Dear Plaster Saint
Lois suffered so bad sometimes,
too much thinking
and in war time no less,
hosiery: cigarettes: midnights:
more than she could handle
I guess and here in the letter
from the newly awarded
gunnery sergeant,
onion skin like an old Japanese
painting, translucent wanderer
miraculous and buried
in how many a drawer,
guilty prisoner of time
finally confesses on a cold
winter’s day
to sixty quarts of Golden
Wedding Whiskey,
wanting to wet
his new stripes down
sic Gloria transit mundi,
as ever yours,
January 4, 1945
Lawrence.
19.12.13
8.12.13
The Diner
Here where all the bites are loaded
into passengers over the undulating
corpses of the sea.
Bring back our dredged,
collared slips of quicksand
where you sail over the hedge
into the loam with the cunning
of wizened old thieves:
between handfuls,
overt challengers of belonging
trapdoors in the whale doze
dreamt near a Jonah,
Here is where we meet again and again –
to double and as if
your glut and ours are merely
a comfortable pairing of hungry old friends.
Here where all the bites are loaded
into passengers over the undulating
corpses of the sea.
Bring back our dredged,
collared slips of quicksand
where you sail over the hedge
into the loam with the cunning
of wizened old thieves:
between handfuls,
overt challengers of belonging
trapdoors in the whale doze
dreamt near a Jonah,
Here is where we meet again and again –
to double and as if
your glut and ours are merely
a comfortable pairing of hungry old friends.
The Fifth One Ended Up in France
-inspired by Harris Burdick’s drawing left w/Wenders
She sat there with her coffee
Incredulous it seemed (to me)
re: the abduction, the beheading
the explosion down in the wadi.
Her elderly husband
nodded to sleep near
a Hindu yonder.
How would it be if I spoke
about the angels and epiphanies,
the series of dreams?
How bourgeois to come all the way
to Paris and be fearful
of using a password
on the internet:
dressed in the requisite blacks
and whites that are expected
of Americans in Paris
-so as to avoid detection
amid the fashionable French.
There, as I observed
a young man dashing to and fro
each freshly abandoned larder
to pay his rent in some
run-down Parisian
haunt, tapping out hope
in case-sensitive detail,
rubbing his hands each time,
a bit Dickens, a bit Faust.
Her poor dog it seemed
would be all alone until ten
in Boca
because of the delays
and that’s all that matters
to someone, somewhere.
-inspired by Harris Burdick’s drawing left w/Wenders
She sat there with her coffee
Incredulous it seemed (to me)
re: the abduction, the beheading
the explosion down in the wadi.
Her elderly husband
nodded to sleep near
a Hindu yonder.
How would it be if I spoke
about the angels and epiphanies,
the series of dreams?
How bourgeois to come all the way
to Paris and be fearful
of using a password
on the internet:
dressed in the requisite blacks
and whites that are expected
of Americans in Paris
-so as to avoid detection
amid the fashionable French.
There, as I observed
a young man dashing to and fro
each freshly abandoned larder
to pay his rent in some
run-down Parisian
haunt, tapping out hope
in case-sensitive detail,
rubbing his hands each time,
a bit Dickens, a bit Faust.
Her poor dog it seemed
would be all alone until ten
in Boca
because of the delays
and that’s all that matters
to someone, somewhere.
4.12.13
I Remember Rasha
Baabdat, September 2013
When suddenly I thought of Rasha there,
between the jail walls and under
the stirring portraits of ladies
in handmade fantasy dresses,
each one from a different place,
foreigners all at home within
these locked-up boxes,
like mix-matched jewelry.
I thought of Rasha there
pulling the dark hairs
from her armpits, drawing out
her long Kurdish brows,
primping for the someone outside
who must be waiting, who sends
us coffee with sugar, for whom
she left her children back home
in Syria along the border.
I thought of Rasha and the way
corruptible people laugh,
inviting tramps and robbers
to suck them dry and move on
to the next home-wrecked
easy to please wife.
