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The Potter’s Song
Convex demands concave they say
And shapelessness shouts for array;
I’ve walked my life in mud and dust
But worshipped with my hands the clay.
Upon the wheel my fingers dance
Arresting chaos in a trance;
They spin and spill and roll until
No longer is my will a chance.
My furnace and my eyes are one
They burn and, burning, they have fun;
They rape the clay and as they play
They reach their climax in their sun.
When leaves and birds dance high and low;
A dubious welcome to the snow,
My window blurs and weeps to tell
How wonderful it feels in hell!
Once made, my pot is not my own
For hot and cold are not the same,
It fills with wine a stranger’s cup
And leaves me staring at the flame.
The Forest Sorceress
it was the ancient forest once again—
the trees must have forgotten what they were:
trunkless they stood
their summer branches
dripping olive green
a thick inviting ambush
of story-tellers
the supple leaves
love-birds
gifted with silence
that was more
than silence ever was
****
“all dreams are hushed reality”
whispered a voice so magical
a voice that sounded like your own
it was your own
for as ordained
by power of that summer dawn
you were the forest sorceress
****
you smiled
did nothing more or less
the grapevine leaves
on stems unseen
marveled their way
up to the summer branches
circled and sifted through
those supple leaves
sifted and circled through
until
no one could tell
which was which
but you
who slipped upon a whisper of her own
stripping the grapevines all naked
their purplish darkish marbles
just awakened
to ripeness that meant fall
to each and all
into a silver bowl
that floated up and down
just surfacing the breeze
almost touching the leaves
and that
under the harvest burden
of those marbles
turned almost unnoticed
into a slice of watermelon
or
a cradle of a moon
that’s half-remembered
half-forgotten
then you
the forest sorceress
with feet that fit a seductress
squeezed those marbles
into sparkles
sprinkling dawns and suns thereafter
with your purplish vinous laughter
****
a recurrent dream
strained with the dryness of nocturnal thirst
tongues gasping for the sound of promised rain
the crackling leaves
under the naked ghosts of forest trees
almost at dawn
abruptly stirred
and raised an eyelid
( or was it two?)
above their sleeping level of the earth
when there
from underneath
from everywhere
gushed the swishing song of holy springs
when then and there
two jasmine rings
sprinkled two halos round your feet
and you
like the melodious song of holy springs
though from nowhere
moved silently
like a suggestion in the air
treading the twilight leaves of memory.
indescribable
like baby skin
that’s been
rubbed too hard too long
against a blanket’s edge
my wakefulness
glowing with self-transparency
into luxurious drops of purple light
split at last.
the dangling night
scratching its layers out of dawny sleep
trembled and rambled all about
absolved of tinge and glint
of hue and hint
of past and future memory
the present was the color of the mind
from whose contingent guts
a gushing scent of purplish grey
swirled up to play
some hazed unheard-of symphony
of soundless tunes
(oh, have you heard of sandless dunes,
of waves the dancing grass collects
from sweeping winds far far away
from sea or river, pond or bay ?)
something as indescribable
though always there, ungraspable,
was giving birth to birth.
THE MARTYR
The martyr is a field of wheat
A basketful of bread and meat
All, all divine --
The rarest wine
From promised lands untrod by man
Since Eve and Adam brought the fall
Upon the body and the soul
The rarest wine --
A syllable of piercing light
So gentle on the sight --
A jasmine coffin for the sweetest soul
That fondly teases the prostrating night
With holy perfume, holy white --
A dance sublime
A dance superior to the dance
To steps and twists and jerks
To shaking and to wiggling rhyme
Sublime, sublime --
A blessed Hamlet but without
His hesitation or his doubt
To set the jointless world to right --
The martyr is a joyful sigh
And not a cry
A whisper from the earth unheard
Except by angles in the sky
Beyond the sky
A joyful whisper, joyful sigh.
“there”
his destination was a point
obscure in distance:
a blade entranced
entrancing
by the shock
of splashing light
the glaring suns
colliding
splintered against it
sharpening it
to
blindness.
it was a point that was no more than
there.
* * * * *
the lucid morning and the lucid eye
entwined in purpose
drove the truck for him
his fingers green upon the wheel
playing his secret song
to keep him company
driving and driven as it were
toward the point that was no more than there.
* * * * *
distance
a smuggled carpet
rolled itself
upon the flying tyres
to unroll
outlandish scenes of greenery
visions of grass
the lucid eye had had for centuries:
* * * * *
the tender neck
yielding in frightening willingness
in joyful terror
to the blade
that blinked and burst
and fell
a pregnant leaf
soaking in brightening dew
trembling with green - -
the nails that hunt for blood
rending two hearts wide open
in the hands
that blossomed on an olive tree
two holy branches of eternity - -
twin anguished horses
trained by anguished hands
shooting across the flames of sworded men
twin voices howling
in the name of him
whose will they served
twin swords
estranged
estranging life from life
poisoning with justice all the hearts of men
whose worldly cure had been their worldly pride
and dropping both upon the scourging sands
where two palm trees were turning emerald.
* * * * *
one blink
and merged the trains of ancesters
bringing all time and distance to the point
where time and distance were no more than there
one blink
and clashed the glaring suns
the splashing light
splinters of red and green
and
once again
two lines inimical
the horizontal and the vertical
cut through each other in a fatal dare
to form the point that was no more
than there.
from “ The Night of New Jersy”
“nazih koubrusli”
a mile or just a little less off shore
the island lies indifferent
the morning waves
babbling and hissing
thrust their arms in air
clutch hard and harder at the sloping rocks
and failing to stay longer than they dare
crawl down in playful silence
not despair
to try it once again incessantly.
* * * * *
the scene kept humming back from memory
a haunting recollection of a trip
a summer visit
he once had paid the island on a boat
it really did not matter much
that now he could not see those rocks
the splendid rise of splendid waves
the rhythmic silence of their fall
for now the inward look was all.
