On Depression in our children: I am grateful that we have a bit more time to ensure that understanding is obtained, understood and kept safe within my family. That is all. So say Allah Kareem and chase away sadness with knowledge that all will be known eventually. Be one of the knowers and I wouldn't say that unless I knew you were interested in knowing. BUT be careful of your exposure to information...it can really be toxic. Also, if you read Ibn al Arabi, you start to sound like a Sufi hahahahaha You are in my heart and my thoughts all the time. I pray for you every day, several times that shaitan stays away from you, your spouse and your children. Five X 2 Qunoot per incident so ten times total for each person. I correct that is Four x 2 plus one Qunoot for Fajr. So 9 times. You see Everytime you communicate with another person you are also communicating with their accompanying djinn Some of us have our djinn under control and we don't let that mofo get into our conscious

That goes for every single utterance you ever hear from any other person. So dad and I were discussing this briefly I mentioned David Dominguez...he is the old hobo that walks around town collecting trash and sometimes just dumps it on the road creating a mess I said to dad...perhaps he is an angel no one realizes what he is symbolizing I haven't seen him in a while and saw him walking in Warren down near our house...after realizing that day just before that he never gets into my trash or is visible to me in this area Anyhows...I asked your father if he is able to converse much...my only exchange with him was some years ago at the beauty parlor when he was looking for a lighter So I lit his cigarette from the lighter in the truck...he seemed to be kind, sweet and polite Anyhows...dad says in the beginning he didn't know who David was and struck up a conversation...dad could not tell me much about that but he said: "All I know is when he has some money, he brings it to me." Classic "Your Dad Utterance" Beautiful all the same. He asked me for light. He gave dad money.

Audience of One

I am asked sometimes, "do you still write poetry?" Sure, when there's a poem to be written. Most of the time, there's something to "be done" and if it's the laundry, then I do the laundry. If it's yard work, I pull some weeds. I am fortunate to have a husband that understands the artist in me and he encourages me to do whatever I see fit. We had a conversation not too long ago....we've been married now for 43 years give or take and he's never been under the illusion that I'd be some kind of straight up wife type (but if you hum a few bars I'll fake it). I said to him that sometimes I wish I was like real artists and poets and had dedicated more energy to publishing (photos, poems, etcetera) and I realized (total epiphany, the kind that you always said but didn't really believe but then you say, wow That! yes!) ...that being a mom, a wife, a cook and "chief bottle washer" was just as important and allowed just as much creativity to flow as anything else. Of course, like all art it can also be done poorly and without craft or enthusiasm.

I read this morning somewhere or someplace (on the interWEBS haha) that someone local said a poem doesn't exist until it is published or read out loud which could be said about anything that one wants to share....like a lovely cauliflower stew or a collection of lovely, well-tended pieces of pottery (made by someone else...and I finally purchased and constructed a console table to show off my collection, took me four effing hours to put that thing together). You do want someone to taste and feel the pleasure of the meal, to enjoy the cleanly swept front porch, pee in the shining porcelain receptacle of the Gods. I do not believe that another person is very much interested in how that toilet ended up so miraculous or how the poem was constructed line by line in order to insure that the reader stumbles over the words

"I am

-pretty too"

in order that they should be led, misled and then led back into the thought process with special trickery. And sure, I can give you a recipe for cauliflower stew but I cannot teach you to how to cook anymore than I can know if you like cauliflower. In other words: my standards and preferences as any kind of producer of any kind of work are what matters. It's all that should matter to anyone who is serious about any thing.

I take great issue with the type of self-absorbed mummery involved with a statement like, "oh until it is published it doesn't exist". I sense that the person who said it was trying to say "something important" because, well. People expect poets to have some sort of special power to issue decrees and such.

I decree: when I eat my cauliflower stew, I'm much more interested in how that stew makes ME feel inside, how important that hint of seven spice really is to ME ME ME. I'll sit there the next day with a bowl of leftovers and just languish in the glory of my creation..... albeit if someone else likes it, that's good too. Same for poetry. Any artist who truly understands their own production knows this and by knowing it, has conquered the biggest critic of all: themself. Mean Joe Green a former mentor that I used to interact with quite extensively taught me this, the idea of a poet's "audience of one". He also coined the phrase, "Look, a war all about her." (after the incursion in 2006). It was perhaps the best gift I ever received from him and sadly, continue to receive it now as Gaza is being leveled. The sad gift that keeps on giving.

