and geologists’ knowledge will thrive,
on this, once loaded land.
Ivory heads of those that walked here,
are hoisted like scarecrows,
in boundless barren fields,
hollering at those traipsing their land,
Who hungered and struggled,
for molecules of survival,
Smirking at the horizons,
a fading reek of rotting leather
rises and meets the ochre sky…
Arabian Sunset
In the midst of the vast Hatta desert,
Sky stretching as far as the sand
as if the earth is made up of
just two elements.
The sun descending,
with the tunes of the Oudh,
changing the blue into mackerel,
and shading it with dusk.
This beautiful sun, so alive,
Regal, a rich crimson red
Mystic and reverent
makes all cares of the world
seem so trivial.
4WDs resting
at the calling of the maghrib,
as it goes down, slowly, demurely,
beyond every horizon
watching a thousand eyes staring at himself.
Come With the Wind and Dance ~ For Rouvier
(Written in the Autumn of 2008)
Recollecting:
We went to bring you home one last time,
And the first thing they did was hand over
your wedding ring from your finger.
We sighed in unison, gasped a little
thinking how more cruel this world could get.
No one cried.
We looked at your once huge body,
young, so young, lying in that massive coffin,
which I thought was only meant for people whose time is up.
We kept looking at you,
now small, shriveled beyond recognition,
dressed as if for a grand occasion.
After lowering you to where your body belonged,
We came home and wept…
Your room was still filled with the
traces of chemicals they injected into you,
without any outcome.
But that was how it was s’posed to be.
I shall miss you at my wedding,
Everybody in the family will be there…Except you.
How you would have danced to a song or two,
only after making sure all went well.
Your name exists on the “guests expected” list,
For I know you’ll be there, present.
Wherever you are, you’ll surely come,
So, in the wind I send you the invitation,
For how else can I reach you?
Trolley Jam
insert
a coin, grab
your trolley
push it!
No signal lights of red and green,
No rules at all in these crowded lanes,
Disorderly drivers pushing their trolleys,
Folks not apologizing for all their follies.
Promotions, discounts, Oh what craze!
Shopping is such a pain these days.
You can’t horn, can’t overtake as little imps graze,
Older kids pushing smaller siblings who inside laze,
One struggles to push, while other enjoys a joyride,
Adding to commotion, no one hears if they cried.
Then rolls the vacuum machine amidst the crowd,
Pushing people aside but no one screams aloud.
You end up rolling your shopping trolley to and fro
Wasting time as trouble in your knees begins to grow
With yet another ordeal of the queue at checkout counter,
trying to recollect if you missed out anything, made a blunder,
entertaining yourself sometimes as cashiers catch some fraud,
happy by the time you’re home, your chicken is thawed!!!
***
The Truth About my Land (Double Rictameter)
My land
Oh I hear thee!
Calling my name aloud.
When I step on your sacred soil
The smell keeps me safe in your warm embrace.
You sent me to this foreign land
To find myself the truth
That vanished from
My land
The truth
Peace, harmony
Prejudiced government
Where all the evil creeps and seeps
As hearts watch thousand tears silently shed
Of a mother whose child is snatched
From its nursing breast
Pleading to see
The truth
***
Junk
I ruffle and shuffle
through things I have accumulated over the years.
Like a collector
of pointless pens and primitive picture postcards,
Key chains and hopelessly twisted keys,
Suitcases and locks of suitcases that don’t travel anymore,
Old radios with rusted circuits,
cassettes and watches that have run out of time,
crockery and cutlery: my reputation would be at stake!
Magazines telling stale tales
and empty diaries dating back to the 80’s
with plain cardboard paperbacks,
(not that I’d make a wallet if it were leather)
Clothes that don’t fit me
and I know I will never wear.
