The Skulker

Betrayal has seven layers, five of them destiny

sandwiched between black and white.

A card arrived with the bouquet,

in the back room on your bed.

The signal was busy the day at the beach.

One hundred and forty vignettes,

doesn’t matter what happened next or who held the camera.

In Adlieh I kept a key tied to my thumb

when you first met in long glances.

A falling star over my right shoulder

as you dropped the last vestige of your humanity.

She slid on the stretcher as we headed south

between love and the last meal.

That year the tomatoes volunteered and grapes returned

when beauty turned its hard back on memory.

I noted that it was a rudder not an axle

as defeat sculpted a new side between breezes

where we sat on the banks of Patagonia

waiting our turn.

Is In The Details

A neighbor reported that a woman had been yelling

For four hours on Blank Avenue, he did not know

If there was anyone else at the residence.

He could not see the last two months nor did

He pretend to have remorse over his actions.

The police shook their heads and then nodded,

Perused the array of dead plants on the porch,

Her disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes,

The witnesses parted curtains and sighed,

It was eight pm on the Ivory Coast,

Contaminants swirled in the air

But this was not pertinent nor did it indicate

The launch of a new investigation.

He whispered into the mouthpiece,

“Do you see how God has punished you?”

From his seat on the airport bus driving

Through the streets of Montserrado County

The day after a body was left until a quarter to four,

The viral count spewing itself onto the ground

Outside the luxury goods store beside someone’s

Next whore just before the curfew.

No, the neighbor reported he did not know

If anyone else was at the residence,

He could not see the torn clothes

In the bag at the back of the garage,

Could not see the last shard of glass

From an old portrait of boys that had hung

On her wall, he could not reach the bless-ed

Fragments of the wallet sized photo

Or the stack of boarding passes and business cards.

The good cop bad cop routine lasted a half an hour,

Until one of them spoke into his lapel,

The listener and speaker following the unwritten code,

“Aren’t you the mayor’s sister?” he asked,

Or weren’t you the one we caught behind the hedge

In the park?  Why haven’t you changed your address

With the DMV?  The cops evaluated sobriety as they

Perched their left hands on the holsters.

Luckily, this was not reported.

The devil wept in the back bedroom,

Looked solemnly at piles of documentation

Unable to decipher one last signature

Unable to sample the DNA or hear

The hand as it witnessed to the foot.

The Breast Sketch

It serves us so well.  And then it doesn’t.  It doesn’t obey, it finds new ways to remind us of what we are and what we are not.  We are young, we are attractive, we are mothers and grandmothers, we are human.

I sat upstairs in my home in South Lebanon.  It was warm so it must have been summer.  People were just waking up from their afternoon naps.  The sun was still up and Rabab’s three boys were outside making noise and fighting.  Billboards across the country sported images of women’s breasts substituted by watermelons, peaches, cherries.  Advocating self exams.

Rabab came up to talk.  Most people avoid my apartment, they know it is a place where I can go to escape whatever is going on down below.  To be free of the need for interpreters and just look through my old stuff, the things that have been left there over time by me and my children.  I go through these things when I am there and contemplate a lot of things.  The material world, the time we’ve spent there, the time I want to spend there in my old age and the place I am headed after death and ressurrection.

I remember one winter and it was very cold.  I was still drinking back then.  I’d go upstairs and the brothers would come up and we’d drink.  Wine and Arak.  We’d laugh so loud there could be no doubt in those below that we were not in control.  That day I’d taken the kids to the graveyard and we’d messed around by the graves scaring each other, some of the graves collapsing, some of them covered by photos in glass boxes.  We came home and my eldest was there doing her work for university.  The propane heater barely kept the frigid room warm even though all the doors that could be closedd were closed in order to heat the smallest area possible. 

I poured a gin and some coke and settled in for a nice evening.  The kids went to bed and by then I’d had another gin or two.  I went to bed nice and cozy with my bedroom door open and my son out on the couch, one daughter with me and the other secluded in the middle room. 