I thought of Rasha as she squatted
over the flat hole, eliminating
the insides of herself,
scrubbing her mons, her
heavy white thighs open
and plucking, plucking, plucking
for hours at a time
while we waited to urinate
until she emerged hairless
and smiling, see! she says,
as if it were easy.
Her smile lit a thousand
dungeon lanterns until
the portraits on the jail walls
curtsied in the flickering
boiler-room light.
5.11.13
Fatme Takes Beauty Away
The moment she got news of her release,
we all began to weep:
not for her but for ourselves.
No more mornings with her
wrung out kohl colored eyes,
her two beautiful dresses
one from the Iraq
that she slung on before
her cold two-gallon shower
and one for after.
Somehow she managed
to change them from moment
to moment, or maybe
it was her face
that changed
between one tragic
thought and another,
as a little boy
floats left and right
in a rear view
on his old bike,
the kind with a bell,
that earmarks a vision
you hope does not end
because parts of your self
vanish into these scraps,
odds and ends.
29.7.13
The First Ramadan, Dhu Al-Novemberish 2005
This is my ninth Ramadan since having been blessed with a blessing so deep that I cannot begin to describe it to the degree I would like to. I could write a million sentences and no one would yet know how far I have come since accepting Islam as a young woman 30 years ago, a woman who would one day be the pround parent of three dear people, my children Fatima, Sarah and Ali and whom I trust will all follow me and exceed me in their Islam.
Eight years ago in Ramadan of 2005, I was about to undergo a change in my psyche that was thorough and explicit and real.
It isn't important to know every detail about the prerequisites of my Islam except to say that they are populated by significant dreams (I cowered in front of the destruction and threw myself down upon the ground in worship long before I would ever actually do that), significant people (my mother who said she did not believe Jesus, SA (Isa) was God when I explained to her that I had embraced Islam), significant milestones (when I realized that no one in the 7th century could have explained human reproduction in such finite detail) and significant signs (my fantastic stumble into the world of mathematical wonders known to many as the miracle of the number 19) as well as one very important visit from a group of believers who told me (when I was very young) that they were "following him."
It is critical to understand that through 22 years of searching, questioning, experimenting that throughout it all there was within me that mustard seed's worth of sincerity. It was planted by my mother one afternoon as she handed me green bean seeds to plant and she said a prayer to the Creator. Little did I know then that she was speaking in code not only to the Creator but hopefully, to the future "me". She said that now she had done her work (prepared the soil, planted the seed, watered it), it was time to do "his". I remember that day as if it were yesterday and send greetings to her in her grave. O Mom! How I look forward to seeing you soon! What glorious conversations we shall have and I hope you are as proud of me as I am grateful to you to have taken the time and the risk to be completely honest with me about "God".
In the summer before Ramadan of 2005, I began having a series of dreams. These were not ordinary and they almost could not be described as dreams. They were more like revelations. During these night time episodes (how many were there...I have no idea) I would see the world and know the world and understand everything about it. The feeling cannot be adequately described here or anywhere. It is the kind of thing that I know other people have experienced and it is only they who might be able to confirm and witness to you what I am saying here (if my witness is not enough for you).
I would awaken from these dreams and rush to the kitchen in our apartment in Beirut in order to get a pen or pencil to write down the information I had received in the dream (that seemed to have been infused into my mind) that I knew would solve all the problems in the world if I could share them. Every time this happened, I would be completely unable to write down even a phrase. It was truly frustrating but at the same time, I was full of a kind of elation that happens only once in a lifetime (as a stage in purification i.e. religious progression). You can only go there once and it is this milestone from which a person cannot ever turn back. You might say, where the rubber meets the road. In Islam it is said that you must kill a person who turns away from it but I am here to say that if a person turns back when they have reached this point, they might as well be dead because they have truly dropped the ball. It is a metaphorical punishment, no more and no less. No real muslim who is worth their weight in salt or salmon, would kill another muslim for this thing called "losing one's faith" which in fact is not much to lose. It is certitude you don't want to throw out with the bathwater, faith is expendable up to that point and in fact, it is a necessary stage in one's legitimate climb to the heights of knowledge (a much better form of what is known nowdays as "religion").
