Doog's Masterpiece
(Riyadh, late entry 1999)

Not sure if you remember
but I keep going back to it
reminding everybody
of the goblets banging
the night before the war,
the method of my classical training.
At the embassy the food was good,
the cakes were fabulous
on theme nights we were
all interested in the next drink,
never left until the last bottle
was down to fill quotas
of the forbidden and girls
hauled in for the conversations.
The bar, Uncle Sam's, everyone
wanted to go, they'd follow her
around begging for tickets
her phone never stopped ringing
and the Chattanooga Choo Choo.
We would go up and down,
people would stop by,
all manner of friendliness
over those invitations.
During this time, the babies
took their last breaths,
some went home and others
just lay there carrying on,
it was our job to keep
them warm, quiet and clean
if we weren't on royal duty.
Our flat was well appointed
and part of the process,
most of the time
it was tidy and barren.
We waited a few months
before hanging up anything
that was ours
or might be sold
if the locals climbed in
after scaling the walls
to look for the money
and Raymond Weil's
we purchased through
someone we knew
or as one of us went home
to the old Indians.
Every day someone
would announce, get ready,
be alarmed and relax.
Servants had first names
only and peculiar tendencies
like the old days.
There were drivers and nannies,
cooks and seamstresses,
most of them Filipino and said
prease and madam and smiled.
No one worked very hard
yet they discussed all of it
with great precision, terrific grace.
I was not seeing him much
then but talking to him alot,
our letters never ended
and the paychecks were enormous.
The shine on the car was impossible
for an old guy with rags,
he held on and no one knew
how to drive, the maps
lied if they existed
at all and this is how that works.
On Sundays, the diplomats
attended church on campus,
the Germans and French held festive
get-downs in their digs,
hosting Jewish bellydancers
on the sabbath
and the crowd piled up
fascinated, almost tipped over.
The lean wife of the commercial
attaché and Charlie in a back corner
under ficus and palm
got soused so she kept it going.
Rumors thrived in the gardens
there were cells deep inside the earth
near the borders and dark
in the downtown
where they hung prisoners
and let vermin feast
on the feathers, their last drips.
Poor old Paul Johnson.
The guards outside knew
what went on,
stood at attention, fully formed,
evolved from their ancestors
and passed secrets without adjective.
There where the goblets did all the talking
and there are still things I cannot say
or was told, do not remember.

I get the shakes all over.