The Sea Shell

 

In this heaven shall they wait and all those

like us for you to pound your fist on the wall

and heave your head upon the concrete, to scrape

your knuckles before digging into your long lost skin?

Like your father listening stupidly to the radio

in this vault of sadness pending, as you tidy

up bank notes and shave for the last mistress,

there were so many things I could have told you.

It isn't love on the verge of the moon's darkest side

that locks those that ponder out of paradise. It isn't

the sound of night as it groans along and takes

out breaths one by one to examine them.

This ultimate secret that poisons the years

bloomed and blustered before it pried open

our mouths and eyes and ears, entered us

through our dreams and premonitions.

News and music and announcers whisper

sweet nothing into the landscape of time,

into the thousand years of study and testing

the ignorant and ugly ear.

The Parable of the Snake

 

Can't remember what that one had, when it happened,

a part of me began to let loose on the reverse side

of Jack's feeding plan, another spin off

with a nod to final debate, the gentle leading

as if we completely understand.

Who swapped peas for beans in the jar

and then switched jars, the one heart

scathed and debrided with scissors and flame

the other still chock full?

Too late say the stick men, too early

says the yawning hole at West 23rd,

keep walking toward the uneven light.

This army of bitten tongues swells

then retracts as if it is breathing,

a long tailed carnivore begins

and ends the similitude by swallowing.
Who will stop the marching? how deep
the tunnel winds toward the turbine,
tourists forage in the racks on the way.
We pass a sign that says buckle up!

There might not be enough love now

to finance the mortgage, hold up the cow.

These souvenirs might have to go, price slashed

and cells remaining on the handles.

A generation to come, several files by law

demolished in seven years like itches,
snouts and beaks crud and fodder,
bait and switch, rattle and shed.
One more long minute is all
the clock ever said as it clicked and tocked.

 

QIBLA

No one is more surprised that 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, how much chemo left to push in? 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.

handbook for freedom

-the skulker
-In fact the last yard
-forgiveness
-is in the details
-Rub al Qali
-Letter to the Dead
-The Intercessors
-Qibla
-Dear Plaster Saint

In Fact the Last Yard
I dig grave after grave
to put this into piece by piece,
the advantage of time...
when it serves the guilty
is time, like Satan
forever waiting for the inevitable
to come, bartering and stipulating
as he does. Put each one to rest
says the self accusing soul.
Resurrect them again says the devil
and again and again.
Try to pull the scatter
into a single location
as angels stand guard
and retrieve data
and how the stockpile grows!
  I, the forever grave digger,
shovel in hand, half asleep,
stand in the stillness. The glade
of anger a few yards away,
that wholesome place
where the wicked meet death.
In the chorus one hears
the cracked voice of reason
who screamed late into the night,
death opera, she sings lullabies
to the frozen and ashamed.
If only the others understood
the list of sins, the stinging ablation
of forgiveness, the Z track
of the maze where the surgeon
cauters and amends.

Forgiveness

...an origami in reverse
unfolding wing and leg and snout
Was it you that said
I am just crazy, that
my imagination takes over sometimes?
Did you whisper in low tones
that God was punishing me?
How natural it all seemed
in those times
all the wild animals tearing
at my flesh as you spied into our voices.
The checklist includes
miracles, backstabs, brainwashes.
A wallet sized photo, in the wallet.
The pink shirt which you testified
was green, as if that meant
I hadn't seen it
or the sandals and list.
The five separate swears
from which I abstained in fear
for us both.
As you thumbed through the files
in my backseat try as you might
to catch me offending another criminal
like yourself, does that make sense
to anyone but me?  And you?
There she is now trying to shake it off,
having the time of her life
as perpetuity forms into her regrets,
having lost love at that age,
having lost her hopes and courage,
all I see is alopecia and a black bra,
a few antics at the beach
and a liquor store receipt.
All I see is the desperate poverty
that drives non believers into hell.
Would it help to remember
the first call, the 'how are you now'
as I lay in a catatonia
from which escape is never certain:
love of my life/liar
and now as I hold back the demon
during lovemaking in a stupor
of mere tolerance, as I weep for passion
and her ghost, all is still
when I awake to the duty of ghusl
one more time.

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.

Letter To The Dead

"Didn’t you like the way the ants help
the peony globes open by eating the glue off?"
-Galway Kinnell, "Why Regret?"

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.
Its 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. The movement of its chambers
disrupt the universe where stars
melt into time and the past
behind which is more past
and the past.

Kaak vendor on the Corniche in Beirut, circal 1990s. All rights reserved.

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.