This little ditty was written in 2006, on 16th Terrace/Center and won a little prize and honorable mention in a group that no longer exists called the Interboard Poetry Contest. Back when message boards and in particular, poetry critique circles performed surgical interventions on poems for other poets and probably destroyed some seriously pristine and honest work. It is one of the last times I ever bothered to submit a poem (save for.a stint of sending things off for $5-10 entry fees and receiving in return, rejection after rejection and saying to myself, if I want to give away five bucks, I'll send it to a Monrovian scammer instead...at least someone might eat 2 oz of macaroni instead of 1). That summer I read the poem "To Beirut" at Central School. I dressed in BHS school colors and had pom-poms (I dreamt of being a cheerleader way back in high school)...the poem features the Fight Song Onward Bisbee Onward Bisbee yadayadayada which, I actually sang to the audience.

Yeah, I still write a poem here and there but more importantly, I am happiest when I make something magic out of nothing. Like a kid with a magic wand, no one else has to believe in magic or for that matter, like cauliflower for me to know that as a human being, the Creator thought pretty highly of us humans, perhaps thought more of us than we even think of ourselves. We were created with free will and the ability to use our intellect in ways that dumbfound the rest of us and even, ourselves. We are given hearts and eyes and ears and taste buds if we only knew how astounding that when the Creator created us, the Creator said:

..even better than the angels.

Sure wish some folks would wake up to that human responsibility right now.

The Song of Bob

-MSwaid

(for Fred Tarr and the Radio Room)

The love affair with stangers began

with morning glories between us, Bob

went to work at the prison at 6:30

as the birds performed their last songs.

He quieted Sarge, Berry and Coco with biscuits

before he left with his radio

on, yet they started barking before

he reached the first stop sign.

I want to be his wife forever they thought,

I thought and we kept barking,

as we chased his car for all time in our minds.

Bob talks to his ex 1500 minutes a month,

he doesn't seem to mind the cost of his past tense.

Why didn't you just stay married? I am

pretty too behind this fence made of chain-mail.

Twenty-one years is all he says

from the screened-in back porch where he keeps

his old partners, ex-police dogs, his detritus.

It is as if 21 years is the official

Americana. There must be one

hundred morning glories from me

to Bob, outflanking the trees

choking them slowly. Bob wants me

to be his wife forever, waiting in my war

torn house next door so he can get home

from prison to say goodnight and wake up

again to say good morning all over.

I am the last sweetheart in town.

The Creator

When the matter of free

will is abolished,

when all are dead,

evolving into stone

and then, iron,

Will we then understand

even the most finite

change in the wind

was perceived?

Will we then know our own superiority

as living things in a world of stimuli

daylight, moonlight, oven-light?

We will understand at last,

the minutiae

of making bread,

the notion of the yeast

reproduced and extinguished.

Here is a photo of the kitchen lady gifted to me by my sister. It was created by an admirer of hers who used my grandmother’s wooden spools to decorate her neck. I never appreciated the piece when it hung by Radi’s front door…because it deserved a much more elevated position. She finally found her place a couple years ago above my sink and near the ceiling. It’s as if Radi and Ella Porter are always supervising the work down below.

We Had No Shadows

-Happy people in a happy world. Wallace Stevens, Auroras of Autumn

In the beginning we put the sun

up

in the corner and the grass

a green line across

the bottom of the page

and a house. The house had

a window, a door

neither could be opened.

There would be a flower

or two or three or four

until we tired of the trying

after the yellow one broke.

Everything was there,

everything that mattered:

beauty, rest, warmth, food, safety

perhaps a God that showed

the 19 fingers outstretched

and at times

there would be a bird

an M hanging

a whole big flock of M

and at times the rain

shot-fell like sticks

through the air

impaling the hard won star

which wasn't a star

which wasn't the sun

however convinced we were.

