15.12.12

Sandy Hook




We are above the rooftops again,

near the trees on the outskirts of town,

here we are yet again

drifting in helicopters, the day is bright

or cold, people are led about

as if on ropes, tied together.

It is almost Christmas.

29.11.12

How those who once I knew, disowned me.
They thought too little or not at all
busy with their decorations and babies.
If I mention them now it is only to invite
them to their old age, to the round-up.
We need more clowns in cannons.

25.11.12

Heat Seeking

Despite the war:  harmonicas.
We'd have been who we are
only taller, our shirts less worn.
Scriptures are rewritten
into dictionaries of the absurd
before they matter.

This is the moment in time
that to forget
is to remember strongly
the real myth
a mirror locks on
to the target, bam
and it is over.





24.11.12

The Sound of Olatayo




I've known people who were passengers

on high-jacked planes.

They were assholes before they hit Libyan airspace

and probably still are.

I've seen a black man

come out of the sea

like an aboriginal -

Mexican sand on his face,

hair twisted into tribal knots.

It was the week after he stormed out

of the Que Pas, a community college diner

where I met Olatayo Sowandi too,

watched him and the other Nigerians

as they listened to the sound

of foreigners eating.

Not a word between them and I recall

how sweet their silence felt

when I was in it with them.

As Mahdi busted out of the sea

I remembered his anger that day

when the Arabs at the cafe -

Saadi Sartawi the Kuwaiti, Faisal the Libyan, Wassim
the Palestinian brothel owner's kid from Egypt -

kept calling him abed in conversation

instead of just calling him

the Sudan-ee because he was

definitely not their slave, he was just

from Africa and knew

how to make an impression

when walking out of the sea at Kino Bay.   





Reprint from 2006 but written sometime in the 80/90's most likely, Remembering the Sudanese before I knew what that meant.  Almost Juvenalia by now.  

"Abed" is literally "slave" in Arabic and a common name in terms of being a slave to Allah (Ab'dallah) however it also carries a certain connotation of bigotry when used by Arabs in reference to those with 'dark skin'.  Arabs tend to be either comfortable with the usage and not necessarily bigoted when using it or 2) we as outsiders to the language impose our own meaning on it and hence we feel and perceive a bigotry that is actually our own.  Not sure really but at the end of the day I choose the alternative meaning which is Mahdi saw it neither way as they were all muslims involved in the cafe incident and he didn't like being considered differently from the other muslims as we consider ourselves as one type, all slaves, all equal.  My experience in the muslim world has shown me that the Sudanese overall are highly respected and some of the most gracious of all the muslims.  This is a view that is shared by a majority of muslims worldwide.  I find it to be a nice poem to revisit upon my return from Liberia. 

The irony of this piece is uncovered later (as is the case with poems from the heart) that "Mahdi" itself has profound meaning within Islam.  I won't go into that particular detail except to say Mahdi in this poem has a saving grace.

19.11.12

Eat Fish, Monrovia Liberia W. Africa

30.10.12

A First Walk

The poverty of Africa
is an engine, a pool
of mud where birth and death
mean mostly the same.
I cannot begin to understand
her ranting on the corner:
She sent her boy to cut me!
her jaw abscessed for weeks now
as a nurse I beg to look in
between her clenched and mighty teeth-
yellow polish
on her black black hands
studded with grains of sand
from a bottle nearly empty
congealed -
what kind of jaundiced beauty
this?  How terrifying.
As passers-by stop to stare.

-at me, not her.
True Love America

Begins near 20 and 24th
streets in Monro-via,
in front of the JFK
Memorial hospital-
People go there to die and work,
limping in and out
on one leg, maybe two
but most never go and the girl
at the bus stop sells used towels,
your uncle Ned's pajamas
to a Godwin or Cornelius.
These clean people have hearts
inside their hearts
bigger than the Mets versus the Yankees
times the Sox.
Their love is ne plus ultra.