I drifted deep into sleep…..when the visitor showed up.  He’d been in my dreams before…just a shadow. Once he took me to see my ancestors.  The kids still tease me about that night journey.  Porter Hopkins they say, Porter Hopkins, one eighth Cherokee as all white people do.  There are no white ancestors so we have to make up some Injun ones.  Common practice where I come from in Arizona.

In the dream I saw an enormous wave closing down on me.  Inside of it were several children being tossed around by the force of the tidal surge.  The visitor said, “Save them.  They are going to die.”  I woke up with such a start that my heart was going over 150 beats a minute.  Not my normal but I woke up and there was my son standing at the door saying his stomach was upset and then he vomited.  I got up and cleaned him up, cleaned up the floor but my heart still beat out of control.  I put him to bed in my bed and went to the kitchen to try to get control of my heart that was easily doing 175 by then.  It just wouldn’t stop and I thought of the disrespect at the graveyard that day where we’d fooled around to scare each other.  Could that be the cause of my distress? I thought about the gin and Allah punishing me for my indiscretion.  I’d rather not believe that.

I heard my son get up again and moan a bit.  He was stumbling out the door and I grabbed him to get him to the toilet.  He didn’t make it though and covered the floor.  I cleaned him up again and he was so lethargic.  My heart completely wildly out of control.  The guilt just overwhelmed me for neglecting my children, teaching them wrong instead of right.

I returned to the bathroom and began to clean the mess.  I knew something wasn’t right and knelt on my hands and knees and began sobbing.  Sobbing for the sins, sobbing for the indecencies and the destruction caused by my chemical abuse.  Just sobbing out loud.

My eldest came out of her room and asked me “Mom, what’s the matter?”  She seemed just fine.  I told her, “go get your grandmother, something isn’t right”.  I didn’t want to disturb her at 3 in the morning but was helpless to solve the problem. Just helpless and losing control.  Perhaps I was going insane?

Em Melhem came charging up the stairs and threw open the door.  She said only one word and it might has well been death.  GAZ.  Propane.  She threw open the windows and doors to air out the salon and bedroom where my youngest two children still slept and would have slept for an ever if not for the visitor in my dream who said, “Save them.”

It was years later and Rabab came in and we sat across from each other in the kitchen.  She already had a left mastectomy.  Her hair was back and she was looking good.  It was over.  She was a survivor. We both were.  I had already apologized to her for my indiscretions of years before when she was left to worry down below while her husband and his brothers and I got drunk and laughed late into the nights. Apologized for making her feel uptight, for being a good muslim, for being the kind of person who could hold her tongue.

She wanted to talk to me about an implant.  It was heavy on her mind and I suppose she felt a little guilty wanting to look like everyone else, to stop stuffing her bra or wearing baggy clothes.  I am not sure but I imagine it is the same for all people who have an amputation of a body part.  They miss the normalcy of that.

I told her sure, they can take skin from your belly, your back.  They can tattoo you some nipples, they can do wonders “nowadays”. 

Suddenly, she asked me to see her.  To look.  I said sure.  I’m a nurse, I do that all the time.

Rabab lifted her top to show me what was left.  I swallowed so very hard.  I was unprepared, I was honored and then I was simply devastated.  Just devastated for Rabab.  I didn’t cry though.  I waited until she left and then called Pat Porter, my brother’s wife in America who had already had implants, already been there, done that and was doing fine.  I cried to her and could not contain my feelings.  She offered advice that I cannot remember now and it doesn’t matter.  There is no road map as they say for such things.  There are just no easy answers.

Hotel Dieu, Part II

I arrived to Beirut International that evening September 9.2013 and as I sat and watched the official butting out one cigarette after another, he took out some paper and in general took his own sweet time attending to whatever it was about my passport that made immigration pull me into that office. It was really hot and I was so so tired. He avoided looking me in the eye and other young officials went back and forth out of the office seemingly doing very important things but I was the only passenger in the terminal. The only one.