Ode to Rocks Revisited

Ode To Rocks Revisited

"O my son! surely if it is the very weight of the grain of a mustard-seed, even though it is in (the heart of) rock, or (high above) in the heaven or (deep down) in the earth, Allah will bring it (to light); surely Allah is Knower of subtleties, Aware" -From the chapter in the Quran called Luqman. Luqman is commonly known in the West as Aesop of Aesop's Fables.

In pockets and gardens, under

our beds for miners carry

a fair share in long gray

pails with jugs of soup

near shanks and flesh

with crusts plus those

stored in the chests.

The spare parts of the world

cast about pose a craving

as deep as the ocean is long

as the rivers are wide. A record

of perennial harvests hauled

up from stopes through gob-shite

on ladders of iron out the Judeah

the William Jennings Bryan, Red Jacket,

Cole and Campbell

the Eagle Eye, Nagasaki to the north

Beloved fountains of slag

pour into banks of remains

where genuflection pays

paper for gold and time with loss.

Poor men fair well in shifts,

forever on the way down or out

with dirt clinging, dirt in love

with the heroic skin, part

ancient shroud part, let me in.

Here's one from someone else:

Sully's Bucket

I've a thing or two to tell ya pard that I think you ought to know,

About that rusty bucket Sully carries down below.

You're not the first one, stranger, who laughed at Sully's pail.

You're the only one who's laughing now, the rest have heard the tale.

When we were young and handsome, had some ten years in the game,

Old Sull he had a partner, and Jim Riley was his name....

The four of us together, we were working side by side.

That's how come I chanced to be there on the night Jim Riley died.

Well the blasting had been easy, it was running out like sand.

An we were mucking out the ore; those days we mucked by hand.

And we were nearly finished, and I hadn't heard a sound.

But something must have happened, "Cause Jim Riley yelled "bad ground."

When we headed for the timberin', Sully must of took a spill

‘Cause when we looked back in there he was pinned beneath his drill.

The ceiling it was groanin' now, all set to drop its lid.

And Sully pinned beneath his drill was sobbin' like a kid.

Now there's men can watch their partners die, not throw their lives away.

But Riley wasn't one of them, he wasn't built that way.

As soon's he seen what happened, "Hey, hold on there Sull," he cried.

And before he had the words out, he'd thrown the drill aside.

Well, they headed ‘round the ore car, Riley wearing a big grin.

Guess he never knew what happened when the hanging wall came in.

Sully reached the timberin', his face as white as chalk.

And Riley, four yards back of him, caught fifteen ton of rock.

That day Sully's pail was buried, he ate from Riley's pail in tears.

And he's carried that same bucket now for almost twenty years.

So you can laugh at Sully, because he's mean and drinks a lot.

But don't laugh at Sully's bucket, it's the only friend he's got.

-Anon, Bisbee Arizona, From the Mining Museum Archives

Inherit the Earth

29.10.2008

In the fragrant backyards

of the Army, the whispering

Janes bake orthodoxies

into pie. Oh! the dresses

they wear, the photos

of some sweet mother

stationed

on each and every shelf.

How they bother

about the meek

on the Sabbath

near the wars

over in Juarez.

Gentle preacher pray

for the whispering Janes.

Pray for the upended

daughters of the revolution,

the last of their kind.

No more Apple Brown Betty,

no more quiet afternoons.

Bloody good reunion yes?

How To Haiku

there are the chances

of writing twice,

the same thing

from two different

places and there are

the chances of reading

one thing twice

the same way

the chances are about

the same really

idea makers and breakers

not all that easy

to come by

the better mind

the better heart

what foul intentions

and braveries

are hidden

between the disasters

great artifacts of time

those that turn and toss in the ruins

many things are there

if you look for them

long enough

this one reads

heads and spear,

that one reads

ten thousands

and the Sabine or flags

the best are pearls

kept safely aside

for the divers,

those whose very air

is in the return

from where

I do not know

nor how to get there

it is a one way canal

with very tiny sockets

just look down

why don't you

tell us what the soil

relates as it fills

all the dead spaces

tell us how many grasses

have returned

with the same old story.

man walked on the moon

big detail in small pond.

