(middle)East Side

Yofi Yofi
Let me buy you a coffee
or kiss you – even better
cause it makes me feel b’seder
like a varsity letter
on a blue and white sweater
from Hebrew university

When you fress my banana
it’s just like Rosh Hashanah
Yeah- the head of the year
like primo red-Leb gear
of kif from Morocco
psycherotic sirocco
blowin’ down my spine
and blowin’ my mind

Good thing I’m circumcised
cause you know I’m super-sized
and I don’t need no trayf cheese
Hebrew national to my knees
you know this kosher meal
going to make you moan and squeal
like a hazzer in a sty
So don’t be toyin’
with undersized goyim
who don’t know what to do
like Snoop Jewy Jew

Sound Poem

The predawn still is broken by the warbling of the muezzin, intoning the song to prayer. You stir by my side in the silverblue of not quite light as the cry streams in from each Marrakesh minaret offset in time. Even to an infidel this; this sound shared; this moment of divine aware shared, by everyone in the Adhan’s range, is beautiful, in its morning musical wakefulness. More so by your skin in alabaster against mine. Another voice and another and another and another join the chorus and the sound eddies out out across Arabia.



125 BPM of tribal drums and saucer sounds pounds our skin in a sonic fingered massage. A night of dancing under a Goan moon fades under the Indian sun. Bodies writhe in rhythm around us; No need to talk, pointless, only a shout could be heard. We fuck, standing up under a tree, behind branches overhung and held to stay upright, unseen by DJ satoris and swirling techo-sufis. Blanketed and buffeted by sound. Music. Sound. Beat. Sound. Alone. Surrounded. Sounds.



Beyond our building, the bedframe bang, the bedspring squeal, the liferhythm of belonging inside, wails through the walls.



Screaming fights and recriminations; seething frustrations; guttural expectorations pregnant with fear and fire and ire and loss. Neighbor waking exhortations, midnight palpitations, self-righteous orations, unmet expectations.



Iberian sounds surround us; sibilant Spanish and the round sounds of Portuguese play atop the bass and drum rhythm section rumble of train over track train over track train over track train over track. The endpoint cities lay so far ahead and behind that the only light whispers from our windows. The full train feels empty, you fill every nerve, no other sensation gets through. The music of your sighs between Madrid and Lisboa is a fado song, of incomparable tone; we fly across the peninsula; the peninsula flies by our window, almost unseen, against the moonless night, lit only by the sparks from your skin striking mine.



The BoopBoop susurrus counterpoints a baby’s cry. And another. Gurney wheels stalk the hallways morning noon and night. Coos and cries and newborn fears are the symphony of joy and doubt and irrevocable change. The dripdrip of fatherhood sweat. Every mother a martyr an angel a frightened delight. Another baby cries. This one nearby. This one shatters all possible peace. This one is ours.




Louder than those is the silence following the final footpad click of the closing door.

Sizzonet

(with apologies to petrarch & snoop doggy dog)


I’m lyrical empirical
nearer to a criminal
than poet in a hymnal
or Norton Anthology
Fear my psychology
my guerilla ontology
offers no apology
when your cerebrum gets frantic
from how I drop my iambic
a verbal alembic
distilling thoughts leaden to auric
ideas so phat they’re caloric
ignore it
if your mind can’t do meteoric

8 things I should be writing a poem instead of doing

1. Contemplating intricate incursions through folded space/time to finely re-finish every flirtation and conversation in the manner my memory demands.


2. Feeding P. Pan at the expense of the man.


3. O Maw! O Stomach! Y/our insatiable need for supplication and adoration is an aberration – suggestions of ingestion won’t answer questions indigestible throughout the night - besides we ate 2 hours ago - turkey on rye


4. Failing at trying not to masturbate.


5. Riding the Cathode Carousel for a 3rd time around – just in case - this time- I find the gold ring.


6. Blinking my lids must take –like- 38 minutes and the clock keeps on lurching in great fits and starts 1:37, then 2:08, soon a quarter to four and I still haven’t reached the end of the line on this great tangent train to the town of Minutia by way of whistle-stop websites hitherto unenvisioned and points further west.


7. Nothing.


8. Anything.

Is it still writer’s block when you just don’t give a shit?

A million words and nothing’s changed

A million tries and it still seems strange

A million lines and a million breaks

& nothing feels like it’s going to take



A million letters make a million poems

A million smiles and still no home

A million steps and I’m still here

& nothing new to hope or fear



A million years since I crossed the sea

A million tears dried inside salt-free

A million reasons not to deposit ink

& nothing fresh to say or think

inauguration day ditty

goodbye bush hello obama
the past has a period the future a comma
let’s start the healing from yesterday’s trauma
goodbye bush hello obama

Buccinalia (for Robert Gibbons)

In a shaded cove
a flower grows
vivid
wishing he is steel

Buccinal petals
trumpet flowerness
“flower” “flower” “flower”
Forging steel

Turn soil & struggle
shit & sun
into bright burnished petals & peals of flower
& steel

Trumpets rarely flower
Flowers rarely trumpet
Edge your petals in sharpened steel
Root your roots in hidden steel

& blow & blossom
& blossom & blow