1.10.12

W. K. Vanderslice Silver Cup and Saucer




Gothic Revival silver cup and underliner made in the middle of the 19th century by one of the important American silver makers of San Francisco.  Probably made of coin silver with a nice warm patina.  Beautiful condition without dents, damage or repair.  Gilded interior.  Exterior embossed with a fine Gothic Revival pattern and monogrammed/engraved for the child John B. Daggett (both pieces/matching set) in a Gothic Revival script.  Marked 810 Montgomery St. San Francisco California with the makers mark below.  Machine turned, hand engraved/embossed.  Lovely lovely find!

I noticed it at the Salvation Army and wasn't too sure as the price sure was steep....10 bucks for the pair.  I hedged my bets and took a chance without knowing the history of the company or the composition of the piece which at the time I took for silver plate (most likely).  The gilded interior threw me off as it seemd to be a sign of silver plate on copper with the base metal exposed.  

 

15.8.12

Reposted from 2008

More Notes From Extremists to Other Extremists
regarding the nature of "stone" and "idol" worship
Generally speaking, having read the various apologistic explanations it is clear that many muslims do not understand the origin of their practices. This leads them into vulnerable straits where certain rituals are discussed, especially those of idolatry. Therefore I think redacted's point is an extraordinary one and most likely cannot be answered by many of the posters here.

The idea that mysteries are needed to explain all things is convenient but it is also the case that not "knowing" something does not constitute a "mystery" of Islam or the declaration of same. There are mysteries and there are mysteries. Going to Mecca on Haj is not of either type i.e. mysteries based on the actual "unseen" and not a mystery of religion of the type claimed by Christian theologians like the virgin birth (which to muslims is not a mystery at all).

If Allah states cirumambulate THIS stone and not THAT stone, it is not indicative that muslims are stone worshipers. That is in the eye of the beholder when it is clearly stated in the Quran that the notion of a Qibla is a clear one. Clear as mud to non muslims and when faced with those, attempting to explain it is about as good as conversing with a brick wall (also made of stone) because Allah made some people unable to hear, see and/or understand.

I am no expert particularly in the area of Haj ritual behavior but it is my understanding that the stones that are tossed at three objects in the same manner that Ibrahim (SA) smashed the stone idols which can represent a vast number of things including the rocks themselves. In one instance they are said to represent a dream that was experienced by three people (the prophet, Hajar and Ismael) on three consecutive nights. The whole ritual of Haj requires a person to have a guide. Few people actually go to Haj without one you know and those that do usually have already made at least one Haj or an Umra and "know the ropes".


It is one of the most critical points in all of Islam that only through "emulation of a practice" is that practice preserved. Formally it is referred to as the Sunna. Underestimating it, particularly by non muslims is common. Haj itself, in the Quran is the major distinguishment Islamic Monotheists have that defines them as a special class of Monotheism. It is the whole reason non muslims are not permitted into Mecca itself. Only a muslim NEEDS to go to Mecca...others need not go there if that is not what floats their boat.

It can be compared to the fact that in the initial days of the Last Messengers mission, muslims were told to dye their beards red with henna in order to distinguish which people had accepted Islam. After a certain period however the Messenger abrogated that ruling because after a certain critical number of the umma (muslim population density) had been reached, it was no longer possible to know that anyone in particular was especially "loyal" to the last prophet or to Islam. Some of the last submitters, Abu Sufyan in particular (the father or "thought to be" father of Mu'aw'iya), only submitted when it was clear that he was one of the only ones left in the area that hadn't. At that point, most people had already joined ranks with Mohamed and his Ahl Bayt (immediate family), Sahaba (Companions, disciples, friends), the Ansar(the hosts at Medina who protected and fed the Muhajirs) and Muhajirs (the migrationists who migrated with the prophet to Mecca). Having a red beard would make no difference and in fact, a large number of muslims at that time were not really believers but were incredibly good fakers. Which ones? Not my business of course. I will say however that the Shia ruling against persons such as the notorious Mu'aw'iya being included in the group known as "sahaba" is discounted by Jaffar Al Siddiq using a ruling in which the last prophet declared his Sahaba were a given few and that is all. That occurred at a specific place and time and there were no Sahaba to be included in that group after that and that would include the notorious anti Islamist Mu'aw'iya.