I moved house to house
clearing my wardrobe, throwing tons of clothes,
(since the church closed donations for charity)
But much older clothes, how they lie there still…!
one for the unavailability of color,
and the other, my favorite,
and another, because I still like it,
and yet another one because it was gifted,
and one more I think I will alter and wear.
Blunt reasons!!! More and more reasons…
I attempt clearing this wealth several times,
But it all comes back and remains in drawers,
wardrobes, corners and wherever there is space in the house.
I look at some of the things and memories cloud around me,
Connecting me to those times, those people
and sentiments keep them aside one last time.
Others are “just in case” cases, never to come to use!
Parking Officer on Nasr Square
Leaning against his commission,
hand on his creasing forehead,
one leg, bent like a flamingo
against the tall building,
pondering,
with a look of a butcher.
I wonder of his scheme today,
as he takes one long stroll
in grimy dust and burning sun
Trying to catch a defaulter
If he’s lucky to get one.
Later
Standing under some shade,
receipt book in his merciless hand,
Wondering
about his pay for the day.
So he takes one big walk down the road
and tic-tac-toe,
there you go, unlucky fellas
this just wasn’t your day:
You parked out of place
/> over-parked by three minutes…
and there’s just no excuse,
Declares, like Pilate “what I have written, I have written”
if you’re there, present at the fourth minute.
Pen, out of his pocket
and your car number onto his receipt
tucked behind the wiper
lies your ticket!
Perfect Peace
There are no broad-shouldered people
on the escalator today,
everyone standing on one side
letting me walk down as I please.
for once I don’t have to dodge and scurry
for my morning train
as the one going in the opposite direction, leaves,
~ empty as usual.
Mine will come anytime soon,
while my time is running out
watching a man in his 60’s play hide and seek
behind the information and advertisement stands
with a little child.
I like what I see…
the policeman on patrol smiles at me
I like that too,
I wish nothing should ruin this day
of perfect peace…
but my train comes full
~ this itself being a call of duty.
I shove myself jostling and squeezing
against passengers with rough moods
unwilling to move.
As the train leaves, I see the game continue on the platform
~ this time, a clapping game.
this must return the smile
on the policeman’s face.
Cities of the Century
Ultra elite boulevards and roads like snakes
Snake over and under civilized citizens of current century
There is no time for pain: the tears of the crying would be too few
to fill the tanks of fountains in front of plazas
But the glint of neon camouflages those that are blue.
Lips, in the night glitter with lip-gloss and psychedelic lights
of Jezebels in high heels: Oh how they make the city sway!
Envy tearing the frock of Giorgio Armani
Gigolos masquerading, parading the sparkly streets
With cab drivers often landing at the police station.
Life of extravagant squander, debts, bets and credit cards
The city needs no pillows of soft feathers: it never sleeps
Living by day on sedatives and feasting on fast food and gourmet
Kitchens, cleaner than living rooms for they’re hardly used…
They never cook, but mess around the city.
Birds, bewildered to fly over flyovers with supersonic traffic
Or rest in lit trees: no consideration for the least of creatures
women loving women and men doing same without being discreet
‘Cause laws have been made for those who changed ways
Like love, freedom being given to those who want it.
Nights at Casbah
Sweet scented smoke swirls
from scattered tables,
and shishas in the soft glow,
amidst shadows and dim lights.
Silhouettes of starlets,
crooning, grooving on stage,
and harlots shuffling in the corners.
Smooth Arabic fusion
feeds his soul and fills his night.
Without intent,
her rhythm rocks his body
to the ecstatically luscious beats,
as the starlet resumes to whirl,
With a voice that touches
his passions, deep, deep down
while the harlot caresses his chest,
whispering seductively between tunes,
until they finally leave the Casbah.
You’ve lived with extreme
dangers, the death-defying
strangers, playing, handling
crocs, arousing in audience,
fears and shocks. With your
unquestioned adeptness and
charm with nothing less, all
the creatures seemed to obey
your “law”(?), keeping mum
and shutting their angry jaw.
