A Dream of Kuwait

There is a boat on top of the bookcase, wooden
with a flag that reads Kuwait, reads
not of deserts, but something of sailing.

Habibi, I never went, but was told through others
of orb-like towers, built for water, and the streets
grown so hot, you feel a great weight hovering over you, pushing
like two hands folding the earth.

Binti, you would call, little one, and we would lie close,
and you pointed over waters and waters as though to find
that far away coast, where we could watch
the great eye close, and a final surge
of solar perplexity and vague mystery
as green light broke the waves.

This is how I love you: a green burst
among the waves, and every night
when the great eye closes, and again when it awakes.
We are as heavy as an endless summer, and as thick
as stars spread in the wilderness, where I looked
at sand for hours seeing only your face.

Pieces from Fall 2009

Just wanted to talk to you today.

Just wanted to say your name

to someone.

________________________

I am seconds away

from pure color,

from autumn browns

and dark stone,

from flying up to the

brilliant tree cities,

into the sunlight-spilling

gold ridged sky.

Thought you could skip me

across water, did ya?

thought I would sink

like a rock.

_______________

A realization

I have

Breaking through

some inner layer,

didn't think anything

could run this deep.

I think I might just be

invincible.

We make our way, a thousand days
of dreams; we turn pillars of parking
garages into fortress walls, and kingdoms walked
wearily, we tread to our cars.

Eventually, we thought it would make sense
as violets do, sprouting heads above the dirt. We thought
each ray of sun is for someone blue
and each moment of blue is to remind us of solitude, to
take our hand and sit us down for a talk, like our mothers
used to do.

But we have been reprimanded for changes, for calling names
and praying, we were blamed for the wrongs we made,
but even right things lead into corners and squares
 
like boxes and papers cut in halfway planes. I am fully immersed
in the world, but can never quite fathom its shape.

Exit

I am sitting in the back

of a fogged car, gray seats

and not enough leg room

behind a gas station, where rain falls
on the windows, on the roof, to our backs 

where a forest sits of

towering, overpowering, pitch black

trees with eyes that watch the night

as I am staring at your face

in reflection, water sliding down over your eyes

smoothly pressed and soft as an empty freeway, closed

to the mountains, impassible; we are late, it is cold,

ice is falling, and I am holding you.

Long enough, I have cultivated fields of fog and corn, happiness
as fragile as a young bird; you don't know how long it took me
to plant this garden, and now, a sudden lack of seed.

the rows are shallow, dug with a spade. I expect too much
from a patch of earth that has never been planted
and I am watching to see what grows -- nothing
but the wild seeds blown over the wall.

_________________________

I told you it is madness, a constant back and forth, upheavals, swoons, dives.
It seeps up and debilitates; watching a sunset sink into silver hills. This is nothing.

There is a woman sitting
at a window, looking out upon the weather,
and she glances back -- whether
or not you stand with her in the room, she will not
look directly at you.

In summer seasons, she fishes at the river
reeling bodies tied on strings, to dangle
helplessly, then toss them to the currents.

And her child, not born, but distilled
inside her womb, who died
ages ago, yet is ever smothered in her breast --
the little girl does not rest, but cries a lonesome wail
of innocence, and the heart's cracked details
of a blanket torn away.

And the woman is still waiting, ever waiting
for the day, but does not realize -- she will never be
revived, restored, remade.

Wings

You passed, a gray swan
at dawn's light. You passed
through wire branches and low, bending limbs.

You flew across
distance, wingspan
of our armlengths, hand to hand.

And for a moment, the wings broke
to either side, and I realized I mouthed
my own name, while looking for you in a sky
that was empty, save for the distant call of birds, and the subtle mist
that emerged from memories of you, moments tossing stones
into blindness, the constant
balancing attempts and rational violence, with no release
but a burst of wings.


There it flew, all of you
as everyday as a gray goose, no silver swan-necked, hovering bird
but there, your unloved, molted wings -- gray, yet true.



- - - - - -




What is the unnamed? The unreachable
peaks upon wings upon a broken wind; what speaks
through us, when a hole opens
and nothing replaces, fits.