After what seemed to be an hour or more, he would ask me questions about my visit and I was on the verge of tears already, standing in line to get into the baggage claim area where you go through the standard glass enclosed cubicles to have things stamped vigorously by bored and unsympathetic young men in khaki. I always wonder why they are so unhappy or at least appear to be. Little did I know how many unhappy officials I would be meeting in the coming days. One man after another clothed in every shade of gray to khaki to brown with expressionless faces and smirks.

Finally another official entered the office and the boss was telling me to go with him to the baggage claim. At last I would be allowed to leave, to get to Hotel Dieu and see dear Rabab who probably had anything but a few minutes to a few days left in her life. This I knew and was on borrowed time already as we all are but in her case, the borrowed time was finite and there were no bargains left to be had on her behalf. As a nurse, these things we know are non negotiable.

By the time I was sent to get my bags, they were already in the abandoned pile in a room near the exit. I went to the door and was thankful that my two big suitcases were right in the middle. The official just stood there and let me pull both bags by myself. A grandmother tired from a long journey and he just let me struggle and instead of taking me to customs, he indicated we had to go down to an office. He said it would be alright, I would be able to leave the airport as soon as they cleared me from immigration.

I went into his office and left my heavy suitcases outside the door. He sat across from me and began to ask the same questions I had already answered in the other office. Why are you here? How long are you staying? The usual.

I thought to myself…well obviously, this is about Syria. In early September 2013, Obama was planning to attack Syria for using chemical weapons. Now we know that wasn’t true at all but I always knew it was a lie. It never made any sense. But I comforted myself with the thought that the Lebanese were just being very careful about who was entering the country that week. I could be anyone for all they know, a spy, a terrorist, a courier…who knows really.

The official flipped back and forth through my passport. He’d stop on one thing and go back to another. In total I’d been back to Lebanon 4 times since the war and evacuation in 2006.

The official called one of his peers in and his was the first real friendly face I’d seen all night. He was a big man, bald and he obviously felt for my misery. I kept telling them I had to get to Rabab and I would cry and they would offer tissues. The two of them flipped back and forth and back and forth in my passport. They asked me again why I was there and if I’d been living in Lebanon. I then remembered the Bahar. The Beach. Lebanon’s own Normandy Landing in reverse. We left in 2006 in a mass exodus…thousands and thousands of people shuttled to Naval vessels and ocean liners in order to escape the heavy bombardment. During the evacuation, we left the country on an amphibious from the beach, on to the USS Trenton and then on to Cargo planes times two to Ramstein and then on to Newark.

I also remembered my car accident on the autostrat in a Beirut suburb in 2004. I didn’t reveal that one fearing that was why I was being investigated. A car accident that was not really a car accident but a suicide attempt: my own. I wasn’t successful obviously. But it wandered around in my mind that I was finally going to be punished for that act that sent a couple other people to a hospital and most likely ended up with a garbage truck driver with a stiff fine. And me with broken ribs, sternum and a pneumothorax.

Finally the big man asked, if I had gone out in 2006 on the “Bahar”. I indicated I had and he looked thoroughly enlightened. He explained that apparently a lot of people had the same problem as I did and had problems when returning to Lebanon for a visit. They evacuated and the US Embassy never informed immigration that we’d left the country. I was so relieved and they said they would call the judge and I would be released just as soon as they could get me cleared. It would finally be over and I could maybe get some sleep in my apartment in Aramoun before going to check on Rabab in the morning which by now was just a few hours away.

I waited and waited and made small talk with the first official. With his broken English and my broken Arabic we were able to chat and he seemed more relaxed, more tolerant of the midnight burden I was providing. Keeping him from the quintessential security guard type nap, head on chest, police cap tilted down over the eyes. I was worried about Rabab’s brother Ahmad who must be outside the airport waiting for me to arrive. I begged the guard to call him and let him know I was there but he said he couldn’t do that. I pleaded and pleaded and they relented and let me call Ahmad outside to let him know there was a problem about the evacuation.