I will insert here but only to pepper the story as it should be with a dose of reality, that I was at that time fighting a dependence on chemical weapons. I had lied to just about everyone I know about the real nature of my existence which was seriously askew at that time. 'nuff said about that and my pneumothroraxes and palimpsests.
When Ramadan rolled around that year, I was really primed. I was miserable with remorse about my life's failures, my moral lapses but full of a powerful desire to understand. So powerful that I begged Allah to fill me in, to make it clear for me, to sign the deal. I actually wrote that down, encrypted as a poem and will go back and send along a link to that because it is indeed buried in this blog way, way back (as are so many of the back story stories).
I was unable to fast that Ramadan. This much I knew but I so desperately wanted to be released from my spiritual exile that I myself had volunteered for (as are all people who use chemical intoxicants).Anyone who thinks they can get closer to "God" after a few hits or a glass of wine is plain and simple, more intoxicated than they suspect and they need not bother getting drunk.
I lost the battle after only a week. I drank an entire bottle of wine. No doubt I had started thinking about it the first day of the fast. Forget the foodstuffs and abstinence from cusswords. I was at the nadir and in the literal cross hairs of the devil himself. I was trying to read the Quran as you are supposed to in Ramadan but that was a miserable failure. I went to my bookshelf, feeling pretty much hopeless and happened upon my Nahjul al Balagha.
Now, most non muslims don't hear much about the good old Nahj. It isn't what you would say, common knowledge that there is this other incredibly important book out there that represents what we in the know refer to as The Ahl Bayt (the family of the last prophet i.e. immediate family). That is perhaps an oversimplification but when it comes to a book that translates in English as "The Peak of Eloquence"...well. My description cannot bear the weight of that!
I found the Nahj some years before when I was in a bookstore in Beirut in a neighborhood where it is said the hostages had been sequestered for so many years. I asked the owner if he knew anything about the "Shia Quran". He looked at me and said, "There is no such thing as a Shia Quran. You might however want to read this," as he led me to the two volume works which are a collection of the sermons, sayings and letters of the single most important Imam in all of Islam after the prophet and the prophet's daughter, Ali ibn Abi Taleb, pbut. I bought it and went home and tried to read it.
Yea, right. Anyone who has ever picked up the Nahj will testify to the fact that it is a difficult book to penetrate. Not all that many people ever do. I tried again a few times to read it but to no avail.
In Ramadan 2005 however, I went back to it in lieu of being able to stomach the Quran (how it bored me by then!). I started to read. I didn't stop for two weeks. Night and day, between loads of laundry and trips to take the kids to school in Hamra. I couldn't put the thing down and this is testified to by the many scholars (both muslim and non) who have through the years related that it is a book that takes you back in time to the days of the last prophet and his progeny, pbut (which means, "peace be upon them") and transports you as if you can hear the sound of the swords clashing and arrows whirring through the air at the battle of Siffin.
By the time I finished the Nahj, Ramadan was almost over. And I was filled with the knowledge that my miracle was nearing completion. I guess you could call it "a rapture" because there is no doubt, I was filled from head to toe with a feeling that the prayer I had extended a few weeks before, the request I had made to be "filled in" on a few curious details...had been answered.
I told my husband who at the time was pretty frustrated with me that I understood what up until that time had eluded me. I explained to him that we had to begin to be observant (rather than 'ignore-ant) muslims. We would have to begin to pray and never stop until we left this world and joined the dead in wait for judgement.
He wept. He agreed. I watched him pray in those early morning hours for the first time in our entire marriage. I told him Salaam wa alaikum for the first time as well and this is a matter that still shocks me to this day.
But that isn't all.
We packed up the car as was our usual in order to spend the Eid with our family "down south". Kids, bookbags and my faithful dog Bijou in the back of the Range Rover. No stop along the way at the liquor store either which had become our habit in the past.
I was in a state of I don't know what you'd call it but it's a bit hazy from here. All I know is that I woke up on Eid morning and told my husband, "I'm done. I will never drink again."