Delusion

Talking to my children this morning, the children that have seen three invasions, three escapes, three traumas.....well none of that can compare to this in Gaza. No but when it comes to tasting that bitter boneless cake we know exactly about the texture and flavor. Even Israel knows it well and have it as a creed: Never Again.

The one thing I hear often on the few newscasts that I pay attention to, so accustomed I've become to this ongoing problem that appears to descend from the battles of brutal Assyrian kings...I notice when they ask, "who is going to rule Gaza after this is over?"

I don't bother answering because afterall, it's a script and a TV screen. I have spent way too much time shouting at those actors who go home to their lakeside properties in windy cities with mass transit, arriving home to martinis and fettucine. Who are they to ask questions when it is the case that they work in front of butcher shops for the butcher selling knives? Why are they even asking? Do they expect a response or are they scheduled to give one?

It is no secret, I have the answer. Are they trying to pry it out of me? They know I know the answer, they stare at me all day feigning ignorance.

Memory. Memory is going to rule Gaza. It always has.

The Killing Shields

I listened to a phone call of an IOF soldier (assuming it is real) speaking in Arabic to warn a Palestinian family to get out as IOF is preparing to destroy their building. He begged the Palestinians to leave their building because there were children. The man simply said, "Kill us then" ..to that effect. I assume the bombing was carried out although it could have been faked but if it was faked, there's an enormous backfire in the logic. I'll elucidate.

I cannot begin to imagine (no, wait I can) being so dead inside, so exhausted, so impoverished that death even for my children is an acceptable choice. To just say, "I give up. I give up for them. I just give the hell up."

Because some people, usually people who have never been victimized to that extent, have bought into the human shield argument think that "surrounding yourselves with children as human shields" is proof that a victimizer should continue the insane act of torture and of murder. Victimizers who have never been subjected to emotional, physical, financial torture and abuse are able to say:

they deserve it....even the babies, toddlers, old women, teenage girls and boys, grandmothers, grandfathers, amputees, people in wheelchairs and I assure you, there are way more of them now than anything else

But wait. The decision to CONTINUE BOMBING EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE CHILDREN.... to not stop is the definition of premeditation

What about that? Is that not part of the question?

u0l17hc5 2cnc2472t1Jf71hhl8cu288ti604i 9e7  · 

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The Heart of Darkness

Sometimes I want to write, "What's on your mind Meg" as if farcebook wants a real answer to the intricacies of an intellect. Mine or someone else's. The devil is in the details you know and certainly farcebook has little actual interest in "What's on your mind" and a voracious appetite for who you connect with.

I've an inkling, which is merely the tiny spawn of a squid (circa 1400 C. E.) that my connections on farcebook make little sense. Nor should they matter a whole lot to a Super Power like farcebook that blindly uses our freedom of speech to manufacture consent to everything from State Terrorism to human trafficking to gambling.

Atelectasis is an old poem and no doubt it can be understood by anyone who can read it. Atelectasis on the other hand might require at minimum a brief description of the word coined relatively recently (early 1800s). Atelectasis is a condition in which your lungs behave like a wetted and deflated balloon and fail to operate as designed. Our lungs generate a hell of a lot more than just breath. The lungs generate everything from whispers to screams:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

Just before the war, the infamous war of '06, I'd had a slight 'accident' of the vehicular variety resulting in some atelectasis and further on down the road, a courtesy ride on a boat called the USS Trenton. It led to this and that and the other thing because life is like that however, there are strands of 'it' this thing which we call life but really, it should be called something else alot less bland. Life is interesting more than the word itself and for me as a poet (which I am embarrassed to say such a thing), poems are like miniature versions of novels, great big episodes with chapters and pages but written in my own personal code. Once in a while I provide an illustration. I'd say Atelectasis is an illustration.

The poem Atelectasis is full on angry, hostile, desperate and mean. It is downright mean. Which I can be. I suppose we all can but in some people I find it difficult to imagine that they are ever mean. That is, until I find them on farcebook exhibiting their mean core, their alter ego that they either wish would go away or wish they could summon to defend themself when mired in human conflicts. On farcebook it is almost as if some are exorcising the devils within them, airing out their grievances as if that was how it is done. Reminds me of one Sister Josepha of the St. Patrick's Church convent.