Finally the big guy came back and grabbed one of my suitcases and the other one took the second leaving me with just my carry on. We exited the airport but through another door, the one that no one tells you about. The car was waiting just outside already and I realized that the big guy must have pulled it around to pick us up. I asked where we were headed and they told me that they couldn’t get hold of the judge and so they were taking me all the way to the immigration office itself. I didn’t question that and slid into the back seat of an old compact car. In Lebanon, officials and police don’t always have an official car, they use their own. This wasn’t a surprise. I knew that already from my car “accident”. That cop that accompanied me to one hospital (I left AMA to try to escape) and eyed me like he knew there was something more to my little accident. I had to drive that cop to the police station myself in order to answer my charges that day in 2004, his eye on me the whole time, his knowledgeable eye. The awful eye that cops have when they know a person isn’t being quite honest.

…to be continued

Hotel Dieu


Today makes one year to the day. 

I arrived at Beirut via Rafik Hariri International. It was a late flight and I was on my way to tend to my sister in law Rabab who was in Hotel Dieu (God Hotel) in Beirut. 

She had metastatic breast cancer. It had spread to her brain, her bones and her liver. I had known for a year that she was terminal but she was not told. It is common in other cultures to fear telling the person about their situation. I always believed though that somewhere inside her heart, she knew the end of her life was near.

She'd already had rods put in her neck because the cancer had invaded her vertebrae. She suffered excruciating pain during that time...must have lasted over a year. She couldn't even lift herself out of bed sometimes and her personality started changing.

Our Rabab who was the life of the party so to speak...a muslim party with a devout muslim looks more like her making your favorite dish and calling you over for a shin dig involving jokes (mostly at her expense...we always liked teasing her to try to ruffle her extraordinarily dignified character), involving the kids playing and just sitting in her presence enjoying hospitality from the heart.

She began to feel a bit more angry at life. But Rabab's anger wasn't like anyone I have ever known as a registered nurse. It was highly controlled, and mostly she worried about her three young boys. This was what truly bothered her the most. The idea that they would be left without her to guide them in life, in their Islam, in the world so full of challenges and hardships and joys.

I was not aware by the time I boarded the plane in Tucson on my way to Beirut that the cancer had spread to her brain. At that time, I was only told about her liver and knew that was the call I had to attend to. The call I had to follow.

I was not a good friend to Rabab in the many months of her disease process. Not at all. I will never claim I was her support, her confidante or even a good advisor in the years before her death. All I know is that she loved me and if she could, she would go to the end of the earth to bring me whatever I asked for and as an RN I only hoped to get there to help with her death because I knew she was dying, I knew that the death process is best managed with friends by your side, children outside playing in the yard and wanted desperately to get her out of a hospital and into her father's home in the south of Lebanon. I knew that it might not turn out that way if I just sat around in the US and watched from afar. I believed that I had something to do there but in the end I benefitted far more from my attendance. Far more.

I reached Beirut at about 8 in the evening. It was a slow day at the airport, I think it was a Monday and I'd been en route far too long already. I knew she'd had her liver tapped for fluid and with that goes internal bleeding because the liver is failing.

I handed my passport to the immigration clerk and his face changed. He said to me, "one moment please". He turned his computer off and went into the glass office where I could see another traveler conversing with the immigration head at the airport.

He reminded me of Kamal Ataturk. All such foreign officials in the Middle East seem to have sprung from the loins of that infamous secularist who marched thousands of Armenians to their deaths in the 20th century. That portrait (Ataturk)decorates the walls of every Turkish police station, most of the restaurants, the majority of hotel lobbies and no doubt people's the nightmares of the Turkish population night to night. I met that portrait in a Turkish police station outside of the hidden cities of Cappadoccia and it still brings me to tears. He looks like a Vampire and perhaps he was.

After a brief conversation between the two officials, I was told to enter the glass office and sat on the flea bitten couch in front of the chief's desk. There was a young woman and she was trying to explain something about her passport. My Arabic is limited but what I gathered was hers was expired but it was Lebanese and she was given a free pass to leave but would have to go to the immigration to fix the matter before she would be allowed to leave the country again.

