Jesse May Crawford

 

Shahid

I am home now with the architecture

of the sky in summer. Far away I assure

you all that the rubble is real, the devastation

is widespread and the people are tired.

I will also assure you that in Lebanon where

the end of the world never stops ending

life goes on. It goes on a bit differently

each time, a bit harder, for longer or less time,

the bread is still baked, the zatar collected

and enough olives pressed to bathe every-

thing in oil meal to meal. The villages lost

numerous young men who gave their lives

to deter a genocide and one day,

when the world stops ending, they will

be celebrated as victors, heroes and men.

We still fear to say some things of course

but the manifestation of beliefs, the real

manifestations that can only be seen

from the top side of the clouds in a monsoon

are pouring from the gutters and flooding the streets.

Ode to the Chosen

Is it the case one wants

consent or forgiveness?

When it is too late it's too late

yet it never was too early

until now and now

that it is clear

it was always consent

you begged for,

I will remind you of your begging

but not out of cruelty, no

not at all. The word is

disgust.

A Few Words About Tinnitus

I'd say it was about eleven thirty
or so and this car alarm starts going
off in the still of night. my door
still open to catch the last of summer
through there but then
it needed to be shut because
of the danger out there, it is just
everywhere you know. Outside, the street
lamp flickered a bit and the moths
kept mothing about in the halo
as if it didn't matter to them,
one way or another, just little bugs.
Over in the distance, the dark hills
were gently lit by the few lasting
glimmers and glows of the night
owls who creep into bed as slowly
as the neighbors who came outside
to turn off the siren, another false
alarm and they spoke a bit, went
inside to hit the switches there
lock the doors, some cursing maybe
or perhaps a round of gin rummy.
That one man was thinking of mummies,
I know it, I just know it.
I remember when that sort of thing
happened to me and I felt like
the ground might shake if I asked it to.
I honestly asked the ground to shake
and then the car started to make that noise again.
I wish there weren't such things as mummies.
The moths laughed plenty when I told them,
they sounded like pins, magnets and bells.

ODE TO KIKI

Where are you now not dead
but all these years ahead, four
minutes down they said, just
not really quite dead. Raised
little Kiki up and then nailed
to a folding chair instead,
outside the tavern's walls and hauled
off to bed yet, not really dead.
Arruh umm you said, uh mmm
and the curious smile on
your lop-sided head. Left
arm lifted with this wave
you led street corps of marching
past walls as below us running,
the weary stream fed.
Your right arm was as heavy as lead
as past by you we sped, regretful
thoughts in all of our heads when
the doctor said you'd have been
better off dead. They sat you out there
on a throne with a crown
of invisible thorns, never to wed.

"But we managed to lift him,
up from the dead!"

We love you still Kiki –
your half-dead body and lop-sided head.
The way you knew what went on
inside of our heads as we waved back
and past you we sped. The way
you just held up the tavern's red
wall and you there, the sight of it all.
Next to that the doctor felt small,
his mistake meant so very much to us all.
Not sure what he knew but we all understood,
Kiki was better off not really dead.
So were we because he saw us then tilted his head.
They say now he is a shadow of his former self
but none of us really know which one.

 

 Sailing to Modernity

One day poems will praise

the likes of Baltimore

but probably not.

Half of it is resentment

filled in with envy and regret

holistically speaking.

Saying anything here,

fiddling with my crown,

tired as hell of getting here.

Still, living quietly on the outskirts

of the empire saying

it's too late now, 

the Red Sea yawned and went to bed.

These days you can go anywhere

you want to

but back then, oh!  Back then.

Now all they say is:

People with respiratory issues should stay indoors.

Well, I'll say! Should have already been there,

'specially in the holy city of Baltimore.

 Thermohaline

We tell all the secrets here

full of hindsights, nevertheless

listen to the eyeless creatures

at the bottom of the sea

making their own light...

I repeat: making their own light.

Might I mention the separation

of the seas to the salt? 

Can't you see?

Don't you hear?

they don't even need it

From the sura known as "The Light": 

[24.40] Or like utter darkness in the deep sea: there covers it a wave above which is another wave, above which is a cloud, (layers of) utter darkness one above another; when he holds out his hand, he is almost unable to see it; and to whomsoever Allah does not give light, he has no light.

Okay,

Now that you are gone, it is time, yes?

Take the reigns, I have never been sure

if these were excuses or compromises

the plain lack of time

between knives and timers

and feeding the birds.

My last friends

don't even speak English.

Years are now sentences

without commas and every day

an asterisk-like sun

in a cosmos full of them.

When Dinosaurs Ruled

So true...I run across 

old hot wheels here and there, 

inside-bowls left outside 

full of witchy potions 

all dried-up and not working,

broken chalk and more broken chalk.

Last but certainly not least: dirty bubble wands.

The Facts

 If not the magician then who

borrowed all the money, tore the scarfs?

We were young then not yet dying

as far as we knew

things were attached.

Even if in the breakage were clues,

we practiced ignorance.

Ignorance is hard to get right.

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.