The Silent Night

Was there once upon a time

when angels were created

before man, before djinn

and then tested? Was there

once upon a time

when they thought

they had it licked

all their batting averages

1.000 to the 10th power?

Allah created Gibreel

before the rest of us,

all the angels, all the djinn

to serve as witness:

time and time again

sworn to secrecy

honest to a fault

willing to take a newborn's

soul from his love lorn mother

if told to do so.

Gibreel did it,

never gave an inch

nor flinched nor balked.

It was necessary

because later on

when Gibreel had to talk

to a virgin and convince her,

Gibreel had to come with some

sort of proof that he wasn't 

just some Adonis or other

bon vivant. To prove

that the very long line

of heredity was about to change

and change for good.

Gibreel has been through the all of it

the thick of it, the ups and downs 

of it. Gibreel wept at long absences

between round trips

saying to the prophets

each and every one of them:

"I missed you so much friend."

But, once upon a time

there was nothing but angels

and stars and night and angels

would not know a lie

because lies did not exist.

26.3.06

Bound to Happen

I thought I was just pretending
all along, saying well, that's
bound to happen and it does and I say
well, that's bound to happen.
We all know that when we leave
the room, the room disappears.
We've known it since we were born
and sometimes we talk about it
with strangers knowing full well
that once they leave
all secrets follow
into the ether or the dark,
same thing and who can tell
time as it passes
when you are asleep,
the clocks looking you over?
It is a strange statistic
and one I am fond of until
it comes to the war zones. concentration camps.

 The Ris(i)k of Grief

Forgive me for seven minutes

of your time, repentance for the hours

leading up to the manifestation

composed as it were of signs

each one in a sequence as if

a spiral began where it ended

instead of toward the center

from which it formed, or 

did it begin before 

it was named and it was numbered.

The Higgs Boson 

This is no ordinary fatique,

looking through the posts 

about Fenton glass, microwave cookware

and sheets through a storm

of boxes and happy birthdays.

 At the same time they were 

carrying your father

from the house to the cemetery

 you scalded yourself with a cup of boiling coffee.

 I'd been warning you of such a mess

for a long time but you insist

on refusing condolences,

 treasuring your sweet secret another day.

As you open the cash drawer/

over and over tomorrow and the next

day and the next, please

think of the pain on your knee.

 Think of the time laspe world

in which we live, in which

fathers and sons try their best

to run the experiment backwards.

 I think a new widow reminds me

of a bride, I think your father

scolded you at a distance 

last night as you screamed out.

 Life is this super collider

and as they lifted his coffin

a bit too quickly, the atoms

and molecules rearranged your DNA.

Sayuri's Joke 

 In fact there are ten 

thunderwords in the honey 

stomach of the bee, fifty million 

partisan donors a day regurgitate 

each to each a brilliant-bronze 

breast milk to cure the cud. 

The baby tells me they make it from scratch.

Sayuri's Joke In fact there are ten thunderwords in the honey stomach of the bee, fifty million partisan donors a day regurgitate each to each a brilliant bronze breast milk to cure the cud. The baby tells me they make it from scratch.

I must accept the permanence of confusion,
the intractable weapons of chaos
or rather, it is the case that death
is the goal, the long lasting aloneness
that I crave, the only respite from years
of service to the systems,
the good mornings, the how do you dos
all of that professional courtesy
and whitewash burying the past
in vacant memories.

I want to tell you dear that I am in a permanent state of confusion now.  It is accompanied by frequent episodes of nausea.  The criticisms are so perpetual that they have become not only a way of life but an expectation of same.  I have nothing to be ungrateful for and this compounds a kind of sadness in which the futility of happiness is coupled with the never ending thoughts of losing each and every thing.  One at a time.  Like teeth. 

The numbness.  Oh the numbness is there.  Somatic or otherwise, it is similar to being a two legged dog or even more crippled than that. 

You never really admitted to anything.  In fact you have formulated a brilliant scheme to force me into the trap of agreement and complicity.  I know how you do it.  That's the worst part maybe, I know exactly how you do it.  Inescapable if you ask me and lord knows, I have tried.  Tried to kick sand in your eyes and then felt the sorrow of cruelty.  Perhaps you know what that is by now but when we played the game with a child, I knew for certain you had no desire that compels the rest of us to lighten up.  He sat there blinking.  Just blinking and wanting to run away.  I know that feeling. How I know that feeling.

I love you still for whatever it is worth.  If I wasn't aware of certain facts, I'd not bother to stick around to make sure that you understood that but as it stands I do.  We have a name for this in my line of work and it's called 'seriousness of threat.

So is this the slow way?  I hope not and it is that small glimmer of hope that I must hang on to.  We all do.   All of us that struggle to wake up each day and march a little further.  I just feel I am marching in a thick and bottomless pit full of decades worth of mudslides. 

Psalm 2023

I imagine there is

no laughing left

in Turkiye, maybe

a little smile on

the outskirsts of

Byzantium, remember

the Bosphorus got the blues

as it split Asia from Europe

yet I imagine there is

no laughing left

in Turkiye, maybe

in Beirut tonight

the assassin holds

his cell and calls

his handler once more

and dupes a grin

yet I imagine there is

no laughing left

in Turkiye, maybe

the elephants in Ceylon

believe the end is near

and stare blankly

towards Java and Haiti,

Chile, Hawaii, Alaska

The. Great. Rift. Valley.

yet I imagine there is

no laughing left

in Turkiye, maybe

the souls of New Madrid

are restless and recall

months on end when

the earth smiled

ear to ear

again and again and again.

Yet I imagine there is

no laughing left

in Turkiye, thy rod

and thy staff and thou

shall not want.

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5Bisbee Bodega, Raghida Khouri and 3 others

The Mourning

Up there they talk about you

late into the night, ghost

talk but it is good

to be known

by one's brothers' names

even if death has wrapped

its arms around again

the all-of-it and small-of-it

the petrified rock-of-it

the once was a tree-of-it

the hemorrhage of birth

now in a box, the weight

of a small child held.

I'm so sorry, so sorry

to the ash-bones

as if they can hear

a finely working heart

when it says remember

all that stuff

that we thought mattered?

It doesn't.

Periscope

The day cannot see

what the night reveals:

if only, if only, if only

said the dreamer

to the dream.

I used to live

there in the woods

with them,

there on the lake,

on the beach,

I used to own

at least a part of it.

Now I know

which part

it was,

the part

that was not.