He said, "I believe you."
I explained to him the sign I had received in the night in the form not of a dream but a vision within a dream:
There was a tree and upon that tree were several large green fruits. They were perfect and one of them was for me and I knew it. I reached for it and there was light all around.
I then read the Quran from cover to cover as it should be read. I finished just days before the Israeli invasion of 2006 and understood if not every word, I understood that I would need to do it again, and again and again. It is a fruit that never loses its complex sweetness. It may be difficult to sit down and do, but it is definitely not boring. I look forward to and seek for its inner workings, comparisons and explanations.
This year will mark my eighth completion (once per year except 2006 as 2005 bridged with the second Ramadan of 2006 and we were a bit distracted by the war). I cannot imagine what would have happened to us all had I not been prepared for this brutal exile in the country where I was born but where originates the most horrific hatred of Allah and Islam that has become institutionalized and normalized. I cannot tell you how many people I have run into on the internet who have said to me when I have been explicating things, "Why don't you go back to your country then!"
And that is the "God's Honest Truth". I swear it. And if you understand the nature of an oath in Islam you will know that is a powerful swear.
This is my ninth Ramadan since having been blessed with a blessing so deep that I cannot begin to describe it to the degree I would like to. I could write a million sentences and no one would yet know how far I have come since accepting Islam as a young woman 30 years ago, a woman who would one day be the pround parent of three dear people, my children Fatima, Sarah and Ali and whom I trust will all follow me and exceed me in their Islam.
Eight years ago in Ramadan of 2005, I was about to undergo a change in my psyche that was thorough and explicit and real.
It isn't important to know every detail about the prerequisites of my Islam except to say that they are populated by significant dreams (I cowered in front of the destruction and threw myself down upon the ground in worship long before I would ever actually do that), significant people (my mother who said she did not believe Jesus, SA (Isa) was God when I explained to her that I had embraced Islam), significant milestones (when I realized that no one in the 7th century could have explained human reproduction in such finite detail) and significant signs (my fantastic stumble into the world of mathematical wonders known to many as the miracle of the number 19) as well as one very important visit from a group of believers who told me (when I was very young) that they were "following him."
It is critical to understand that through 22 years of searching, questioning, experimenting that throughout it all there was within me that mustard seed's worth of sincerity. It was planted by my mother one afternoon as she handed me green bean seeds to plant and she said a prayer to the Creator. Little did I know then that she was speaking in code not only to the Creator but hopefully, to the future "me". She said that now she had done her work (prepared the soil, planted the seed, watered it), it was time to do "his". I remember that day as if it were yesterday and send greetings to her in her grave. O Mom! How I look forward to seeing you soon! What glorious conversations we shall have and I hope you are as proud of me as I am grateful to you to have taken the time and the risk to be completely honest with me about "God".
In the summer before Ramadan of 2005, I began having a series of dreams. These were not ordinary and they almost could not be described as dreams. They were more like revelations. During these night time episodes (how many were there...I have no idea) I would see the world and know the world and understand everything about it. The feeling cannot be adequately described here or anywhere. It is the kind of thing that I know other people have experienced and it is only they who might be able to confirm and witness to you what I am saying here (if my witness is not enough for you).
I would awaken from these dreams and rush to the kitchen in our apartment in Beirut in order to get a pen or pencil to write down the information I had received in the dream (that seemed to have been infused into my mind) that I knew would solve all the problems in the world if I could share them. Every time this happened, I would be completely unable to write down even a phrase. It was truly frustrating but at the same time, I was full of a kind of elation that happens only once in a lifetime (as a stage in purification i.e. religious progression). You can only go there once and it is this milestone from which a person cannot ever turn back. You might say, where the rubber meets the road. In Islam it is said that you must kill a person who turns away from it but I am here to say that if a person turns back when they have reached this point, they might as well be dead because they have truly dropped the ball. It is a metaphorical punishment, no more and no less. No real muslim who is worth their weight in salt or salmon, would kill another muslim for this thing called "losing one's faith" which in fact is not much to lose. It is certitude you don't want to throw out with the bathwater, faith is expendable up to that point and in fact, it is a necessary stage in one's legitimate climb to the heights of knowledge (a much better form of what is known nowdays as "religion").