II

No one is more surprised than me. 

There he is with his Qibla. I am fixated on the girl next to him, she couldn't be more than 18. She is adjusting her head cover, fixing it the way hijabi girls do when they are interested. Pushing hair in while pulling it out, eyes up and then down again, no one noticing the way their lithe bodies twist toward the object of their affection.

There is clapping and a bride and groom. The most beautiful bride a person could imagine. Her groom sits attentively near and love is revealed in its small moments. Ruths rule the castles of other people.

It is so.

I watch it over and over, stop, replay. A child wanders in and out of the frame, belongs to no one. The young woman cannot resist another look over and another. The cameras of heaven between Qibla and Qibla.

The two wests, the two easts under the pleasant lights . Tulsa. The way cities look from 35,000 like giant lava flows. The world is ancient.

And there she is, Rabab. Her heart beating inside the camera, her steady hand is on the wheel, and pushes him away and toward the person who with steady hand and that awful eye, one terrible eye and the other shut, packages memories.

How many angels were there? Two? Seventy-two?

She enters from the right side of his Qibla. Did she know I'd be watching her now six years ahead? How many treatments had been completed? In the beginning she used to wear ice caps but by the time I reached her after six days of one person after another entering Adlieh, entering Babdaat, it was clear that ice had not worked to prevent the theft of hair, the stolen color of her skin.

He is throbbing and glowing. His mind awash with houris. Taking his risik* before its time, playing the part of Sultan to his crew. The man of the hour and a child wanders into the frame, belongs to no one. The girl straightens her head cover, pushes hair in in order to pull some out. It is so. Take a walk on the Wild Side.

And Rabab turns him Qibla-ward, she is there forever looking at me saying: wake up.

The Lote Tree

And still there is more 
Saintpaulia
how tiny you are
the smallest 
flower or you are 
a dangerous mind
boggling dragon to
pursue us dragging
mysterious around
the dusty old cosmos
how your petals
sparkle and those too
are small and creep
into the outraged eye
like criminals
bright dainty sparkles
the sun comes up
glistening now
in the window
which is also
dangerously small
particularly thin
between the wind
that might have
touched the fragrant
Bouillon of stars
and the air inside
of this cozy container.
How many stars
would it take 
to put out
your nuptial glitter?
In comparison
how trite
to see you there
and wonder.

