Prophecy

I am sure that 

that was lightning scar

and the rocks are still 

there though smaller 

and we older,

I am sure of so much-

of the lake and the elk

and the rope tied onto

the tree. Those are clearly

trout and it is summer.

One day they will come

and rifle through 

the knick-knacks,

the beads and bedrolls

and will need to know

that rope was tied

onto the tree, it was summer

and those were trout.

 Down through the alleyways of extinction

the abandoned dirt roads where young girls

used to walk unaccompanied

wearing their silk slips outside instead of in

here we are on a lonesome blogspot.

Yes, you heard me.

All the big publishers have moved on

to the big cities

pushing boundaries they said

breaking molds they said

all I see are the shadows of identity

politiks. They took their slips and packed

their bags to make noises in the city

using the sugar daddy model of poetics

gymnastics at 4 am on some old worn

out sofa with Jazz on a streaming device.

We are out here in the country,

enjoying whatever it is you thought 

you found but never even looked for

and that was:  your departure.

We waited because we knew

it would pass.

https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Salah/Wexler-Studio_2-10-17/Salah-Trish_Wexler-Studio-Session_Two-Self-Portraits_2-10-17.mp3

The After Thought

When finally the last words are eaten

and when there's no more 

to fall back on

and the lump of fat that is used

to exercise the heart mediated by the mind,

it is as if the thermo-regulation

of a dog is a more important

organ to the well wishers and naysayers

waving at the hostages

on the way to the mass graves.

My mother used to tell me:

I love you more than all the tea in China.

The day Ron Silliman said this about me: "There were multiple comments in the polyphony of the stream that could be interpreted as racist, especially those made by Lilac, an Anglo woman living as a Muslim in Lebanon."

This was in response to a drunken pair of Filipina poets who went on a rampage because I said Barbara Jane Reyes poetry was not so great but she was exotic looking.  And, she was.  She and her friend Eileen Tabios were also vengeful racists entrapping balding white men on a private site they operated...tricking wealthy old white dudes into marrying Filipino village girls.  Of course, as the Lead Detective on the case, no one at the Silliman Blog knew about the dark side of these two numbnuts.  I exposed them and it led to Ron Silliman taking his toys home and shutting down his comments section forever.  I imagine because he was a total embarrasment.  Coddling two really venomous poets and me....well.  The whole thing happened when I wasn't even there to defend myself from these nasty women.  I was in South Lebanon, no internet, no cares in the world while the bunch of them spun amazing tales of my horrendous White Superiority Complex that was a surprise to me more than anyone.  Me, an "Anglo" woman "LIVING" as a muslim....it doesn't get much better than that when it comes to the outright bullshit bigotry I have faced as a muslim over 40+ years.  

https://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/2006/03/famous-ron-silliman-said-wednesday.html

Untitled/Undated/Also, Ongoing

Someone announces there are jackals in Tel Aviv,

just for saying Jerusalem.

The key to the cities: Beirut and Nablus,

were purchased long ago while you slept

in Long Island.

A journalist fumbles in his pants

for his keys and a lead,

watches Arab children razed,

toilet trained too young on empty cans

carried room to room with the burghul;

it fell in older times from mud kitchen walls,

silos of sand in sand,

dispensing traces of brothers

fallen into wells full with grain.

You in a photograph of a boy

pointing into the deep of the old village house,

the place where you sunk forever.

The UN Sounds Blue

There are jackels out there in the fields,

guarding a hundred ghosts;

dead Roman soldiers

disintegrating near Saladdin's castle.

-a bat skirts through the early morning air

swallowing and swallowing-

The UN makes another patrol

down the thorny roads of South Lebanon

the sun will climb over the horizon

one more time

to make a small history

as if Christ walked here

sweeping for land mines

in the frost cracked hills.

The jackal out back is innocent if we let her be

leave her to her pups.

Their cry sounds like a herd of goats,

or a hundred frogs;

or dying birds;

a plague of locusts.

We could catch one and give it a name

create a race of stray dogs

sought after by collectors of uncommon things.