Marvelous magician to kids
on TV, surely missing you on
Animal Planet & Discovery,
where your silence shall be
voiced forever, recapping
your skill, incomparable and
clever. Deadly decades of
danger didn’t get you down
But a stingray’s strangeness
had your destiny bound. One
in a million thing to happen
to the one man in a million,
You – Steve Irwin will be in
memory for your Wild Passion.
A Candle for the One in a Million, Steve Irwin
In The Mirror
Sunday morning finds me like a log
I leave the breakfast table,
drinking soda instead of coffee.
The window
from where our silhouettes
took glimpse at our dreams
and the rising sun,
needs varnishing.
Right now,
I would like to see the obscurity
dissipate,
And more than anything
I would like to see the birds outside,
fly far away,
far from the vicinity of this sadness.
I can stay indoors all day
accompanying Yanni’s “In the mirror”
playing repeatedly,
something must have pressed the remote control setting to auto repeat
while I fell asleep on the couch,
as the last notes of his piano
left me looking into myself…
Auntie Mary’s Heaven
It would always be cool in Baga,
even on the hottest day of May
the woods would speak to your loneliness,
while you replied with a clap
or a shoo, driving away squirrels
and monkeys feasting on your fruit.
Always wrapped in nature
you knew what it would be like
and where you’d be
when this life would be over…
Today you’re living in no more different place
than you had been “living”
the only difference is,
~ you’re gone from human sight,
revisiting the woods when they’re lonely.
Your grave is a remembrance
of how beautiful you were,
brave and bold too,
safely distant from trouble
like the gravestones.
The serenity of the cemetery
tells of the peaceful life you led.
If I must know what happiness means,
I just have to visit your heaven, once in a while…
Origami Wish
In a world of usual day-to-day struggle and strife
Little Boy devastates a city so large, destroys innocent life
Leaving all paralyzed, killing some, keeping others
to narrate their chronicles like tales told by forefathers.
Tales of thousand paper cranes, peace and paying the price
Tales of suffering and tales of sacrifice
Tale of a brave little victim, a girl
worthy of praise
Lesson she teaches us, needed for our world always.
Thousand paper cranes would grant what she wished
fear befell her when all of the paper finished
medicine packing and prescriptions folded to take flight
get-well-gift wrappings disappeared out of sight.
How would she take a glimpse of the peace she hoped
What’d she do if her six hundred forty four cranes eloped
But her wish was the wish of her friends
Though she’d be gone soon, they’d bring peace to the lands.
And so she leaves the world with her one last dream
Her cranes to fly throughout the world with a peace theme
Her wish made to come true by friends finishing the cranes
Sacrifices and wishes, washed Little Boy’s stains.
Peace written very clearly, on every flying crane’s wing
so we see into the highest heights, this signaling
cranes, paper cranes easy to fold, easy to burn
peace is all but something man has found difficult to learn.
(October 2005 – 50th death anniversary of Sadako Sasaki)
Driving, Driving Me Nuts!!!
Got my hands, years ago on the wheel
drove out of edge of roads, into the fields
pedestrians laughing, thinking I will make it never,
I see them thoughts, in mirrors side and rear.
I observe every move other drivers make
as they start the engine and release the brake
and how much pressure they give the clutch,
it all seems very easy, but not as much.
So I go professional thinking it’d be easier
They waste my time teaching me rules on paper
With charges too high: these Motor Driving Schools
prolonging sessions as if I am a hard headed fool!
I drive amidst the heavy city traffic
with the instructor by my side it’s so tragic
Pointing several mistakes, yelling time and again
then says “lets go driving over the weekend”
There he winks and tells me to observe his driving
Smiles and says, “it’s my job to teach you the best thing
Someday, when you get your license
you’ll be a great driver with great road sense”
Of Old Souq and the Press
Sauntering through the sandaled sounds
Four Decades And A Poem Page 9