Sister Josepha told us a story once. I was sitting in the first seat of the row and had to pee really bad as she launched into her horrorifying tyrade against the devil. Back then, we couldn't just go to the bathroom as a child does now. Oh no no no. You had to wait.

Sister Josepha related a story about her brother, a Jesuit priest of some sort. The Catholic Church used to have entire families of priests and nuns, dynasties of divinity so to speak. Her brother worked saving souls in some remote place in the jungle. He was summoned to give last rites to a man of particularly diabolical character. She told the tale in graphic detail and we looked with eyes wide open, ready to tip over in our seats as he took his entourage up a winding jungle road, dense and humid, into the home of said diabolical non-believer who was wasting away in some hut or another, of terminal cancer. Sister Josepha glared at us as she spoke of the odors emanating from the hut, odors that were virutually intolerable, disgusting, repulsive and beyond our barely emerging and so precious, intellectual imaginations (sixth graders). I imagined it must have been like the smell of fried cow liver which I hate and watching my mother savor it haunts me to this day.

As her brother lifted the crucifix to his lips and instructed him to kiss the cross she described a scene right out of The Exorcist (I hope we all are familiar with that episode in time). The man stuck his tongue out to wantonly lick the darn thing and it became fused with the metal, so much so that it had to be cut off after he died. Let me repeat: after he died. By that time of course I was ready to wet my pants and perhaps I even did. It is the stanza in the poem Ode to Seven:

St. Pat's let out at three

no one moved until

Sister Josepha left with her

cross-kissing Judas stories

hanging around her ankles

like worn out socks on a poor kid,

no one dared.

She was mean and luckily, farcebook had not been invented yet. At this point one asks, "I wonder what happened to her?" No profile pic, not a shred of evidence that she ever existed perhaps except to a few of us who remember her absolutely terrifying role in our lives traipsing back and forth through rain and shine to sit there and be terrorized by a nun. I assure you, she existed and is remembered. I digressed. Not even sure how I got this far down that road and through a jungle and into that hut.

"Mistah Kurtz—he dead"

Atelectasis

between winter &

watermelon

a

chequering bottom

pool, swimming

to dream

in castlists

no name

shocks and fevers

hostage dramas.

looking down just like a Pieta then

up

for planes

for birds

for kites

or stars,

airs.

tempt me.

still hurts

to breathe

wondering

wondering

why why why

the corpse

of djinn,

the old families

inside lizards,

which day it was

he got in.

away ago

through an eye

plucked

gutted

a spiritual cousin

name of splinter

stopped

in the meat

of orbits,

lodged

a piece of bramble.

you tiny things.

you tiny societies.

you tiny tin-toothed.

buzzard keepers.

curs. bunch of curs.

no magic

nor curses left.

pockets dry.

amulets useless.

natural causes

might amaze you.

There might

be a stumbling.

a deflation.

 A trilogy of sorts:

Drone and Birdsong

-7.13.2024

Around the table

In Scranton tonight.

Here the fog rolls in

To ripen figs

I love you more

Each day

Says the king

Whispering sweetly

As the drone

Flits and shivers

between birdsongs.

I'm Sorry I Love You Said The King

-2019

The fog's already burned off.

He declares it is to ripen the figs.

I'd rather not say. Causality.

Miles and miles of tossed and torn plastics,

miles and miles of one after another.

Pharmacies next to butchers,

beauty shops alongside old tires.

Laborers, Syrian refugees.

There's just no plan, all so random

as if time has finally taken over and won.

Here in the wake at the back of the boat,

cancer is killing everyone.

One at a time by the dozens.

The post-coital run-off is in the gutter,

part animal and some of it fog,

the color of gray in hell.

The same ice cream truck interrupts the maghreb every day.

You can hear change falling

from

their

pockets

as they rise from the rugs-

the sky stops there,

holds down the putrid steam below

.....as night turns figs into fall.

What About Mars?

-before 2006

No more problems says the package

the cure came in, no more

warning labels and the price tag

no longer legible. It began

with flashy children and fast cars

then people started talking

about the leftover stuff

after the move out,

wondered what would happen

to the crystal ball and Japanese flag.

Where to put Mars now?

Whose house next?