-but a god damned hunter shoots her anyway-

As bats witness to Rome and Geneva,

the weary eyes of the UN

hide in jeeps and tanks;

big white tanks

their blue flag courses in the wind

flappity flap flap flap,

it sounds blue, like blue flappity flap

in the cold southern wind

full of jackal. 

Written by a Retired RN who became a landlord

On Valentine's Day we readied to sleep

when I heard the first call at 2200

I looked at you,  you already asleep

but listening as you do and said,

"Who would call at this hour unless there was a fire?"

In a fire prone town this is how you think.

I tucked myself in and began the trip to morning.

The second call at 2220 went to voicemail

which politely dictates messages for me, does yours?

It was Ken, he said "Meg, I think your building is on fire,

I think you better head up there."

Long story short, we were up on the hill

just minutes after my second pant leg slid up,

and I always worked best on graveyards.

The man next to us had escaped the blaze.

It was glorious in its own way, out of control

as the BFD performed what is termed: surround and drown.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

He told us in low whispers that he and his wife 

had lost everything in a California burn a few years back,

lightning does strike twice, just not in the same location.

Nothing is left now. Just a bunch of walls like brothers

broken in a war, scorched and scarred and somehow, sacred.

The whole town grieved. We raged and bargained, 

denial of a fire is impossible, denial of our

animosity towards it however isn't, so we toiled

in a state of bitterness until slowly

but surely, we accepted. We graduated from

the Kübler-Ross academy of hard knocks.

We accepted all the feelings we'd hurt and been hurt by.

We accepted the inconveniences, we learned how to get on.

Until my tenant got cancer. Not another one.

It's a God-damned avalanche. Colons and lungs,

brains and skin, breasts and babies, one after another.

I went in to see him, to check on the overdue rent

that I already knew wouldn't be coming

but I wanted to put eyes on the scene

to gather evidence, we all need evidence

and his wife had been crying, he started crying.

There's just no way, we're tapped out

he said, out of pocket expenses already

have a choke hold, "we'll get it to you as soon as we can."

I said to them, "Isn't it weird how the fire missed us like that?

Only to start over here six months later?"

She looked at him, he looked at her,

as if to say, 'how did she know we were just saying that?'

His wife the real life retired homicide detective

who solved a cold case that made it to 

National TV and who told me

when I asked her "what's it like...murder stuff?"

She said "it's the cruel things people do to other people"

...that's what got her out of the profession.

Same here I thought, same here.

Dear Whoever You Are, Once again, I fell to sleep, eventually. The amount of pain I felt was beyond my tolerance for accepting it as 'just pain' and rather, I believed it to be mental illness. Things will never end will they? But you knew this, know this. I wonder who is the teacher? Is it you or the devil? In the morning I wake to realization, that kind of nausea that everyone knows. It will be there for some hours. It is that pattern that I've learned to live with, not an old friend but a regular visitor. A mailman or garbage collector. It is almost a hobby but like stamps, filled with a certain amount of dread, a certain amount of fascination. The sadness that started in the heart and went into the tummy, ends up in the hands. Circles back into the heart and runs the circuit until it has divested of the pertinent electrons responsible for the distribution of grief. Grief? The losses endured. The losses of things no longer even there to remember let alone to grieve. Ancestors. They are there but no longer have names. Whoever you are, my question is this: have you felt your skin on inside out yet?

As if an open book revealed an open heart. I don't like to read books anymore.

