Poem & Video: World Split Apart

The façade of a building falls away and
reveals a man praying
A bakery loses its show-window showing a
hundred weddings who’ll have to
wait in the next world for their cakes
An Orthodox cathedral split in two
revealing a solemn baptism that’s now become
more like a drowning
A synagogue smashed like the tablets of Moses
the dust of [...]

Poem: Great Cruelty and Heartlessness

(Note: this poem written during the 2006 Lebanon invasion is sadly too cogent now as well…)
___________________________
We’re living in a time of great cruelty and heartlessness
where instead of a sun they’re throwing up
anvils
Instead of sunlight there’s the sound of
hammers beating
Instead of walking there’s kicking
Instead of thinking there’s talking
It’s almost as if there’ve never been times like
these [...]

Another ‘Eid Poem: More Feet

Sitting facing the Ka’ba
like a flat black kite
bobbing in the wind, or rather
the flat black square of the kite is
stationary, the world is
bobbing –
a thousand billion feet stride past, going from
left to right, feet of whole
nations it seems, feet hitting cold marble,
heels and toes passing endlessly,
feet of emperors (who knows?), feet of accountants, feet of
women [...]

‘Eid Poem: What Are Feet For?

What are feet for
but to go around the Ka’ba?
What are eyes for
but to look upon God’s House?
What are lips for
but to kiss the Black Stone?
What are hands for
but to supplicate our Lord?
What’s the heart for
but to open to His Light?
_________________
12/27/95 (from Mecca-Medina Timewarp)

Poem: The Grand Fete

Audio reading of The  Grand Fete:

THE GRAND FÊTE
At the Grande Fête everyone’s invited to
people start arriving by aerial gondola
Shape-changing twins arrive
dressed in tuxedos
Lady Godiva comes dressed
as a smudge-blotched charwoman
Historians come with inky thumbs
in suits made of parchment
Serenaders arrive on whiffles of song
neon red cummerbunds like those worn at the Vatican
Various woodland creatures arrive
in human disguise [...]