> Liberian officials fear EVD could soon spread through the capital's
> largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for suspected
> patients and took items including bloody sheets and mattresses. The
> violence in the West Point slum occurred late Sat [16 Aug 2014] and
> was led by residents angry that patients were brought to the holding
> center from other parts of Monrovia, Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant
> health minister, said Sun [17 Aug 2014].
> 
> Local witnesses told Agence France Presse that there were armed men
> among the group that attacked the clinic. "They broke down the doors
> and looted the place. The patients all fled," said Rebecca Wesseh, who
> witnessed the attack and whose report was confirmed by residents and
> the head of Health Workers Association of Liberia, George Williams. Up
> to 30 patients were staying at the center, and many of them fled at
> the time of the raid, said Nyenswah [other reports put the number at
> 17. - Mod.JW]. Once they are located, they will be transferred to the
> EVD center at Monrovia's largest hospital, he said.
> 
> The attack comes just one day after a report of a crowd of several
> hundred local residents chanting "No Ebola in West Point" drove away a
> burial team and their police escort that had come to collect the
> bodies of suspected EVD victims in a slum in the capital, Reuters
> reports. West Point residents went on a "looting spree," stealing
> items from the clinic that were likely infected, said a senior police
> official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to
> brief the press. The residents took medical equipment and mattresses
> and sheets that had bloodstains, he said. EVD is spread through bodily
> fluids including blood, vomit, feces and sweat.
> 
> "All between the houses, you could see people fleeing with items
> looted from the patients," the official said, adding that he now
> feared "the whole of West Point will be infected." Some of the looted
> items were visibly stained with blood, vomit and excrement, said
> Richard Kieh, who lives in the area.
> 
> The incident creates a new challenge for Liberian health officials who
> were already struggling to contain the outbreak. New figures released
> by the World Health Organization show that Liberia has recorded more
> EVD deaths (413) than any of the other affected countries.
> 
> Liberian police restored order to the West Point neighborhood on Sun
> [17 Aug 2014]. Sitting on land between the Montserrado River and the
> Atlantic Ocean, West Point is home to at least 50 000 people,
> according to a 2012 survey. Distrust of government runs high in West
> Point, with rumors regularly circulating that the government plans to
> clear the slum out entirely. Though there had been talk of putting
> West Point under quarantine should EVD break out there, assistant
> health minister Nyenswah said Sunday [17 Aug 2014] that no such step
> has been taken. "West Point is not yet quarantined, as is being
> reported," he said.
> 
> While the armed attack is likely the most brazen attack on health
> workers trying to contain the deadly outbreak, it is far from the 1st
> in the region worst-hit by it. There have been numerous reports of
> locals attacking those trying to stop the disease by throwing stones
> at aid workers, blocking aid convoys, and forcibly removing patients
> from clinics. Many locals blame foreigners for bringing the disease,
> saying it had never been there before they arrived. The mistrust of
> central government and help from outside runs deep in this part of
> West Africa. All 3 countries worst-hit by the outbreak -- Liberia,
> Sierra Leone, and Guinea -- are relatively recently off decades of
> either brutal civil war or iron-fisted dictatorships.

TERRIFIC

I hold now to nothing but Allah, bricks and dust,

the house empty and memory just a phase

in yet more phases while you sleep

unencumbered in your sociopathic haze.

Remember the day your boy got his leg

stuck in the fender of an ATV

and I turned and rolled in.

Near the camel souks of Riyadh,

his gasps and terror bled into the sand.

As I knelt by his pale wonderful body

and shushed him like the babe

to whom I’d given birth while you

entertained the nurse with stories

of a woman in stillbirth and her husband

threw the body in the morn into the well

saying, What baby? to her as she awoke,

I gasped and begged for the knife

and as he lay limp and lifeless there

near my worn out old form,

they pumped him full of nitrogen

for days as I woke and traveled to

and from the hospital where I tended

to drunks and drag queens,

there you were hanging onto

your strenuous gaps of good and evil.

And you twisted your face

as you watched me pull his leg free,

inspect his chest where he’d landed

and you complained about my calm

demeanor and I knelt near his

pale wonderful body, his natural grace,

the only peace I’ve ever known

with your species was at his side

in the afternoon naps.

He and I read the Hobbit over a course

of a week or two, Charlotte’s Web

left us weeping and alone. 

Letter To The Dead

Don’t blow out the last light in my soul,

the one called pity, the one called empty

for it is the only one that burns.

It’s unsteady flicker consumes

atom after atom of air,

the breeze wanders through her door.

The lighthouse keeper has locked

his shop and turned away the sea

in agony where his breath holds

the final blow to all that burned

all that beckoned he has stowed

away his key.  Beware the cool

vapor that settles near the quay,

beware the tips of your fingers,

beware the beating of your heart

where nothing but stones and stitches

remain.  For the movement of its chambers

disrupt the universe where stars

melt into time and the past

behind which is more past and the past.  

In Monrovia

the hundred aliases of evil

know poverty’s single house address,

familiar with all her drab,

pointless days spent in mud

and frustration, robbing Peter

to pay Paul. The taxis carry

the message of God to every door

and gallons of rain wash

the rusts of love from the naked

bodies of the dead and the dying.

The pungence of death’s naked stare

on the floor of a hut bearing

her breasts to an old man there

waiting for Judgement to come.

The last view I saw as he stumbled

toward the back gate, broken

and breaking will haunt

the waterways of our prison no more.