The whole point of "stoning" the devil is an attempt to do something that EMULATES what the great prophet Ibrahim did that extraordinary day when he basically outlawed human sacrifice from the law books of all humanity:

"This is where pilgrims perform the ritual of throwing stones at pillars that mark the spot where the devil is believed to have attempted to prevent the prophet Ibrahim - the biblical patriarch Abraham also revered by Muslims - from obeying divine orders. "

Why, the Kaaba itself "our Qibla" is that which is gone to, migrated to and migrated away from and even, sadly, not taken seriously by some muslims as that thing which was ordered by Allah to travel to. It was erected by Ibrahim and Ismail (May Allah be pleased with all of his apostles) and not by the other brother Ishaq (pbuh). It was erected in the exact spot where the sacrifice was to be made and then, it was abrogated by Allah and a sheep was substituted for a human being. Literally "a son" and it can be compared and contrasted with the mistaken Christian notion of a "son" being sacrificed to atone for the sins of others. It is the same story over and over and it is best defined from the beginning (Adam) who was told to follow the advice of Allah and not the Shaitan to the end of the story which is the whole basis for the last Messengers final order when he completed Islam for everyone, not just the Arabs. The whole point of it is contained allegorically in that safety of the boat upon which Nuh traveled during a storm and is one of the fundamental axis around which Shia teaching revolves. I cannot speak for Sunni Islam and wouldn't try.

Anything that one follows instead of following the advice of Allah can be considered to be idol worship and it is not limited to mere objects but to the things those objects represent. Afterall, we use money and not gold and we cannot even eat gold. If it was the case that what we "eat" could also be a subject for idolatry (it is) then our ideology would be gluttony. Eating is oft mentioned in the Quran because it is the one single thing that human beings consume and it becomes a "part" of their very own bodies. It is necessary (as is money) but when overdone, it becomes the source of our own suffering.

Like the spider who eats its own web and then takes it to "the next abode" i.e. and respins a new web. We carry those things within us much like the spider carries this immensely frail yet deceptively strong material called web fluid which is literally his next home AND his nourishment The Spider is basically a tafsir of the highest order in the Quran, one that allows the Quran itself to provide evidence for the premises contained within it. And really, what is a parable anyway except Allah's own tafsir?


The parable of those who take guardians besides Allah is as the parable of the spider that makes for itself a house; and most surely the frailest of the houses is the spider's house did they but know. -The Spider

Allah makes abundant the means of subsistence for whom He pleases of His servants, and straitens them for whom (He pleases) surely Allah is Cognizant of all things. -The Spider

And how many a living creature that does not carry its sustenance: Allah sustains it and yourselves; and He is the Hearing, the Knowing. -The Spider

And this life of the world is nothing but a sport and a play; and as for the next abode, that most surely is the life-- did they but know! -The Spider


As an interesting aside, it is very common in Arabic literature and media to liken the excesses of government and leaders to that of "eating" wealth, very common. Arabs often say, "He ate the money."

I'd like to add that the last part of redacted's question is perhaps the most intriguing to me because it is that act of leveling a charge as opposed to the real issue in Islam which is to gather adherents who share faith in Allah and perhaps even, a given approach to the demonstration and verbalization of that faith.

The Quran itself systematically defines various practices and you cannot find any single human practice not defined in there. They are categorized in various ways all the way down to categorizing the color of people versus their culture and way of life. Including the categorization of the animal kingdom.

