Muqawama Central. Colonialism. Lectures about same. Yawn is right. Time is short. It doesn't wait for your talent to show up but it does bypass you when your talent moves into the past. Poems are pictures to me. They must have balance. They must have some implications. They must have some depth of field consciously selected for its contradictions. They must have composition that makes some sort of sense. They must appeal to the dumbest person in the dumbest ways and to the intellect of the dumbest persons in the smartest ways. Furthermore they should scare the crap out of a paranoid person smart or dumb or of middling intelligence.

This dime-store effort isn't much and the back story of it is....the cop down in the "round-about" hahaha just like the traffic circle in Lowell, Bisbee which had its old name unceremoniously dumped to favor the more exotic European look: roundabout. In Riyadh we called them "death circles". But back to the game. I drove a bit further down to take that shot of a blind Palestinian monk's banner which is juxtaposed near a Coke sign and that of our very own Nabih Berri, another warlord of great renown (Coke is Imperialism they used to say around here but now they drink it, no more black marketeers like Fred Tarr the trucker of the ancients). I stood down from my mighty Range Rover (white as is usually the case with stallions) and whaddya suppose happened next? A nice French Colonial Attired officer walked towards me to get my phone number and a bit of INFO. Info like that guy who was getting INFO from me on the hill in Aramoun one day and pulled his Shia Rock out of his pocket to prove he was a Shia Info Taker (like yea right, all us Shia's carry our Sutra in our pockets nowdays, a kind of ID or something, not!). I, a bit miffed, started fumbling with my latches and locks to get back into my stallion, my Trojan Horse (at least he thought so) and whaddya think happens next? Another person of whatever designation, pokes his head through the blinder space (passenger side window) of my mount to give me a piece of his mind and get his INFO. Scared isn't the word for it. I wasn't even that scared when I went to the Police Station in Turkey and cried over Kamal Ataturk's strange resemblance to Count Dracula and drank such lovely Apple Tea....I was indeed scared. Thank god for automatic locks and latches. Shut down. Drive on. And watch that black Mercedes follow in the Rear View Mirror for a while. Stopping all the while to take poems in a camera at the various rest stops where the youngins are commemorated. He finally left, my companion. He finally gave up the chase when he knew it was impossible to go unnoticed. Somewhere around C'ana, the place of the mighty massacre of '96 (Grapes of Wrath, Israeli Massacre at UN depot Southern Lebanon). Why are people so confused about all of this? Because they don't think. They simply don't think. They ASSUME. And that is what good poets make use of. Assumptions. And time doesn't wait for you to make a decision, come to a conclusion.

Artistic decisions are usually best made at a fast pace with little use for the intellect and more use for the eyes. The eyes tell it like it is and the heart guides a person to a fondness for certain beauties, certain masterpieces of society. Not a control of the Language which is never fully understood, never fully utilized and certainly, never fully invited.

It just come on in.