Oriental Storms

I

What would be good here is to sleep through the hierarchy
let it rip open by itself and all alone in itself
without me to introduce it to my voice, the sleep one
which chatters into the nonsense of nonwaking, the miracle
of losing touch next to the boulder breathing, cat purring
the whizz of appliances at night, snap of the clocks each
per room divided into the drops of faucets and drains,
each passing unnoticed falls into the curvature of a steady building
on this precipice near the sea of hidden color.

II

buzz drip drop whizz galore
a symphonic clause of night
the cat bats around a piece of plastic
the wind rattles the big metal door
occasionally a jet removes itself
the anxious boarded people sit strapped
if only one could see them there
praying good lord praying
don't fall into the sea, don't drop
the wind rattles entire shackled tenements
runs in a river through the shafts
chimneys full of air until the glass
shakes like a fun house mirror
lightning over in the west
part of it from Istanbul some of it
having touched the Hagia Sofia
where the cistern serves water
to the dead, the big door arched
over one thousand kings and consorts
and the small side doors for the poor.
Cisterns and drains, the same.


III

Just back from Turkey eh?
Food was great. We spent Saturday waiting in the car
for the business men. Against the law she said
for covered women to enter the government buildings!
Yes I said, that was Kemal Ataturk's business.
We sat up in the hotel bar, we could see everything
but not the Bosphorus, stood near the double bridge
Asia and Europe, you did? Couldn't enter the mosque
because we'd just had sex at the hotel and a drink
but that is a tourist attraction anymore I said
she didn't know nor did she know
to buy a ticket to see St John's arm encased
in a golden jacket, absconded with by the Turks.
Five days of eating at restaurants.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

IV

buzz drip drop whizz galore
the whizz of appliances at night
the cistern talks to the bottom
of the catacomb
each eye closed for a time to the miracle
of losing touch
another jet to Istanbul on takeoff
the wind whips the big metal door
the heater off and cold
and out there, the sea without a color
under lightning, under these oriental storms.