There is a season to yell

written and read aloud in the UAE, 2009

 

There is a season to yell

And there is a reason to smell

Long have you waited

How have we have learned

 

Now is the time

The time to burn

 

The desert is hot

Hot hot hot.

Let’s walk

yes, let’s walk

Into a wind of fire

Lets close our eyes

And lean

Lean into the heat

 

And think of lemonade

 

Lean long into the past

And dream of hot chocolate

Warm dry clothes

frosted windows

apple pie

 

and

A really good book.

 

Oh may he live in infamy

This poem was written in 2009 and performed at a seminar at UAEU to promote reading literacy

 

Oh may he live in infamy

In the poorest of neighborhoods

In Anatolie

 

where so it goes.

 A lost time it was,

a wonderful moment,

forever funny

but never nervous

we walked into the fire to see…

a chance to crawl out.

 

What is there to eat?

and you sit down at the empty counter

and order a steak. 

Medium rare. 

No one is there. 

It is early. 

or it is late.

it is dark

you get up

brush your teeth

“and history slips into my thoughts

like a distant call

from love far away”

and you slap yourself

see the horror

…did we really do it? 

Santa Maria

 

but so it goes.

Time has stopped 

your order never made it to the kitchen. 

I get up and find the cook is dead. 

Someone

stuffed the cook in the kitchen in the microwave

with your steak

and au gratin pototaoes

your salat

with crunchy tomatoes. 

Outside again

Bending into a hellish wind

like a kid caught in

a Gitchigomee gale

eyes closed,

hand over mouth,

I walk backwards for ten minutes. 

a desert ruthlessly clean

in twenty minutes

the charred remains will disappear. 

Nowhere to escape the cutting air ,

no place to hide

pins and needles

pounding

pounding

Then it stops. 

Blowing sand falls

Like a finished fight

from the sky,

A blue sky

And look, behold,  a mall. 

We snake through the car park

full of old BMW’s

Into

cool refreshing air, 

and shake off a pound of sand

for a pound of flesh 

Never nervous

Never wanting

Always helpful

Last in line 

Today you have 50 million dirhams. 

I drew an island

written in Huizou, China, 2005

I drew an island on the board

“egg”

I heard about four students behind me.

Yes, I am the fried egg

Looking for my island. 

One day I scribbled an automobile

From a birds eye view

One with four circles for tires

One a stick figure of the same

 

Then there was a horse

an ugly mutation

of beaver mixing it up with an aardvark

Bringing howls of protest, scorn

And thirteen year old ridicule.

 

Boats are ok with their triangle masts

I can do a canoe

But put a human near it

And it’s time to wonder

Comedy

Confusion

Consternation

 

To show where my th’s came from I drew

 A grotesque head from the side

With big teeth

Open wide

And a zucchini tongue

Protruding out

The es sound demonstrated

Where the vegetable muscle

Slithers down this abomination.

 

But everyone laughs. 

Khaki cuisine

 Written in Huizou, 90 minutes north of Hong Kong, in 2005.

A table full of khaki colored food

her eyes misinform

remain aloof

and my questions

of love, innocence

baby fish fall

weightlessly in smoggy air

 

Surrounded by storied masses

High into gray skies,

in a caged sanctuary

with one dying plant,

 tiny turtles

hump slow and long

sustained

in a green plastic bowl

with rocks

 

Contentment

For ones who live

In their shells.