sharpened
Originally uploaded by barkdog_sa.

He said (as keynote speaker at my daughter's graduation) that when he graduated from high school over two decades before, he had no idea he would become a Warlord.

I used to think that was funny. And true. But then I remembered his father's assassination and thought, "Come on buddy, you've got to be joking. You are old money!"

The Grandparent's Bed

Bed2
Originally uploaded by barkdog_sa.

Grandma

Grandma
Originally uploaded by barkdog_sa.

Ode to My Monster

There you are my little Frankenstein,
I birthed you in marriage,
a village boy who read the garbage for news.
I was better then, even when you cursed
all my living relatives and some of the dead.
We didn't know much then about creation did we?
You, my old glove. My masterpiece.
I, your beloved wife, your help-meet.
How I pray you'll live beyond me
so I don't have to cry when you go
but then I think, I couldn't do that to you either.
So the next best thing is to stage a duel.
That's it, we'll just trust our instincts.
Yesterday, I napped in front of your grandparents
while they fought. I was at peace.
The old man stoked his fire. Your grandmother cried.
They were waiting for each other to go.

Lot's Wife

Hully Gully
Originally uploaded by barkdog_sa.

San Pantaleone Sees Anne Sexton On The Corniche In Beirut

Becoming a parody of oneself is not so bad when you figure everything is a bit fetish, the tickling tease of the ego." - Dr. Soandso, 1990, Commencement address, Bryn Mawr: "The history of stereographic photos revealing ladies' bloomers and the moral controversies of our time."

Oh that divine itch!

The fuel of the fire, man
-the fractional distillation
-the rising to the top
-the sparkling rumination.

Oh that jet fuel!
How it makes us fly!

A system of clockwork,
spins its spine,
the Hurly Gurly
at Lunatic Park,
the Hurly Gurly
at Lunatic Park,
ferris wheel and gypsy
in our hokey hoboken
on the boardwalk
lit up in the dark,
the sea is waiting
to see under her skirt
her frantic nipples
and her eyes so alert!

Our Hurly Gurly of Lunatic Park.


http://www.sundress.net/wickedalice/sanpanteleone.html