The point being necessarily is that an individual "qualifies" themself for membership via whatever it is they practice and also, they can qualify themself to various nations based on ethnicity (the Jews being the prime example of that in the Quran).

A muslim does not pray ten times a day or once a week. A muslim prays five salaat per day and that is UNIVERSAL and not an act shared by any other religion. A muslim makes Haj and that is also not an act engaged in by any other type of believer.

Charity, good will, etc...those are things engaged in by many athiests worldwide and cannot be the basis for our assumptions. I don't think that it is the intent of most muslims i.e. to label anyone.

Fasting is engaged in by Catholics but it in no way makes them muslim.

Non Islamic Monotheism is Monotheism that does not accept the last prophet and everything that goes along with that aspect of the Shehada. It can be likened to "Deism" of the type Thomas Jefferson, et.al. advocated.



"Paganism" itself, like all other things can be of any variety and some even suggest that certain branches of Orthodox Catholicism engage in excessive amounts of it. Therefore, you can describe a Catholic believer as being polytheist if they hold that Allah is in three parts or pagan if it is they worship icons as some (not all) of the Orthodox Catholic traditions teach. It isn't about blame but rather, it is about description of the various groups to which all human beings belong, one way or another.

Muslims too can suffer the effects of Paganism and/or Polytheism. When they drink/take drugs or gamble, they in effect disqualify themself from the path i.e. no one does it to them but they do it to themself. They do this when they use "black magic" and it is alot more common that you think. No offense to anyone here but in Saudi Arabia it has become the norm, not the exception. Paganism can be a type of "superstition-ism" which can affect any believer of any type. It isn't necessarily just a person who bows to a crystal or a false deity. Native Americans still practice ritual paganism but many of them would argue with you if you thought that they didn't hold that there is a Creator and Sustainer of the entire system. Hinduism in all actuality was originally a monotheistic tradition and "polytheism" is noted in the Upanishads themselves as the eventual result of ignorance and in essence, the demise of original Monotheistic Hinduism:

"The central theme of the Upanishads is not Monism but Monotheism, the concept of an all pervasive, immanent supreme being. "


-from http://www.dvaita.org/shaastra/upanishad.html#section_2


..therefore some of what some have said here has an element of truth but one ought to provide direct evidence of that rather than mere opinion you know.

It's their problem and not ours especially if they themselves are perceiving their own problem right about now (and they most definitely are). Allah stated clearly that Islam was not in competition with any other thing. He stated clearly that it would be made superior to all other systems. I think it is important to take Allah at his word on that one and avoid playing the comparison games in which non muslims usually end up confusing muslims who aren't very clear about their Islam.

14.7.12

At Thawr

When I save the spider, it is not as if I like them.
Astonished that they too have hair or maybe
dendrites, bad days, a past and some future.
It's not about that although it helps to consider
their unborn, egg sacs back home, the view
from the sixth floor they might have shown
to a neighbor just that afternoon while the rain
poured down around us all to leave
a clean world, a satisfying odor, wealth.

10.7.12

As the early waking beetle performs the nasty task
preparing trees for the fire, as the bee organizes
the sunflower by tucking rows, finishing with darts
such a wild composition of habits and chores
the world is made of wind and permission.

30.6.12

To this day, my heart remains
a burglar on window sills
broken and entered in order
to investigate the cloths
of others, to examine
their exceptional pieces.

I remember that rush
outside in the garden
between their gates and doors
it is coming up, it is frozen
over poppies, under mops
that seeing is believing,
we have this, we own these.

19.6.12

"Silk from a Sow's Ear," he said

the winterest person had the sun shined
and he missed me still, not dead, not alive
stood there not knowing which hand to place
in which pocket, which grapeseed shadow
to hold onto, '07 was a very long year
for us all and then there was '08. What's
one or two more we asked, unsuspecting.
By now we get it is clearly not going to end
this dismal class of people we'd become
could not accept or give, apologies,
he said what do you know!
A war all about her! Had I not warned them?
What would suffice then?  A bed of roses?