* * * * *
a mile
or just a trifle less
of rippling blue
stretched now between the island rocks
and him
whose tightened eyes were bent
over a strip of trampled sand
on sidon beach
the twelve – year – old foot
rubbed the sand
contrived the letters n and k
kicked hard
the splashing sand gave way
as bit by bit
was heaving into view
a shotgun sheathed up in a piece of cloth.
he looked around in silence
not a stir
except the wings of pigeons
fluttering
over a sleeping minaret :
* * * * *
the gardens of the ancient king tennes
are all abandoned lasses of the earth
the breeze a stripping wind
the brightful moon
a stranger trespassing
a conqueror
unveiling to the world
the prideful nakedness of arms
of shoulders
necks
and budding breasts…
the garden’s walls can not detain the king
he flies across the jasmines to the gate
that spits him out in shameful agony
amidst the piercing howls of warriors
so young so furious and so proud
they twirl and twirling shake the soil
uprooting flowers jasmine trees
trampling to silence all the reeds
performing there the burial dance
of their abandoned lasses
before the persian blood invades
their purest veins
and ravishes
their city’s heart…
the blazing hands
rebellious undulations through the dark
inflict upon the crackling soil
a sweeping conflagration
murdering
both life and shame
when all at once
beyond the choking city walls
are roused frustrated cries of war
the voice of king artahshashta
declaring his glorious defeat
his stolen triumph
forever swallowed by the whirling clouds
* * * * *
he looked around in silence once again
still not a stir
except the wings of pigeons
fluttering
over the sleeping minaret
he pushed two steady steps off shore
the mosque was taller than before
the pigeons flickered out of sight
his arms were getting tight
what happened next he could not tell
but when he fell
the star of david on the truck
was bleeding endlessly.
* * * * *
a mile or just a little less off shore
the island lay indifferent
the morning waves
babbling and hissing
thrust their arms in air
clutched hard and harder at the sloping rocks
and failing to stay longer than they dared
crawled down in playful silence
not despair
to try it once again incessantly.
from “ The Night of New Jersy”
Summer 1982
(written during the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982)
A crimson epidemic is summer time.
It self-splinters inside us
Spreading about
Wriggling like tongues of hot exhalations
Surging as though from the lava caverns of the earth;
Splinters like gasps
Like breath deeply inhaled;
Firebrands forgotten from yesterday’s fire
And thought to be
By them who never felt their stings
Children’s red marbles
Glowing along the patio in the sun
Marbles that crack like laughter
Stolen from a summer vacation—
With the playing children thirsty for those marbles
That look like grapes
Colored with crimson blood
Burning with the longings of the lover known as Kays,
Longings all searching for the beloved
In a desperate moment,
Contented with even an apparition of her.
Woe! Woe to that moment of glowing longing and of despair.
Oh God in heaven, spare us, spare us all of that
For crimson, crimson is our month of August.
Bob Wrench
The drawer half-open had been left –
A scream, suspended – and the glare
Of thousand shapes pinned Bob’s both eyes
And both his hands until the spell
Was shaken off: a miracle
He could not tell how it occurred!
He strolled his fingers on the glare
Of thousand shapes and picked it up
And shut the drawer.
He rolled his eyes that gathered light
But could not tell who had been there.
All the perplexing colors of
Those dancing shapes upon that board
Were his, he thought, if no one would
Pop in his head to claim them back;
He would shellack
His horse’s neck with them and would
Demand attention on those farms
When he’d go home on Christmas Eve.
His neighbors, old and young, he thought,
Would hang their burning eyes upon
His horse’s neck,
Upon the glare of thousand shapes,
And whisper that he, he the clerk,
Had made it and had paid the price;
And he would pass them one by one,
His eyes two vacant balls of ice.
His breath, a stream of heat, collapsed
Upon a fraction of one ghost
That turned his head a freezing lake.
He strode to break
The sneering ghost of fear in two
And in confusion shut the staring door.
He swept the floor
With surging eyes and pulsing feet:
The sneering ghost danced in retreat
And dwindled in the scary space.
“Damned be his race!”
Bob whispered and turned back to stare
In joy and fear at all the glare
Of thousand shapes upon his desk.
The framed smile of Mr. Ford
Assured him he possessed that board
Of thousand shapes! Now due for rest,
He swayed one foot upon the floor
And jerking one upon his desk,
Bob Wrench of Eastern Illinois
Destroyed his piece of Arabesque!
TAMARA
“There’s nothing like the color of the night:
You wear it at midday, the blazing sun
Can only stare at its integrity.
So trust the falling dark and closer hide
Your tantrums in its layers and in me.
These layers are not mine but also yours
And his and hers whose wakeful eyes
Tell tales forbidden (though most natural)
To ears untuned to joyful sounds -- like Mom’s.
I pity her. She’s too much in the light.
She can’t enjoy what we’re enjoying now.
A spinster in the soul, she’s never hugged
Her image in the mirror or caressed
Her skin to blazing as some women do
Tempted by secret voices of the night.
Nor has she ever loved a man. Her man
Was father of her children, not the man
Whose passion clicked an echo in her own.
You won’t believe it, but for years on end
My father was denied his right to joy.
His bed deserted, he deserted both
His children and his wife and flew away
as far as wing and wind could carry him.
He’s now a happy stranger in Quebec,
Or in a ghastly city like Detroit,
The one with million factories and smoke
Haunting the streets eternal as a curse.
He could be anywhere. I’m telling you
All this to make a point. We’re luckier
Than either of my parents. Don’t you see
Why we should wear the color of the night?”
from “Event Against Eventuality”
KAREEM
“It’s useless to pretend we cannot see
The other pointed edge, the sharper one,
Of that same weapon we’ve been fighting with
Our endless battles – for we always learn
All weapons are a spindle, one, the same,
That wears the mask of multiplicity
Perhaps to please the eyes perhaps to blind
The hearts of different men of different wills.
It’s useless to pretend we can’t foresee
Our actions’ counter-actions: now and here
Are always then and there, and then and there
Are always now and here: the pendulum
Foretells its falling motion as its sails
To touch the highest point of its own curve.”
from “Event Against Eventuality”
BALKIS, SOLOMON, AND THE HOOPOE
1
Two oars the hoopoe does possess:
Sea-water blueness is its sea,
Not sea-water itself;
And the wave, chasing another wave:
The longing of the morning breeze,
The fluttering of light;
And the hoopoe’s absence all night long
Has upset the sultan of all things:
Of earth, of what grazes the earth, of what soars in the sky.
Fevered Solomon flared up;
His lips obeyed:
“Beyond my eye-sight and for the whole night
The hoopoe has disappeared,
His night- journey unknown to me.
Unless he presents a palatable explanation for his absence,
With its own passion the hoopoe will be slashed.
And so will he.”
II
The wisest of all men had failed to grasp
The wisdom behind the hoopoe’s night-journey;
For the bird, more versed than man in matters of the Unknown,
Came back to him with the story of Balkis in Sabaa,
All swathed in her pride,
And brought him as well
A promise in the form of a wound
Dripping with something other than blood.
III
“Hoopoe! Go back to Balkis with the divine order
That she come to me in submission,
As willful as myself to the divine fate;
And with the threat that if she worships anything but Him,
I’ll assign the genies’ eyes to spy on her
And put her to the affliction of defeat.”
