Dear Redacted

We are home as of 1 am July 24. EXACTLY one year after we arrived..to the day...from our terrible war adventure.

It was a long hard trip (redacted). Good and bad...mostly closure of some things. Letting go of the ideal of "expatriatism" for now. It has been my central motivation and I realize now that I must move forward and I must move in this direction and at this pace.

What to do. The Middle East is a downright catastrophe and as well, it is the will of the Lord. I know that but it doesn't necessarily make it any easier to watch from these plush and verdant sidelines in Bisbee AZ.

More to be revealed...I hope you are well and up to your usual practices of working hard. I've got so much to do in the next few weeks in order to get my middle one Sarah booked into a decent university. She was accepted at both the U of A and NAU so that is all fine and good. The U of A did pull a nasty trick on us though and asked for a domicile affidavit since they must have had dark suspicions about her citizenship. When I got the lady on the phone of course...she heard my voice and my double yas were typically Arizonianisms and she got Sarah accepted within minutes. Imagine that! Only moments before she was told that her file was under review and she wouldn't have an answer for at least two weeks. Huh? I told Sarah to get back on the phone and we'll speak to someone who understands what it means to request priveledged information prior to having the authority to do so (domicile statements). It's amazing what a True Blue Double Ya will get you nowdays at our lovely public universities like the University of Arizona which is actually a private institution but the bigots there just don't tell the taxpayers so..they keep insisting that it is public but we old rednecks down here know the GD Truth about it all. It was the craziest thing and we put down the phone and I told Sarah: You've just been discriminated against for being an Arab. Get used to it and be calm and ingratiating...people are so stupid (redacted). Americans are at the bottom of the food chain only they still believe they got something going up top. Man.

The meek shall inherit the earth....


but when?

All my bestests

Me

Some Back Stories of Years Gone By:

Notes of City Sheperds

This land is written
by the indigenous
flowers and broad-striped
fish, terrain split by rivers
in hand-tilled land.
Great patchwork fields
become deeds forever
tucked into blankets.
On and on so balances
feign universe like this,
bi and tri lingual.
The mass of ocean
measures time against
sand, so entranced.
Washed stones strike
in salty kilns the others,
the smooth and rocky
exile, this forgery
and treason.

Chorus:

This border of our land
runs ragged to tarmac
near city maze.
North wind sculpts
with horse hair bow
in silence everlasting.
Dry down the daisy
in limestone rock
perched accidently there.

Sing: our misery in shepherd
gapes open to the sea.


This map a cold front
is a coda, to an end
it points.
Spring falls from
trees to apple blossom.
Peat steams joy for screams
in breaths forgotten,
these of foreigners
built into boots
of perfect straw.
Where we have been
in order to go
silent and single filed?
Whirl down
our set of stairs
into calcitic waters
to rise like light
from wells inside wells.

So wait our magical bones,
things unspeakable,
in! swallowed the skin.
Miracles of tedium,
quick fingers in violin.

Second Chorus:

This border of our land
runs ragged to tarmac
near city maze.
North wind sculpts
with horse hair bow
the silence everlasting.
Dry down the daisy
in limestone rock
perched accidently there.

Sing: our misery in shepherd
gapes open to the sea.

Third Chorus:

North wind sculpts
horse hair bow
down the daisy
over tarmac heart
daisy it down to
horse everlasting
in boots of straw
near kilny sea.
North wind sculpts
rock, deed and violin
with horse hair bow
down the daisy
over tarmac heart
perched accidently there:

down near the sea
down near the sea,

down and near
the sea.

Final:

Da cow and da sheep
da cow and da sheep
dae weep and dae weep,
'caus dar is no sleep
for da cow and da sheep.

In every time zone

a soldier patrols the perimeter of the site
in a certain kind of loneliness.
He persists but I do not.

A prayerful moth, rather large,
finds sanctuary on top of the blinds
but we do not.

Momentary gladness fills the room,
grace ends with a smile.
Your presence fills nothing but the void
as a car loading explosives at dawn
shuts prophecy down for the day.
It is grown here and exported, how?

Radishes grow into melons.
Dogs scattered in various poses
at the road side, mangled and all
quite dead. How can this be?
Who is painting the roads red?

A minaret climbs through the arcadia door,
it is almost beautiful, a knick knack.
The men in clusters near the bottom
count several angles, another balances
high on the scaffold with bare chest.
A slaughter in the dust one year ago
and next year my decorations will
sing everything is loved once before
building a reputation, wherever that is.