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.
The right of freedom of speech consists in speaking the truth. - Emir Ali ibn Abi Taleb, May Allah be pleased with him and his Ahl Bayt
19.12.13
8.12.13
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.
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.
-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.
4.12.13
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)