IV
The night’s wings, the night’s veiled visions,
Were redolent with the hoopoe’s motion;
Inside Balkis, the holiest of wounds awoke,
Wounding her very sigh, her very aaaah:
“Soldiers! How do I protect myself against the wound?
How can I spare myself the harm,
Knowing for certain that the Unknown’s spears
Are moisted with the age-old dew of the Unknown?”
V
Thought twirled, and twirled his feet in the palace halls
As the genies were building for his eyes the magic they most desired
As the birds were chirping and the roses emitting their scents
As light, like a bunch of grapes, was deliciously dangling
As the palace mirrors were floating on flocks of water
Until Balkis stepped in, swathed in her nakedness,
A lily brushing against a lily deep in the water.
At that moment Solomon was wrapped with the fatal wound,
His eyes disrobed of their royal garments,
Praying in supplication,
They-- his eyes-- being his heart,
His heart-flutters on the mirror like streams of aaaah.
Balkis was the wound, and the kissing of the wound, its cure.
VI
“Submit to the faith, Balkis, and be…”
“I’ll be, I’ll be
For the infatuated Solomon his home
Until my last day on this earth;
Now that I’m a believer I’ve come
To atone for the sins of my former years.
Take me by force
And in me find your consolation:
For your torturing me will perhaps be
The only act of absolution.
And as for the hoopoe, the messenger of light, reward it
With exactly what he has inspired:
Send him to the end of the world
To teach what he has taught and inspired,
For the hoopoe has surpassed all others in matters of the Unknown.”
VII
Under the spell, Solomon’s voice is choking:
The voice of love a prayer.
The morning breeze is dampening, dampening
With the fleeting oar.
In the blue, the hoopoe stealthily takes off:
A beam of light through mist.
SOLOMON’S FORGOTTEN SONGS
1
- Existence strolled towards Nothingness; a woman reproached it.
- Woman’s lavish nakedness is man’s lavish clothingness.
- The lover’s sleeplessness is a woman who has lured dawn into missing its path.
- Menstruation sets out as an anemone and ends as twilight.
- Never have two things balanced with each other the way sin and forgiveness equilibrate in the wiggling of her buttocks.
2
- Nothing strips a woman naked better than language, and nothing but language makes her best attire.
- Women are the ambiguity of a language whose only eloquence is the
infatuating woman.
- Women are bad dreams; only the infatuating woman is a vision.
- Scarcely have I run into a woman with thighs brushing against each
other without my tongue being tied.
3
- Metonymy was born when a woman disentangled her hair for a man
other than her husband.
- Suggestiveness is a woman whose wavy dress
Breaks upon her body the way a sea-wave
Breaks unto itself
Neither reaching the shore
Nor restraining itself from moving forward.
- The whirlwind is a woman whose body is exposed to the four winds.
- Annihilation is a woman whose very presence obliterates all longing
for her presence.
4
- Poetry is the woman who takes you before you take her.
- The most beautiful of dresses -- like the most beautiful of poems -- is
the one that presents to your eyes the wholeness of the woman, thus
sparing you all the details.
- Woman never puts on a dress except with the intention to fill man’s eyes with the possibility of her being undressed.
- And man never clothes woman with a dress except to keep her
nakedness as a possibility, an obsession, to his eyes.
5
- Should man suspect woman of wantonness, she would turn the earth into
hell ; but should his eyes be free of such a suspicion, she would turn into
hell both heaven and earth.
- Accepting her wantonness as a matter of certainty is your only guarantee
for getting reconciled with your suspicions.
- Woman balances doubt with certainty…to stay in a state of oscillation;
man accepts doubt as his only certainty…to rest.
6
- Freedom is a wanton woman:
She lures you into getting undressed
To generously clothe you with her own nakedness.
- Always, always does woman burst out crying:
When in love with you, it’s in loving you that she cries;
When in love with another, it’s because you’re still around that she sheds her tears.
7
- In her combat with you, woman has no better weapon than your eyes.
- Two shores are her lips; and for each, her body does have a second
self.
- She who is gluttonous of eyes
Is sharpshooting in erotic love.
- Only when she’s under a devil does woman hallucinate.
8
- Woman’s foot is the threshold of man’s home.
- Woman’s breath is an incantation for her lover against another
woman’s breath.
- Woman’s mouth is the only wound that doesn’t heal.
9
- Woman’s intention to be truthful
Is no match for her inclination to lie,
For the latter is more truthful than the sweetest poetry
The sweetest poetry being that which tells lies most.
- Woman prefers to eternally suffer in taming her man than to
peacefully accept living with someone already tamed by another
woman.
- Woman is eternally fond of taking, and when she gives, she
gives only one part of her in the hope of taking you as a whole.
10
- What is the sinner to do with those hips that watch over his pain?
- It’s for a good reason that a drinking woman has suggested to her
companion that sipping is more satisfying for the thirsty (than
gulping).
- Woman and alcohol are treated equally by law:
As evil in this world, as reward in the other.
- The chat of a woman in love: two lips engaged in drinking
companionship.
11
- All lovers are beautiful; but much more beautiful are the beloved.
- Woman is as certain of being the object of love
As is the tree so certain of the soil.
But as for herself being in love
Well, it’s just a minor fault of the Unknown.
- Everlasting is the dialogue of her lips:
An on-going invitation is one;
A persistent apology, the other.
12
- It’s to stay between two women that I was ever born:
One, who expelled me from paradise lost at the beginning of time;
And one, who’s waiting, at the other edge of eternity,
To receive me in promised Eden.
It’s to stay suffering between two women that I was ever born.
- Blessed be he ! And away with him
Who has come and gone
Without his breath ever blending
With a waft of a woman’s breath
For nothingness alone has he chosen for his certainty
And for his eternal dwelling.
13
- Senses are the mouths of obsessions.
- Salt is a woman: A little bit of her is good for the taste;
Too much of her is agony for the knees.
- Sweet potatoes: a breast-feeding woman’s breasts.
- Winter-night is a woman licking up carob bean molasses.
- Banana leaves dangling over a bunch of bananas:
Women hunched over their secret worries.
- A wonderful thing is the bath of a lustful woman:
A thyme rubbing-sponge and a yellow water-melon bar of soap.
14
- How tenacious woman’s memory is: she forgets everything
except herself.
- Mirrors, for women, are chats about the eyes of their admirers.
15
- The beautiful woman’s chastity is a debt usually paid off by the
unmarketability of the ugly.
- Shyness in the beautiful is only piety; in the ugly, an admonition.