My head?

.

12.6.12

movie

this here bottled art, a Parisian scene
stealer, his genius a load of books
upon the shelves his wife and child
air out differance as all materialists
in chunk refractions,  split seconds
aped out into a lens scooped up
indemnified as in underwritten
as in postulated as in requited
as in terminal as in him, her, it

1.6.12

The False Conclusion

Death is probably a pronoun
the width of one breath, ever tall,
no resting place is deep enough
to capture body and angel inside.
We of the managerial class
empty our pockets and clasp
hands over our mouths gaped
 wide in a stupid kind of shock.
Who needs to know this
except the survivors,
the ones the earth might keep
or place in her old trust?
It is a mystery, a blank wall
no one climbs anymore
for fear it might just end
as a type of relapse
with acute tendencies.

6.5.12




The River Sticks

As the drain point
a continent of disciples
catch alls in lieu of cremations,
skim bathes the unborn and buries
the lifeless, the crumpled up
go betweens and feeders,
the pork bellied up and staggers
toward the swan line
in a spoonful of twice weekly
as the bottom grinds
earth into halves
and heads to Sing Sing
in reverse extraction:
bodies, berms, beewalks,
the blessed and the bled-out
guests of Liffy
come in soap-skins,
 shrink and cough,
skeptical tho alive
to wring the dead
out the shirts
 on wash rocks with a devil
at one side,
     birds on the other.


30.4.12

Runneth Over

Seed bearing pack of fruit,
a load of testimony read left
to right, abundant kickback
swizzle stick in an instant flick
already sick the sky comes down
and the last rider rides
between thunder and cups,
the final laugh a brave sigh.

28.4.12

.

Fall Out

I looked back for a moment and noticed,
who let people play their tricks on us, why
did we agree to cover up
the facts -
I hoped to try, to win.
How do wind chimes know how?
Between a drapery of wind, C minor
or is it B flat? 
Hard to tell in the succumbing
darkness, space all along
revs up to time lapse
our keepsakes, a few droplets-
drift slowly down, tears perhaps 
from other wind-torn planets,
other plastic makers and killers.

27.4.12

Repost from September 2009

Norma Cole Reads in Bisbee

Attending Norma Cole's reading last night was fantastic. Not because of the poems (they were quite fine and finely chosen and executed) but because of the poet. Ms. Cole is diminutive, coal eyed and fine boned and carries a beautiful black cane. She holds her right arm which has grown slack and the hand contracted since her stroke several years ago, the way all people with left-sided brain injury do, at a ninety-ish degree angle starting at the elbow. She gathers her work with one hand and speaks carefully with hard won grace in an error prone but steady diction.

She was accompanied last night by Mr. Charles Alexander of Chax Press who drove her down from Tucson yesterday afternoon. He introduced her work and described her poems as delicate and finely-tuned pieces of visual art and that is quite apt. A truly nice guy, editor and poet who read with Ms. Cole in Tucson the night before but chose to sit the reading out last night. I spoke with Mr. Alexander for a few moments at the reception after the reading and offered to give him a flu shot today. We discussed H1N1 a little bit. Before the reading, I had to shsh my husband who tried to peddle the book I am working on right now, afterall, he doesn't know any better.

I then took my turn in front of Ms. Cole with my copy of Where Shadows Will, Selected Poems 1988-2008 in hand. There isn't much to say to a poet whom you've never heard of, never read and of whom you are asking an autograph. I held the book so that she could scrawl her signature and enter the perfunctory greetings that poets of stature usually enter onto the first page of a book and thanked her. I asked her if it had been a stroke and when it had happened. "It must have been hard" I said. Hard isn't the word for aphasic. Aphasic is the word for aphasic and for a poet who has been described as a "powerhouse" reader, it doesn't begin to describe the agony this poet must have been through as she struggled to regain the use of her instrument: her language, both literally and figuratively.