All those hours spent waiting

for the guard to pass by, to pass

us our crusts and slop

sink into the sewers

on the tales of snakes.

Rub al Qali

Here in sacred spaces, these invaded places

where the last of you retracts

the lips of my soul, not once

did you read the cover to cover,

not once did you stop to take the time

to hold on and craving after craving,

the taxi driver past the gravestones

in the wadi, the gull as she shat

 a slap from the Lord of the Worlds

and Istanbul

might wake me from the sleep of prison.

Chain after chain encircled until finally

chin, nose, eyes were wrapped

into the blindness of bondage.

Did you know love that I bleached

every single uniform, took time to

clean the blinds? At last to collect you

from your airports and first class lounges

to brush aside these meaningless advances.

Here my heart lies listlessly

between creation and time

waiting alone until Paris closes,

until Morocco flashes her headlights

in the whore-light of dawn.

The Intercessors

Have they at last clipped my tongue,

severed the last nerve of the agnost?

All that watches waits,

all that plays dead, the shiver

of the ropes in the wells

rally at last in the echoes

of occultation, near that fog.

The Etiology of Mr. X


as if it was blown into the halo of park lightsbetween strike three and batter up - Darla Whitehead, Pack of Lies

Yesterday about noon, this fellow
finds us out in the sun and says
he wants his test done now.
We of ambigious natures, nurses
working towards Armageddons
big and small, tow each other
like bricks into rooms
full of camphor and prevention.
It all starts there in the clinics,
under chairs where little girls
run to scream and hide. Big boys
grow pale and old men come to us
before they die to talk
about their daughters, to talk
about their sons. It has been
a long time of such things,
keeping the secrets of nature alive
in our pockets and cupboards,
writing down our sincerities
in diaries on demand. Up front
there are drawers full of history,
treacherous rumours named Murphy and Cline.
His hat suits him well I think
as he chatters on about his deeds.
What does this to us all?
What cause is there to explain?
I've lived and loved and laughed
this much and cried about the same.


I Land in the Lilacs

My irises aren't really
mine afterall but all the same
they are touched carefully,
split and soaked, ever-lasting
dutiful to the ages
and then some.
Rhizomes gently laid into
their earthy sockets
produce secret after secret
from who knows where,
who knows where.

A Long Way To Pocatello Tonight

Have you ever seen
such a clean crowd of people
sitting in their folding chairs
listening
chortling
have you ever seen
such a thing?

I have.

They're just everywhere,
they want stripper poets
killer poets and poets
who kill themselves
for a living
as ornery as that
must sound

to the untrained ear

that doesn't know
too much about
poetry but alot
about sitting in an audience.

It's a long way to Pocatello tonight
isn't it? I know it's a long way
but do tell me, how far?

Once, we met Rothenberg
and he knew about that distance
to Pocatello. Just discovered it.

I might just tell him tonight
how far Pocatello is
when there is no audience
and life is just a watch and a wait.

Hope at Crowhaven Farm

If only at eight
I hadn't seen
Crowhaven Farm,
deliberated on it
during the long nights
when the rats
scurried around
in the ceilings,
if only at eight
I hadn't seen
the way they put
bricks upon Meg's chest,
called her a witch
and they were
all dressed up
for Thanksgiving,
if only I hadn't seen
Crowhaven Farm
in 1970,
my life would have been
not as it is
but as it was.

Everything's Connected

Trust when he says he was
in a coma for five months,
no one lies after a coma.
If they sleep, they sleep
only a little and insomnia
doesn't seem to bother them.
We all walked outside
together like that,
into the back alley
a perfect back alley
in a slow motion town
on the border
where I sat and considered
Framingham, Massachussetts.
A whole town measured out
grace in urine cups
and xrays. One by one
they told the truth about it
and Chagas is what you call
an emerging disease.
It gets up into your heart
after years of living on the edge.
I've seen those things on leaves
yet still, I never kill
a single one of them
or scorpions but I do
run away like a kid
fighting wasps. Once
I showed a furry
little beast to a poverty
stricken woman
and she crushed it.
It was a tarantula,
we're all just flesh and bone.
She was the first
to notice the invasion,
and ran up the hill
crying fee fi fo fum.
That was before the war
and power surges
took everything
we thought we owned.
It's one of the best things
that ever happened
but now, I don't take
any chances and put
nets over my bean stalks
and count them every day.