- Love is the ablution of the soul.
- Epidemic is one woman scattered into too many.
16
- Virginity is femininity’s knight-- a knight to be knocked down only once by its first opponent.
- Fears of the virgin are spices for the feast.
- Virginity is a non-inheritable capital.
17
- Misery is a woman whose life is filled with the hollowness of men.
- Should pleasing her be your ultimate pleasure, woman would follow
you to the very end of the world.
- A lover’s misery reaches its peak when his prowess fails to match his
passion.
18
- Tell all lovers, on my behalf,
That the only certainty in love
Is a pulsating doubt :
Does woman unveil her intentions
Themselves being an aspect of the Unknown?
- Away with the brightness and with the brightness- emitter !
For the sun that pours its light upon the moon
To show it as a moon,
Soon discovers how lovers turn away from him to her.
19
- The rose on its stem is a nun
Who grows to supple contentment
Only by being amorously smelled.
- He who picks the rose is the one who has already been picked by the
rose.
- A trap set up for my soul are her eyelashes :
When they shut, they shut upon nothing but me
My heart softening as if by prayer.
20
- Her walk is eloquence itself :
Her feet being brevity,
The lull of her arms, suggestiveness,
Her wiggling hips, indisputable persuasiveness.
- The coarseness of oppression
And the opulence of justice –
These two make up the dialectic of her walk.
21
- Tolerable pain is a woman in love only with your love for her.
- Ultimate pain is a woman who leaves you dwelling in doubt as though
it were the only form of certainty.
- How could my repentance be ever achieved if my very sin were to be
my own woman?
22
- Woman has taught me that hell is the first gate to paradise.
- Every woman is her lover’s ordeal.
And the ordeal of every paradise is a woman.
- Woman’s happiness is never complete
Until other men’s mistresses envy her the lover she’s got
And until other women’s lovers envy her lover the mistress he’s got.
23
- Woman alone
Does incarnate the dawn :
For in one hem of her dress does sleep the rear of the night
And in another hem does awake the forefront of the day.
the city that lost its temper
the story of randa
a
the skydust banned the brilliant moon
and died the sweeping honeysuckle
that once inhabited the space.
beirut in slumber
was dreaming that she once again
was cleaning all her marble bowls of fish --
wearing a pair of dainty slacks,
a black fur coat for winter nights,
a nothing two-piece suit for summer days.
the dreams were overlapping and beirut,
as though she dropped one bowl upon the floor,
startled and then
shrugged both her arms
and rubbed a trembling finger once, once more
between her tightened lips.
her sleeping mates were out flailing themselves
and could not be in time to grace her bed.
she dreamt her blood was drying up
her breasts gigantic nipples that burst out
with serpent-nails, with open sardin cans,
with hardened dust on sharpened pepsi bottles,
with mud and rust and squirming cellophane.
she felt a brutal pulse under the skin
shrugged both her arms and plunged her fingernails,
between one scream and scream, into the heart
of her astounded, though astounding, night.
b
the screams of prehistoric animals,
the piercing moaning of the pregnant cats,
the starving wind, wriggling its way
through those nightmares of bushes,
all, all was dying, so it seemed,
in the transparent jungle of her eyes
when, in a fraction of repose,
her trembling fingers died upon the glass.
“i still can’t see the point,
why should a woman
indulge in self-destruction to create
a dubious image of a happy crash?
why why should she extract herself
from her earth-bound existence?”
her voice came sailing
across the dreaming vibrations of candlelight.
she blinked. the night
gathered a flock of hazes round her eyes.
“i don’t believe in visions, but I love
those waves encroaching on the sleepless sand
and that that ancient mast
forever sailing in my glass,
self-crucified…
but as i said
i don’t believe in visions any more.”
and all was born again
all born again
in the transparent jungle of her eyes:
the screams of prehistoric animals,
the piercing moaning of the pregnant cats,
the starving wind, wriggling its way
through those nightmares of bushes
to crush her bones.
c
7:00 pm
a slash of brownish look
surprised the white arrangements on the sweater
that hung
indifferent to the crowded room
from her exhausted shoulders.
hooked, the night
transformed: a brutal chestnut
and once again beirut was randa.
8:00 pm
a tray of eyes
the crowded room hung on the screen
to scan the slightest vibrations
between the stars
to jolt the boredom with the scars
that randa prayed would rake again
the skin of her cellophaned memory.
9:00 pm
‘ring ring’ the phone so whispered
and at once
the eyes got ears attentive to the sway
of some estranging voice that said it was
a twin of randa’s or perhaps
a second coming of some sort…
and in the trembling mirror of beirut
beirut was hounding her faces
an octopus of multiplicity.
d
my next-door neighbor had announced the news
that by that coffee-shop on hamra street
my hair-assembler
dresser as they say
had murdered all those mirrors in his shop
and painted all his walls with brown shoe-polish.
don’t ask me why dear mother
how could i
unravel such a riddle?
yes of course
i went and had what everyone was calling
a blind hair-cut.
you should have seen
that rush of ladies in their morning race
to try his latest hair-do.
anyway
he smiled at me and said my hair was long
needed a trim from here a trim from there.
i paid him no attention
for i swept
his shop with my news-hunting eyes
to place
even a trace of that that lovely mirror
that once had given glory to my hair.
‘your hair is done dear randa,’
swept his voice.
and out i danced excited.
on the street
i played like window-shopping
for you know
i need a mirror image of myself.
and there it was dear mother
there it was
my head a crownless king.
i swept the streets
and, mad with anger, flung myself upon
my giggling door.
why are your laughing mom?
for heaven’s sake don’t lie
i still can hear
your laughter half-suppressed.
what shall i do
when even you don’t sympathize with me?
what did you say?
you’ve had yourself the blind hair-cut?
oh no my lord
i’ll murder all my mirrors
oh i will
i cannot face my hounding nakedness.
e
the room was panic with the smoke.
she squeezed her cigarette between her lips
and pinned her eyes to photos of herself,
the ghosts ulterior motives of her soul.
no longer could she smile at her young image
that kept recruiting of herself
the swell she’d been in her school days.
her eyes grew deeper and impulsively
she swept her fingers through her hair
that was no longer there…
f
the pyramid of acetone
flung open as the pharaohess
announced her will to blast her fingernails
with that eternal curse of nakedness.
the brush went back and forth incessantly
upon the brilliant gondolas
with all that magical incense
the priests of egypt could invest.
the startled pharaohess,
stretching her fingers, could then see
the claws of some unheard-of animal
scratching the brilliant fingernails
on all those helpless photos by her side.
g
what cracked the sleep off randa’s eyes
the door-bell or the starving wind?
her finger exorcised the crouching dark
and gave an early morning to the fly
that buzzed, self-conscious, round the shade.
she yawned but not without attentiveness:
the screeching fingers of her soul
suspended like a scorpion
with ripened images of cells
that would assuage his hunger for the flesh.
the screech continued.
randa flung herself
across the jungle of her room,
and everywhere was she for everywhere
the screech continued everlastingly.