I will insert here but only to pepper the story as it should be with a dose of reality, that I was at that time fighting a dependence on chemical weapons. I had lied to just about everyone I know about the real nature of my existence which was seriously askew at that time. 'nuff said about that and my pneumothroraxes and palimpsests.
When Ramadan rolled around that year, I was really primed. I was miserable with remorse about my life's failures, my moral lapses but full of a powerful desire to understand. So powerful that I begged Allah to fill me in, to make it clear for me, to sign the deal. I actually wrote that down, encrypted as a poem and will go back and send along a link to that because it is indeed buried in this blog way, way back (as are so many of the back story stories).
I was unable to fast that Ramadan. This much I knew but I so desperately wanted to be released from my spiritual exile that I myself had volunteered for (as are all people who use chemical intoxicants).Anyone who thinks they can get closer to "God" after a few hits or a glass of wine is plain and simple, more intoxicated than they suspect and they need not bother getting drunk.
I lost the battle after only a week. I drank an entire bottle of wine. No doubt I had started thinking about it the first day of the fast. Forget the foodstuffs and abstinence from cusswords. I was at the nadir and in the literal cross hairs of the devil himself. I was trying to read the Quran as you are supposed to in Ramadan but that was a miserable failure. I went to my bookshelf, feeling pretty much hopeless and happened upon my Nahjul al Balagha.
Now, most non muslims don't hear much about the good old Nahj. It isn't what you would say, common knowledge that there is this other incredibly important book out there that represents what we in the know refer to as The Ahl Bayt (the family of the last prophet i.e. immediate family). That is perhaps an oversimplification but when it comes to a book that translates in English as "The Peak of Eloquence"...well. My description cannot bear the weight of that!
I found the Nahj some years before when I was in a bookstore in Beirut in a neighborhood where it is said the hostages had been sequestered for so many years. I asked the owner if he knew anything about the "Shia Quran". He looked at me and said, "There is no such thing as a Shia Quran. You might however want to read this," as he led me to the two volume works which are a collection of the sermons, sayings and letters of the single most important Imam in all of Islam after the prophet and the prophet's daughter, Ali ibn Abi Taleb, pbut. I bought it and went home and tried to read it.
Yea, right. Anyone who has ever picked up the Nahj will testify to the fact that it is a difficult book to penetrate. Not all that many people ever do. I tried again a few times to read it but to no avail.
In Ramadan 2005 however, I went back to it in lieu of being able to stomach the Quran (how it bored me by then!). I started to read. I didn't stop for two weeks. Night and day, between loads of laundry and trips to take the kids to school in Hamra. I couldn't put the thing down and this is testified to by the many scholars (both muslim and non) who have through the years related that it is a book that takes you back in time to the days of the last prophet and his progeny, pbut (which means, "peace be upon them") and transports you as if you can hear the sound of the swords clashing and arrows whirring through the air at the battle of Siffin.
By the time I finished the Nahj, Ramadan was almost over. And I was filled with the knowledge that my miracle was nearing completion. I guess you could call it "a rapture" because there is no doubt, I was filled from head to toe with a feeling that the prayer I had extended a few weeks before, the request I had made to be "filled in" on a few curious details...had been answered.
I told my husband who at the time was pretty frustrated with me that I understood what up until that time had eluded me. I explained to him that we had to begin to be observant (rather than 'ignore-ant) muslims. We would have to begin to pray and never stop until we left this world and joined the dead in wait for judgement.
He wept. He agreed. I watched him pray in those early morning hours for the first time in our entire marriage. I told him Salaam wa alaikum for the first time as well and this is a matter that still shocks me to this day.
But that isn't all.
We packed up the car as was our usual in order to spend the Eid with our family "down south". Kids, bookbags and my faithful dog Bijou in the back of the Range Rover. No stop along the way at the liquor store either which had become our habit in the past.