As I turned to leave, I stopped, turned back and said, "I liked "before the war". I told her that yes, all my work is "before" and "after" the war and explained in a few short words what I meant by that. She took my book from my hands and opened it immediately to the page and showed me a poem titled Sumoud. I looked at it and read it out loud to her and to my husband who was standing dutifully by and he was the one who insisted I go to the reading in the first place, he knows my tendency to avoid such things overall. I choked a bit on the words:

"A stranger of mine, he spilled his drink. I took it as a sign. My village was erased from the map."

Who wouldn't choke on such a thing and me in particular. It is the same choking I get when trying to read the poem of Taha Mohamed Ali in which he describes the feeling of not saying good-bye to the people you adore when running from a village or city that is being attacked by an oppressor.

The poem Sumoud (which means Resistance in Arabic my husband informs me) begins with the epigraph, a quote from Jean Said Makdisi's Memoir,
Beirut Fragments (reviewed here by the typically Awful and Arabophobic Daniel Pipes who simply cannot understand the attraction of Beirut or the bitter attraction of war (for poets/writers/memoirists) because he is an amoral idiot):

"Once I saw a bride standing on the sand..."

Ms. Makdisi relates, "How can this be? How can brutal warfare and beachcombing co-exist in adjacent streets?" My point exactly when I wrote this poem in February 2008, a full year and a half after our flight from Beirut:

Sawridge Hotel, Fort McMurray

When I think of Beirut
I think of hair,
of weddings and war.
A never-ending cycle
of hair, weddings and war.
On our way out
we spoke to a man
on his fourth or fifth
flight from an Israeli

incursion.

I think of hair, weddings and war.


Ms. Cole's beautiful line in which she finds a sign in a stranger who spills something (the truth): his village is erased from the map, and I find my own sign there. This is how poetry is for me. It ought to touch a stranger and certainly, Ms. Cole not only touched me but inspired me. She has struggled no doubt to regain her ability to read her work aloud in public. It was just as strenuous to hear, just as strenous to watch her climb the three flights of stairs to the Central School auditorium and the few steps that lead up to the stage. I hope she thinks it was worth it because it certainly was worth it to me.

I only stayed a few minutes more at the reception. Although there were a handful of poets present that I know, I cannot say I know them well enough to chat and wanted to go home and nudged my husband that we'd pay our respect to the poet once more. I returned to Ms. Cole and as people ought to do if they have any manners, I bid her adieu and thanked her for coming once again.

Salaam wa alaikum I said. Her very beautiful face lit up and her body lurched forward and she gave me her best Salaam. I returned home with such a precious feeling and a book in hand. Such a precious sign.

22.4.12

Coma

I have been in this device for a thousand years,
a sleeping beauty full of hotcakes and my leatherbelly
a ginger piece of crepe has thinned, my hands fell asleep
full of frostbite, decorticate, instrumental, lean.
Do not wake me up until tomorrow, like the devil
who waits to be sentenced and knows
it is hopeless I'd rather wait, collect my thoughts
here in this blessed peeling where the sound
of bird talk drowns in the blink of an eye.


6.4.12

The Truth

If only I could paint instead,
we'd all be better off.
Abstract or a bit like Pollack,
maybe a mural or two plus
some graffiti and a false start.

Poetry is hard you know.

Not like whitewashing
unless you hope to get published.

7.3.12

So What

Since the couscous will last a year, they bought triple
for a family of five. How old were we when we decided
that the Asperger's Syndrome you suffered from
impaired us both? The finding came so late,
after the children had gone and messed up
their own lives in their own ways, did it
really matter? Neither one of us capable
of new love, incapable of moving again
so we slept and laughed about our condition.
You swept differently, sweetly you said,
"Asperger's Asperger's"
like some dumb old janitor.