‘my words are rusting on my lips
open your window please i need to speak.’
a human voice or her imaginings?
she could not tell but still
surrendered to the voice her trembling will.
and through the cracking windowpanes
a thread surprised her swinging eyes,
holding a slip of paper and a pebble.
h
it was not then the smell of earth
that lingered through her windowpanes:
the clouds had journeyed all their way
and tumbled over horizons
that never pined for rain.
it was the thread and pebble still
the slip of paper on that sill
that pinned her eyes and will.
spellbound, she stretched
two fingers, robot-like, and shrugged
the paper open.
her pupils widened as she read:
i
‘time had a flat tire
and for the first time
his trip subsided into sweat
he plunged his surging wrath
into the center of his sultry skull
dug out a watermelon seed
gazed at it
and didn’t know what to do with it’
a vigil
while his forefinger peddling with the trigger
of his reposing rifle
both his knees
were swinging right and left in fainted rhythm
cuddling a tune as silent as the night
as far-fetched as his childhood memories.
a star above him winked
he dropped his eyes
upon his wrist and lapsed in peccant void…
‘it’s half-past two already,’
slouched his voice.
‘i’m twenty one by now, can that be true?’
the street before him burped
his fingers hopped
along the startled barrel of his gun.
* * *
nothing occurred.
the music in his mind
had mushroomed into branches of a tree
reflected in a pebbly running brook:
there and not there
both found and lost at once
elusive wink of blurred reality.
the branches then took bolder shape
grew hard and instantaneously
blossomed in red and white and blue.
a patio squirmed and prostrate fell
in front of walls that hug the space
and rolled up to produce a house …
the squeaking door surrendered to his eyes
a wrinkled face both smiling and upset…
* * *
the air grew thick and redolent
of stuffed green peppers cooked with cinnamon
* * *
and there she was again:
the garden paths
flowing with marveled colors on her sides
she, flirting with her years
a jasmine in each nostril
perfect attainment for her morning walk.
* * *
the night affirmed its full supremacy
blasted his mental gurgling with a grip
on his internal eye.
the sky
miscarried…
or perhaps the stars
were lost in self-immolation
so he thought
and twenty-one hot bullets licked the sky.
the sniper’s vision
the stars are joints
of some celestial beast
suspended in the space by gossamer.
when she awakes
and gouges out her head
they say the moon is born.
now it is born:
celestial time
for an eagle’s eye
to travel down the street
on that shy thread of light.
our alley
over the claws of searching cats
cockroaches hop and slither
dance tiptoe
black rats have joined them in their feast
from garbage caves they tilt their heads
dilate their joyful eyes and rake
the humid air
and lick the blur
and tick the clock of peace on earth.
the teacher’s dilemma
midnight’s the edge of time
that peels my skin
and glues me to myself
the edge of time
when i crane inwardly
to see through ‘me’
and to deny:
my wholeness is a stranger to myself.
the candle’s out.
a swarming generation’s on the streets
and i, rope-walking, hold a pen
that draws one path
and wipes another out
in what might be a dubious charity.
divine and earthly gods
have vanished in the storm
and i, a blinded worm,
am asked to keep the norm.
mathematics is my subject
litigious is my mind
to what but my own logic
shall i refer the blind?
a modern elegy
that surging presence of her gentle walk
assuaged the snow and inadvertently
millions of sirens in a crazy dream
blasted unblasted everlastingly
testing the floor
her gentle feet lilacked the space:
ignition keys that brushed the brain of time
from which emerged a twinkling universe
instant betrayed an instant
time convulsed
with twenty years of wrinkles round her eyes:
a bullet and a skull
and fell
seasons of jasmine
an orchard that once
had bridged those wiggling distances
the chewing-gum boy
the children look at me with searching eyes
their mamas play indifferent
while their hands
roll up the squeaking windows of their cars.
‘his chewing-gum, my children,
is dirty like his hands.’
and then it rains.
i and the children turn
our eyes in awkward shame
and count the drops of rain
and count them once again.
an urge
since you last tickled
my hurt-loving breasts,
my toes have nurtured blisters.
skin-sickness, like home-sickness,
is a shrug
the nervous system issues to propose
a new dimension to my hatching cells.
listen
tonight my vocal system is alert
electrified with sharks
the revelation
down on the street is soundless
rows after rows of stone
the blocks
are silent seconds in the blur
time horizontal
my lips take off their corset
round and stretch
and bluster out a blade of diamond
the glass of windows yawns
and carelessly
goes back to sleep
row after row
why do their ghosts annihilate
all distance … force
a flagrant curfew?
are not the cries of infants at their birth
enough protest
against the brutal curfew of the skies
that sets apart forever man and god?
delirious ulysses
i thought we could thresh out our differences,
that, through those gnawing clouds above the bridge,
we could shake hands,
we could dilate the skies a crack
to ease the painful contractions
of the stuffed ears of rolling distances…
conglomerations of afflicted selves,
inosculating swingers, ever wet,
self-chasing, ratchet-like…
upon those waves i’ve dwelled
for even you would faint to guess how long,
for long enough to swear the broken gates
are still unbroken.
i plucked my teeth in raging faith
that they would grow anew
and have been waiting ever since,
my breath a snake,
a rotting rope,
a pain an unripened virgin
would suck both in and out
when dionysus cuts himself in joy…
not till my years of yearning
had told a dubious tale
could i revel in sailing
the vast cubicle …
light-bugs they are, light-bugs will always be
those hide-and-seek disturbances;
stick where you wish your shapeless face
i’m getting used to distances…
THE SIDON FIRE
( a phoenician legend )
1
(Long ago, the Phonecian citizens of Sidon set the city on fire in defiance of
the Persian army then besieging their city.)
The king’s garden:
Lilies and roses,
Yellow saffron,
Red flowers,
Sweet basil and noble laurel…
And the king’s absence.
King Tennes! Oh king Tennes!
Where have you disappeared, King Tennes?
Have your steps traces evaporated?
Have you dissolved in the dusk?
Have you dug a hole in the water and moved, boat-like, through it?