I was in a state of I don't know what you'd call it but it's a bit hazy from here. All I know is that I woke up on Eid morning and told my husband, "I'm done. I will never drink again."
He said, "I believe you."
I explained to him the sign I had received in the night in the form not of a dream but a vision within a dream:
There was a tree and upon that tree were several large green fruits. They were perfect and one of them was for me and I knew it. I reached for it and there was light all around.
I then read the Quran from cover to cover as it should be read. I finished just days before the Israeli invasion of 2006 and understood if not every word, I understood that I would need to do it again, and again and again. It is a fruit that never loses its complex sweetness. It may be difficult to sit down and do, but it is definitely not boring. I look forward to and seek for its inner workings, comparisons and explanations.
This year will mark my eighth completion (once per year except 2006 as 2005 bridged with the second Ramadan of 2006 and we were a bit distracted by the war). I cannot imagine what would have happened to us all had I not been prepared for this brutal exile in the country where I was born but where originates the most horrific hatred of Allah and Islam that has become institutionalized and normalized. I cannot tell you how many people I have run into on the internet who have said to me when I have been explicating things, "Why don't you go back to your country then!"
And that is the "God's Honest Truth". I swear it. And if you understand the nature of an oath in Islam you will know that is a powerful swear.
27.7.13
Ode to the Bar Code
At the Canyon Cash 'n Carry
Liquor & Penny Candy store,
between the soda pop chiller
and the other under the register
where a total came up 5c 10c 25c
through a peek-a-boo window -
was the best electric shock in town.
This was before we were grounded,
before cable TV, almost before Elvis.
One hand here, the other there
swinging for a second on the two
articles of faith -
the freezer and the fridge
and a shock zipped up both arms
cha ching cha ching
ooooooyeah! Felt good. But bad.
Us kids made fine lightning rods.
Myrtle Wood hanged the cash up to dry
on a clothes line out back
like a christmastree garland:
the washed and pee'd on cash
and sometimes, someone's pants.
19.7.13
[24.43] Do you not see that Allah drives along the clouds, then gathers them together, then piles them up, so that you see the rain coming forth from their midst? And He sends down of the clouds that are (like) mountains wherein is hail, afflicting therewith whom He pleases and turning it away from whom He pleases; the flash of His lightning almost takes away the sight. -The Glorious Quran, The Light
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/1011-mysteries_of_thunderstorms.htm
13.7.13
21.6.13
The Ephemera Game
I must think on it.
A bit of lost property,
trinket and trove outlast
memory, past progressive
ends with an ing
date rape "as in"
not suspected:
a rehab project up in old Bisbee.
The world
belongs to the war weary,
to the established perplexity
of exile, to that
and all that comes forward
honors and honors and honors
blesses and blesses, blesses.
A moth touch tests and teaches.
I must think on it.
A bit of lost property,
trinket and trove outlast
memory, past progressive
ends with an ing
date rape "as in"
not suspected:
a rehab project up in old Bisbee.
The world
belongs to the war weary,
to the established perplexity
of exile, to that
and all that comes forward
honors and honors and honors
blesses and blesses, blesses.
A moth touch tests and teaches.
27.3.13
24.3.13
Ding
Could that bells taken apart
stretched mm angel barks
appreciated, adored,
drenched in golden golden-ness
drip dropped, dangled
as though bubbled
glide towards heaven
synchronized, split off
from blast & smelt & smoulder
quick flown and flashed
not drum, not singsong
just a pouring
up like that
shock ink mess
of sound, tender and lost.
but of course
the stars, the precious moon
a next stop.
17.3.13
Crossing
For a week the blood
smear as deer had
dragged herself
on broken legs to a side
of the road and lay there
like a hand swipes
a frozen window.
There she watched the last cars
and shooting stars, took a final hit
off the moon where no Injuns
ever stood either and she promised.
Praiseworthy Appearance
On Friday night
the fox speeds up
to make it -
away from the town
full of light and actions.
The way he smooths on by -
a little train of feet, film
made of fur and tail
in one brilliant line.