Sobbing I dreamt of Gaza last night. I'd been there before, many times. We were visiting a relative in Borj al Borajne, the sign for Gaza in the world of sleep. It was a symptomatic rendition of a proto-typical slum in the Arab world, places you never see unless you have chosen that path. There were orphans there in a room where a dozen or so Arabs were sitting and one orphan in particular who was being bullied by everyone. The orphan had very tiny eyes that never opened. I went to the orphan and picked her up. Her tiny eyes opened as I cradled her well. There was so much love and longing between us. I then had to leave with the group that had accompanied me to the slum. I somehow got separated although as I passed the correct path, the one that went down a hill..I instead went up the hill all alone. I took a wheelbarrow from a worker at the fork in the road in order to carry something. At the top of the hill it became clear I was in the nice part of Gaza, the universal slum. The buildings changed..I noticed terrace gardens where someone had capped their potted plants with old plastic bottles to create terrariums. I was getting more and more nervous, the buldings were getting more opulent and modern. I was in trouble, getting further and further away from my group. I entered a salon and asked to use a lady's cell phone and she agreed but said she had to do some things first. I knew if I called Mel he'd come and get me and the number I can never remember while awake became quite clear. The woman however was deliberately avoiding me to prevent me from leaving her salon, that world of beauty in which she performed an endless number of tasks to put me off. I finally decided to ask one of the customers and went from face to face, person to person and crying. No, because in my dreams I do not cry. I sob tremendously hard. It was one of these dreams that are so common with me now as if to populate every single dream I have anymore. They all end up in desperation until I fully acknowledge that I have the power to end the nonsense. I choose to wake up. I sense an enormous sense of relief knowing that incontinence missed my house once more time.

We were more patches than pants even our cats had holes in them from the BB guns and abcesses which regenerated themselves using tongues as sharp as the underside of wild berry leaves, all of life was an abrasive yet it kept us from going soft on the outskirts. Back then with our brother's jeans rolled up to our knees we stood and waited for the socks to be darned, we stood and waited for the time to pass, we stood and we waited and we stood and our shadows left traces

The Night Won’t End: Biden’s War on Gaza | Fault Lines Documentary

Unraveling the Fabric: Gaza's Impact on Western Civilization

Delusion Talking to my children this morning, the children that have seen three invasions, three escapes, three traumas.....well none of that can compare to this in Gaza. No but when it comes to tasting that bitter boneless cake we know exactly about the texture and flavor. Even Israel knows it well and have it as a creed: Never Again. The one thing I hear often on the few newscasts that I pay attention to, so accustomed I've become to this ongoing problem that appears to descend from the battles of brutal Assyrian kings...I notice when they ask, "who is going to rule Gaza after this is over?" I don't bother answering because afterall, it's a script and a TV screen. I have spent way too much time shouting at those actors who go home to their lakeside properties in windy cities with mass transit, arriving home to martinis and fettucine. Who are they to ask questions when it is the case that they work in front of butcher shops for the butcher selling knives? Why are they even asking? Do they expect a response or are they scheduled to give one? It is no secret, I have the answer. Are they trying to pry it out of me? They know I know the answer, they stare at me all day feigning ignorance. Memory. Memory is going to rule Gaza. It always has.

Ode To Rocks

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 Cambell

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 in or out
with dirt clinging, dirt in love
with the heroic skin, part
ancient shroud part, let me in.

 Time stood still 

The devil had Frankie on a string

Prancing and grinning in the light

of the flames.

Epiphany of Ending

-“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon [money, possessions, fame, status, or whatever is valued more than the Lord]." - some guy called Matthew

No longer time for real brain 

each touch and switch the antenae twitch

peculiar sound fed into the hand-held

of a dear Pavlov fact-checked inkblot.

I could not put my finger on the special

tinnitus, between gunshot and door slam

used for both hunting and for gathering

yet I heard it, there it was and determined

in true lie-detector fashion,

         the hulking cabal

of our five literal senses produced

yet a sixth, the one I had hoped for

and knew existed:  Eureka!

En la frontera and re-membering

the fundamental block-chain

of the ages Stone to Iron to Data,

how many arthropods it takes

to get to the center of the helix

in state-of-the-art Osterizers

-this last purification hurt

but I've said that before.

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.

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 Ms

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.

 The age at which suddenly becomes suddenly

the light changes and they, the siblings, 

the parents turn to ash and ghost, 

their mementos carry pieces 

forward to balance helix

 on fingertip

scenes 

and clips

meant 

to exist 

only

for 

a 

while 

in

last

little 

drips.