Or have you fallen asleep inside a white bubble
Feeling unattainable
Inaccessible to horror or combat?
Where have you hidden, King Tennes?
Have your steps traces evaporated?
Have you dissolved in the dusk?
The roses and the sweet basil
The tactful lilies
The noble laurel and the saffron
The Arabian jasmine in full blossom –
All all the plants that colour the garden
Are the city’s lasses, full-bosomed,
Dreaming of happiness,
Drunk with the longings of their youth.
Like the morning are their faces
Their lips, the wine,
On their bosoms, the apples
Divulge their secrets.
The touch of silk are their arms,
Succulent in the heat and in the shade,
The ether’s slippery space;
When lulled back and forth
A swing redolent of incense,
The fan of salvation as well as of torture,
Of the cold as well as of the heat –
The touch of silk are their arms.
Their walk is the throbbing of sentimental thought
Their paces the flying sparks
From a firebrand sparkling with light;
Their walk again
Is the bride’s dazzling appearance to her bride-groom,
The quivering of wine-glasses
In the head of the bride
Who one time is moderate
In handling her veil and her wrapping clothes
And one time walks in a drunken manner.
The young ladies’ walk is both the wine and the wine-dealer.
Jasmine, their breath
The fragrance and the snare.
The soul and the senses
Are stealthily robbed of themselves,
And in compliance with the jasmine’s will,
Doubt is violated by certainty.
2
(The music now invokes fear and anxiety.)
The King has perhaps fled in the dark
Wrapped in his terrible secret
In the hope that his dubious departure
Wouldn’t be detected by the star
That watches over Sidon from sunset
Till the cock announces the end of stillness.
Sidon! Oh Sidon!
Perhaps he was determined to flee
From the first day of the siege
Despite the fact that the Persians were alarmed
At the sight of the city’s fortifications,
Their pride provoked by the women screaming:
“Let oppression be gone!
Away, away from the fence whose pillars are the will of men
The boys’ and the childrens’ fondness of heroic stories
Told to them and to their ancestors before them
By the city’s schools and institutes,
Stories about heroism, simultaneously daring and sad.”
From the very beginning of the siege
He was perhaps bent upon fleeing.
And flee did he
Wrapped in the darkness of a night
Whose stars were absent
Oblivious of the immune city wall-fences.
Determined perhaps was he
To flee
That very night.
3
(The music gradually shifts to an enthusiastic tune).
We, the brown young Sidonians, protest
Against seeing our city drown into a state of confusion
Whether during the king’s absence or upon his death.
True kings we are in the time of war,
Swords that spread their flames over the battlefield
Whenever the Persian warriors try us with their uproar.
We are the judgment, the peace, and the ultimate horror.
This is both God’s will and the people’s resolution.
4
(The music now is of a fast beat.)
Artahshashta! Artahshashta!
Besiege our city for as long as you wish,
Surrender we will not.
You’ve only deceived your soldiers
With the delusions of victory,
With dreams you did compose for them.
Besiege our city for as long as you wish
From us you’ll reap nothing but death
Away with you! Away with you,Artahshashta!
5
( The music is now redolent of admonition and of sad, suppressed anger.)
In the time of great danger you left us,Tennes, oh Tennes!
With not even a little hint as to your whereabouts,
Just gone, traceless.
Tennes! Oh Tennes! Were you truly brought up
In the gardens and orchards of Sidon?
Or were you the child of the ever-migrating gypsies
To slip, as you did, into the wind’s unexplored territories
While the night had not yet yielded to the morning light
As is the habit of gypsies
In time of settling down and in travel time?
Tennes! Oh Tennes! What have you done to your people:
To mothers of incomparable patience?
To girls of immaculate purity?
What have you done to the still-breastfeeding-children
Wrapped in their weakness
Their eyes bright with hope
Their lips immersed in their gentle smiles?
What have you done to the dream
Blossoming in the garden’s flowers,
The roses, the Arabian Jasmines, the lilies, and the sweet basil?
You have surely deserted the dream
Taking advantage of its unmindfulness
Surrendering it to great anxiety
Uprooting it from the blessedness of the womb
Hushing to stillness all tender feelings of love
Bringing about the death of the whole garden.
6
( The music is symphonic now, evoking the spaciousness of time and place as well as the drama of the four seasons, burdened with the monotony of
eternal repetitiveness.)
Summer, autumn, spring, and winter,
Morning, red noon, and evening,
Darkness, fog, and light,
Fire, soil, water, and air,
Death and life,
Joy mixed with crying –
All existence is a state of everlasting renewal
Season dragging another season
Each fixed in the constancy of its attributes
The green leaves of yesterday
Today are yellow and withering
July’s lazy breeze, February’s blowing wind
And the smooth wave
Finally provoked by the high wind—
All seasons, all have been the lot of Sidon
The seasons of life as well as those of death
But never had they effected any change
In the will and determination of men, women, or children,
For all of them were armed, all well-trained in the art of combat
Even before the beginning of the siege
Even before the skies were terrified by the Persian warriors’ cries of war.
7
( The admonitory accent of the tune is dramatically sharpened to invoke a
sense of open, direct accusation.)
Your running away is high treason
So do not tell me that in the dissolution of your conscience
There lies your skin’s salvation
From the sparks and stings of fire!
The rule of a kingdom has never been
A matter of leisurely relaxation for the kings.
You turned into a murderer, Tennes,
By committing an act of treason,
That of abandoning the garden’s dream
Along with the sweet and tender feelings of the dreamers.
Yes, you just turned into a murderer
When from their aromatic drunkenness
Our people awoke
With fear being the last of their dreams,
Despair, the bitterest of all their truths.
8
( Music now is a celebration of the fire motif which purges and prepares for
the moment of rebirth.)
Fire obliterates renown as well as memory
Purges the heart of its highly alerted throbbings
Defends it against fear and meekness
And with fire renews its former pulsation.
For from its very redness
Does fire generate the leafy green vegetation,
And with the blades of grass, spear-like,
The anemone glowing around them,
Does it emblaze the way
For the procession of the souls
As they transfer victory
From heart to hand and then to the other hand.
Fire obliterates renown, Oh Tennes!
Burns it until yesterday is yesterday no more,
Expels it out of the realm of time
So that its ashes and oblivion are one and the same.
Fire stones patience,
Conquers the conqueror,
Obliterates – when it wishes – renown and memory
Or recreates – if so it wills –
A green renown for the hero
Who draws up a sword of fire and of light,
One whose heart is not captive to fear and abandonment,
Whose feet slide not into the path of the run-aways.
Fire, Tennes, is God-like:
It takes away life and gives it back.