Left to right as if
a switch lifted and the chute
opened through which
he aimed and shot.
For a week the blood
smear as deer had
dragged herself
on broken legs to a side
of the road and lay there
like a hand swipes
a frozen window.
There she watched the last cars
and shooting stars, took a final hit
off the moon where no Injuns
ever stood either and she promised.
Praiseworthy Appearance
On Friday night
the fox speeds up
to make it -
away from the town
full of light and actions.
The way he smooths on by -
a little train of feet, film
made of fur and tail
in one brilliant line.
Left to right as if
a switch lifted and the chute
opened through which
he aimed and shot.
16.3.13
Sleep Heresy
Here, my ears ring uncontrollably.
I am not sure if it is the electricity
or the avarice of my mind waking up
to the fact: another day, get used to it.
How I crave sleep, how embarrassed
I am when at last I don’t turn off the TV
so sleep isn’t exactly what it is that comes,
more like a moth on a curtain
waiting to get out, hoping.
Here, my ears ring uncontrollably.
I am not sure if it is the electricity
or the avarice of my mind waking up
to the fact: another day, get used to it.
How I crave sleep, how embarrassed
I am when at last I don’t turn off the TV
so sleep isn’t exactly what it is that comes,
more like a moth on a curtain
waiting to get out, hoping.
4.3.13
Just a Quick Reminder
I dreamt a donkey and a tunnel of snow,
we went up into the places
crawled through the openings
up into the nooks and the crannies.
Oh! it lasted so long that
when I awoke to pray
the fajr prayer, it seemed
years and years had passed
but when I returned
to bed nothing but a cold
dark sleep until the sun
and breeze, until then.
I dreamt a donkey and a tunnel of snow,
we went up into the places
crawled through the openings
up into the nooks and the crannies.
Oh! it lasted so long that
when I awoke to pray
the fajr prayer, it seemed
years and years had passed
but when I returned
to bed nothing but a cold
dark sleep until the sun
and breeze, until then.
21.2.13
R***** at February
The snow at night turns blue, sparkles
between the two states of ice and art
as sweetly sings a sparrow near dark,
a moon side of us, a dusk distance
and she is definitely dying, we know this.
All of the water in the world spies
for her, steals color and in that
rainbow of teardrops, a breath is counted.
We each ask Allah to give her a year or two
from our balance as slaves might do,
bartering our beatings as if this will suffice,
as if that could stop all that is random,
as if the snow stops as it does for an hour
to give us time to wander home.
The snow at night turns blue, sparkles
between the two states of ice and art
as sweetly sings a sparrow near dark,
a moon side of us, a dusk distance
and she is definitely dying, we know this.
All of the water in the world spies
for her, steals color and in that
rainbow of teardrops, a breath is counted.
We each ask Allah to give her a year or two
from our balance as slaves might do,
bartering our beatings as if this will suffice,
as if that could stop all that is random,
as if the snow stops as it does for an hour
to give us time to wander home.
12.1.13
One Poet to Another in a Small Town
I wonder, did you ever write one about our
tryst in which we awaken after many years
Rip Van Winkle-like in Safeway’s snack shop .
Here is where adultery stops and whispers
into the ears of old birds in line at the pharmacy window
until I realize this one belongs to me and begin.
As far as the lovemaking goes, yes there are memories
yet those were merely acts in the night by dove light.
I was never so lonely and alone, as all adulteresses
naturally are, usually in tears, broken, beaten down.
Homing in on hope, relief, sorrow. Paring it down to pain.
Now here in this well-lit town square near the salads and slaws
we sit with cold cuts and those within earshot
struggle to comprehend what we don’t bother to hide.
You talk about Gilbert and Gerber , I about their signatures.
We are famous today near the half-off –Christmas-bulk!
We’ve both known so many of our kind as if
you weren’t even one of them and I just a nurse
moonlighting while people lean and stoop to hear
our clandestine clamor about blood sugars and petit mal!
Yet we throw caution to the wind every time we meet
blurting out narratives for which we’ve kept in touch
all these years, taking the occasional pulse of an old secret.
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