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.

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.

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.

http://www.magpietales.blogspot.com/

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.

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.

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.

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.

Adlieh Prison, 2013

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.

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.

[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

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.

Empire

No one wants
to be about here
anymore, dull drivel
painstakingly normal.

It's far flung Xing-zhou!
Tse Tse Frou Frou!

C   H   I  N  A

shipping the train
flashes an iron
clad grin, old school
monnikers blast
through Benson
toward Deming,
the Eastern Seaboard
to the big time: tarnation.

http://idyllwildtowncrier.com/2009/11/20/obituary-michael-kabotie/

And then, the Swine Flu

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sandy Hook




We are above the rooftops again,

near the trees on the outskirts of town,

here we are yet again

drifting in helicopters, the day is bright

or cold, people are led about

as if on ropes, tied together.

It is almost Christmas.

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

Heat Seeking

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

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

The Sound of Olatayo




I've known people who were passengers

on high-jacked planes.

They were assholes before they hit Libyan airspace

and probably still are.

I've seen a black man

come out of the sea

like an aboriginal -

Mexican sand on his face,

hair twisted into tribal knots.

It was the week after he stormed out

of the Que Pas, a community college diner

where I met Olatayo Sowandi too,

watched him and the other Nigerians

as they listened to the sound

of foreigners eating.

Not a word between them and I recall

how sweet their silence felt

when I was in it with them.

As Mahdi busted out of the sea

I remembered his anger that day

when the Arabs at the cafe -

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

kept calling him abed in conversation

instead of just calling him

the Sudan-ee because he was

definitely not their slave, he was just

from Africa and knew

how to make an impression

when walking out of the sea at Kino Bay.   





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

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

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

Eat Fish, Monrovia Liberia W. Africa

A First Walk

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

-at me, not her.

True Love America

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

W. K. Vanderslice Silver Cup and Saucer

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

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

 

Reposted from 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

At Thawr

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

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

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

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

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

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

My head?

.

movie

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

The False Conclusion

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

The River Sticks

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

Runneth Over

Seed bearing pack of fruit,
a load of testimony read left

to right, abundant kickback
swizzle stick in an instant flick
already sick the sky comes down
and the last rider rides
between thunder and cups,
the final laugh a brave sigh.

.

Fall Out

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

Repost from September 2009

Norma Cole Reads in Bisbee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sawridge Hotel, Fort McMurray

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

incursion.

I think of hair, weddings and war.

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

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

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

Coma

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

The Truth

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

Poetry is hard you know.

Not like whitewashing
unless you hope to get published.

So What

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