9
( The drums declare war now.)
The drum! Dum dum, da dum! Dum dum, da dum!
Screaming and barking, thunder is the drum,
Knocking that leaves the earth convulsing
And the plants tasting a sense of bereavement,
Knocking like wild pulsation in a dinosaur’s chest
Or like stoning rocks
The thrower-of-stones being a strained feverish devil.
Indeed is the thrower-of-stones a devil
Indeed are the people victims of the stones.
The drum- beats are the sound-siege
Of a wall-fence indifferent to an imminent onslaught.
The night is gone and gone is the day,
Blackened with the oppressive beats of the drum,
Beats like a heavy rain,
Like a violent throbbing of the heart.
The drum! Dum dum da dum! Dum dum da dum!
Screaming and barking, thunder is the drum!
And there rises the smoke
And circles around the wall-fence: layers of clouds.
And the rose-lasses,
The Arabian jasmine-noble laurel-lilies-lasses
Are now a great burden.
Conquered by fever is the heart; thought, feeble and ill;
Our city’s youth, a blend of anger and sullenness.
In the people’s minds the story grows into a legend:
That the Persian warriors’ wooden ladders
Will soon be laid against the topmost edge of the wall-fence :
To make of the fence itself an illusion of a fence
To render defenseless all defenses
To let the certainty of victory be disturbed by doubt and despair
To declare that the time of freedom
Has made way for the age of oppression,
While the black smoke endlessly hovering around
The topmost edge of the wall-fence.
10
(The enthusiasm of the resistance-movement warriors, mingled with
sorrowful undulations of the wind, breaks out in a valiant freshness.)
We, the brown young men, are blazing with anger,
Our patience-embers being our own triumph,
Pre-written in heaven for our tormented generation,
Our suppressed silence but a mask for our uproaring flames,
Silence our speechless fire,
Our wordless contention,
Wordless quarrel
With the probability of death
For our youngsters, elders, and wives,
For everyone we love and everyone who loves us,
The probable death of all
Which might render the coffin too small
For those who’ve been for us the gentle breeze,
The milk and dates of life,
The dream’s free space.
Our patience-embers are our triumph over nothingness.
Woe to the daring besiegers of our city
Who look with eyes and hearts that do not see
Anger, feverish, boiling in our breasts!
Woe to the daring besiegers!
For their only triumph will be over emptiness
The emptiness they’ll inevitably have to taste.
11
( Music now whispers secret movements and gestures, one following
another…and finally exposes the Persian warriors’ defeat.)
In the dawn’s mist, itself a perplexing enigma,
The ladders shed their sleepiness and rise in the air
Their wooden blackness clutching at the wall-fence.
The ladders rise and float like lines or threads
Unravelled from the coal-colored hems of the night.
Breath by breath whispers float up, up
Firebrand by firebrand the eyes’ gleams float up, up
Float up, up, also the youthful arms, rhythmically,
And the mist gets saturated with the probability of a scream,
Of vehement uproar.
At the moment dawn begins to break,
Wing flutters to wing
Wind calls out for wind:
“Let’s turn around, let’s slide down and set the city on fire,
Let’s carry out the daring and sad will
To save the captivated city from this siege.”
Ablaze were the time and the place,
Ablaze were the eyes,
Heated with the redness of the anemone were the tears.
Fire was dancing its own dance
Accompanied by clouds of smoke.
The Persian warriors cried out: “Defeat! Oh defeat!
Woe to such an end as has been kept for us by the Unknown!”
The leader roared: “The path to glory
Has been blockaded by the fire;
The cunning Sidonians have concluded the war
Before we have managed to really begin it;
The only glory today is the glory of the fire!”
12
( The last tune celebrates the Sidonian warriors’ identification with
fire.)
Our dance…the crackling of firebrands,
Our songs…shafts of light purifying time and place
Of things that were about to be
Of all remembrance of things past.
In the humiliation of running away
You’ve been life-hunter, Tennes,
A hunter of defamed plunder.
Tennes! Oh Tennes! In your hunt for defeat
You’ve allied yourself with the Persians.
All paths are barren, and so are all paces and all strides
So long as you are captive to fear and to a broken will.
Within us, Sidon has been ablaze, oh Tennes.
The might-have-been humiliation was suffocated with the smoke
Before what had been feared could have ever come to be.
Transformed was Sidon into light
When our souls went ablaze
Emblazoning the very tongues of fire.
Our souls are the tongues of fire.
Our souls are the tongues of fire.
MUSIC INSPIRED
BY
GENTLE PRESENCES
HER WALK
How dare you stare
And then dare lie
That she is not a butterfly
When shades and shapes inside her room
Assume the spring that they assume
And whisper as she passes by ?
Her naked feet ! Her naked walk !
And there you’re trembling with each beat.
Hold, hold the dream and let your hands
Caress the tulip of her feet.
A trip of magic is her waist
Arrested wink of ecstasy
A timeless call, but as she strolls
A smoothly swirling gull I see.
OUT OF NO PLACE
The morning, straggling with humidity,
Dragged men and women
With their dangling shoulders
From street to pavement, into grocery shops,
Into misty places
Huskily blurred
With misty breaths and misty faces
Until all, there, all disappeared
Leaving me with a rubbery remembrance,
A molasses-like indolence
As sticky as a chewing gum,
Spat on the pavement by a careless mouth,
Sticks to my shoe in humid stubbornness.
Out of no place
So suddenly
Into the bookshop strolled a gentle face
Out of no place,
A suppleness of a wavy smile
That waved away the morning fogginess
The sluggish, morbid senselessness
Of the hanging, dangling humidity,
A smile of pure delight
For sooner than I thought, the light
Wangled its way
Out of the misty shadows
Of the morning that was just
Another kind of a ghastly night.
Purer than light
A smile of pure delight.
surrender
when
like jungle hounds
the ancient waves
push and howl their way
inside those undulations
of the skin
when
the river banks
close hard upon each other
and gasp a spear of lightning
your lips surrender
two slices
of
sweet ripe
pineapple
and once again is born
another jungle .
wind and shudder
the forest leaves of my body
have learned to shudder
in your mouth.
You are the wind
that shakes my wilderness
into its lasting form and color.
haunting promises
like luscious wine
desired for its haunting promises
like ripe
though perennially budding
apples
your breasts lurk
behind your secretive shirt
two sweet disturbing dawns .
your little feet
cleanliness of the heart always begins with the feet.
and your precious little ones
have recently strayed
in the obscurity of mud.
spare them the tricks of their old trip.
they are fit to tread
the purple longings of my finger-tips.
keep them roses for my eyes
kisses for my mouth.
primal fears
when death proposes an alternative
for what I know of you
my night
a serpents’s skin
lags
undulates
with hisses
through and through
the fractured caves
of primal fears
turning and turning into waves
of howling colors
the calendar of ageless years .