The Colonialist With A Thousand Faces- Allah bears witness that there is no god but He, 3:18

Up on highway eighty
you can see what fire does
and what it does not.
I have to wonder about the two
British ladies in Tombstone
who wanted to go to the
Chicawow-wows, to Apache lands.
One of them
just now wearing
her new wide-brimmed hat,
one of them hoping
for the Organ Pipe National Forest.
She tells me Britain
has history and you've got Geology.
Like I don't know
what we call in these parts:

diddly squat.
Oh! such mighty deportations!
La ila'ha il'la Huwa,
mammoths in caliche,
this is my beloved slag.

See that here? The color of the map
in Yuma is gray. There is a reason
for that. Go up the San Simon way,
take the Gleeson road
but first stop by and see
what the fire does not do
over time
to the miners and the mining.
Trust me, skip Las Vegas.
We're all just tourists,
those are all my fathers
and as I shimmy into town
through the Mule Pass
it is all very new to me.
Once again, the long way.

The Game Over Plan

Which sky does the wind
whip through now,
which city is torn apart
and blended; which one
isn't? Fighters defend
one after another
with flags and buckshot,
where to hit
the wind? Where can
so much water go
if the wind makes peace
and leaves the load
without a treaty, sans
policy in a stalemate
of disillusionment?
These blossoms cannot lie:
when the bee quits,
she quits. When the river
stops, she stops.
When death comes, we agree.


(from The Book Called I Remember)

I remember laying down
with you above me
the first time we made love.
I remember the shirt you wore
and told you they look like epaulettes
i.e. those strips of fabric
sewn onto the shoulders
of your shirt
as you held yourself
over me and for the tenth
or eleventh time, died
your martyr's death into me.
How I wish I could have
been the innocent you were.
As I looked up at you
propped on your two arms
I knew I loved something
so I said it was you.
I hardly knew you
we hardly knew each other
but you agreed.
How far away from home
we were and unlettered
and no matter where
our country is now,
we are always there.

For the Babysitter

Jerry Falwell dead.
It seems to be important
and every day a curious signal
goes out, it meanders over
the graves to find a way in there -
to bother the good dead Christians
and bother the unwanted children.
It tenders a response from
the recluse and the maimed.
What matters is when a good woman
like Lupe goes down. She knew
all about the graves and told me so
even though the church never
said a thing about it.
May her time there be silent
and Allah willing, short.

The Crush

On the back pages of the moon
men's voices come and go
before wars and after
card games until dawn
combines the silences.
The power is on again,
off again. Here
there is trust and there
is no place to hide
the occasional laughter
of the nervous but under
the quiet shelves
in a hundred pieces,
another hundred wires;
those bricks and windows
where there are homes of wonder
and assault - the places
that give up shade
to cover the brave
and coward alike
in ruins and prayers now
crowned with the ragged
families, the what's-left-over
who whisper: repair and brace.

The Honey Moon

Beirut:

Tell me this
is the last adventure
and I'll go home, stop
bothering God for information
about you. I'll stop spying
through your candles and dirty
mists. I married not a man
but the whole country, wedded
rivers while marching
across stones, my innocence
lost on a flight from which
I stepped into a sea
of armies and posters.
My teeth got ground into paste,
a dowry wasted on one hiding
place after another looking
for the auction of the future
where the last bidder is death.
I gave birth to mementos and distress
near bodies of chalk
sucked naked by gravity.
Our children dragged
baggage and dread
through the streets
as the news catered
our bitterest meals.
We never leave and never arrive,
airport to airport with a cold bravado
saying the strangest things.