ESSENCES
Her gently parting lips the beat
Her smile the rhyme
She’s song and dance
And both in her transcend all time.
She comes and goes
No, no, she flows
Her pace upon the ground unfelt
Her motion to the place a test
A challenge to the chasing eye
Ungraspable
A breath
A sigh
“Hello!”, so fast, so fast “Goodbye!”:
An ever-fleeting butterfly.
She doesn’t need a poet to recite
Her beauty to the world
To you and me.
Nature’s the poet, she’s the poetry.
GIRLISH PRIDE
At the boy on the left
I wink
To the boy on the right
I raise my glass and drink
And everyone in a while
To the boy in front
I smile.
I have my reasons
For being all first-rated
For being self-appointed
The girl for all all seasons
And I have my reasons.
It is high treason
Not to believe what I believe
To contradict what I have chosen
For you and me
And all the rest
For always always I’m the best
And you are too perplexed to contradict.
I am the girl for all all seasons
And I have my reasons.
HAIFA’S INTERIOR MONOLOGUE
He looks at me with saddened eyes
And then he smiles.
The rest is silence for a while
And for a while
Postponed the glimpse of paradise
Why doesn’t he
Say it to me
That my complexion is for him
The sweetest, tenderest melodie
Of all he’s known of poesie,
Why doesn’t he ?
Why doesn’t he
By name call me?
Why doesn’t he say anything
Like “Haifa, rose from Baalabeck
You’ve left me just a mental wreck !”
Why doesn’t he
Say it to me ?
I know, I know, he wouldn’t dare
To whisper or declare
His admiration once for me
Or once his care
For I’m the student, bud and fair,
And, well, he is the professeur,
Detached, aloof, so so unfair.
ENNUI
I look around and see them all
I fall in love with neither body nor soul.
Why do I look and see
All those inviting faces that make me
Neither so joyful nor so unhappy ?
They leave me just the same
As I have always been
Tranquil … the heart, and senseless … the body
Neither so happy nor so unhappy.
If once ennui spiritual
Has anything ever to tell
And just in simple words to spell
Then it is that ennui is hell
Ennui is hell.
HER APPLE-PIE
She once made me an apple-pie
And baked it on the sly
In her young sister’s old pyrex.
It was perhaps a sign of love
Perhaps a trick familiar to her sex.
She must have baked the pie so well
Until it rose and rose until
The crusty swell
Became a hill
Rounded and soft and full
Of apple-jelly-jell.
Though time has passed
And passed so fast
I still love her as much as I
Did love her breast-like apple-pie.
LAYAL’S DILEMMA
Some say that love is war
Or maybe more
Some claim it’s just desire
That weaves our shirts of flame:
Some kind of fire
And others do insist it’s all a crime
Though clothed in colors
So mundane or so sublime
A riddle love has always been
No matter how the human mind
Lucid and keen.
DAEMONA
Daemona’s eyes, Daemona’s face
Her smile, her pace
Her gestures as she speaks or walks
A grace, a grace.
Sweeter than wine
Though rooted in the soil, divine
A pure delight
Her presence to the grazing sight.
Daemona’s dearest voice
So smooth, so bright,
Is always right
Is always right.
Daemooonaaaaaa !
A VISION OF HELL
Ankeedo set his eyes on Greta’s thighs
As she was trying from the lake to rise:
A Venus surging from her shell
A blend of Eden and of Hell.
“The prize ! The prize !”
He screamed in joyful terror
And like thunder
He started hurling rocks
Right, left, and center.
Poor Ankeedo! Poor Ankeedo!
Passion, burning, furious, lavish.
Poor Ankeedo!
Then Greta twirled and sensed his lust.
She spoke, defiant, breast to breast
A nudist turning moralist:
“I am opposed to all free love
I’m but a sweet sweet little dove. ”
He twisted right, he twisted left
And round and round he ran so fast
In search of her love-passion nest
But on her face she wore a frown:
Her frosty-spirited chastity belt.
Poor Ankeedo! Poor Ankeedo!
Passion burning, furious, lavish.
Poor Ankeedo!
feminine fingers
your fingers
wild roses
joy candies
or else
skin-hunters
love-mentors
to plunder
to bless
hint-whisper
no softer
or tenderer
or gentler
hostess
your fingers
wild roses
joy candies
or else
her dancing feet
wind-winders
flash-dancers
floor-masters
her feet.
ring-racing
self-chasing
embracing
their beat.
step … circle
slow … hurtle
how fertile
the floor
in curving
and swerving
and starving
for more.
time timeless
distanceless
all distance …
the glare
of motionless motion
that silence can’t bear.
LOVE OF MUSIC
greenhouses greenhouses
in bunches and patches
in bundles and circles
in all kinds of dances
puff puff puff
the sliding
fluff fluff fluff
the gliding
the twirling
and swirling
are all all green dances
greenhouses greenhouses
THE SONG OF A DRUNKEN COMMUNIST
I’m eating like a pig
And dancing like a bear
And sharing every swig
With women here and there.
My head is round and full
Of watermelon seeds
It never itches for the grain
For nothing else it needs.
The future’s for the masses
Young men be they or lasses
But triumph absolute will be
For all the graceful asses.
A LOVE QUARTET
a.
It was more than the music and the wine,
More than your feet could whisper to the floor,
More than your voice, pale as the dawn, could do
To my vibrating soul. It wasn’t you
Alone, or me alone, that did it all.
It must have been all these and something more
That made the night long linger by my door.
b.
Don’t ask me what I think of fate
It’s fate all right to see
That in this war I think of you
And that you think of me.
A wish-fulfillment on my part
Or just a melody ?
Don’t ask me what I think of God
It’s God all right I see
Who gave me eyes and gave you what
Makes dreams reality.
A wish fulfillment on my part
Or just a melody ?
c.
Why did your lips burst out with laughter then
If not with vague intention to perform
And form a tulip shade ? My memory,
Deflowered by its own resistance, surged
With tulip gardens. Shades were shades no more.
They were all dancers, real in their own right,
Led by your mouth, lead-dancer of the night.
d.
You are the darkest power of them all
The civil wars in books and on the streets,
The serpents writhing in those fighting souls
That keep our history chronicles alive
With gaping wounds. You are much worse.
For blood is not the language of the war
Which once declared goes undeclared for evermore.