How did you do it?

How did you nestle your way into my brain

So that when I sat on that dune

That symmetric mound of man-made sand

It caressed my curled up toes

The sun was screaming California as it bounced off the ocean

And all I could think of was you.

Jaffa

I wish I could:
Photograph this poem
As it is being written.

The place where it lives:
On rocks lapped with foam
Lips of an angry ocean.

I want you to taste them, here:
Sea salt breezes, runny noses
And a Jaffa sunset.

Tiptoe back to:
The neighborhoods I know
Wait for your call or
An address
And a break from
A morning of waiting for
The day to end.

A Woman's Love: An Elegy

A Woman's Love: An Elegy

It’s a tragedy, to love a woman so well,

Blown back from childhood, battles we knew so well.

When I was Sam, and you were Merry,

We all changed through Frodo, our other friend was Pippin.

Here we fought Middle Earth’s wars from days beginning to end,

Till that night, a fight, the light came screeching to a sudden halt,

And the Ents were cut down by a premium housing firm.

Under the cover of their broken back blown shouts

Galadriel’s whistle stole our Merry away,

While we, distracted, smoldered beside the men

Who stole our daydreams

And threw Pippin quarters under the bush,

For walking like a lady.

We were 15 when we looked up.

With no Merry.

You had gone to meet your lady.

Childish games for childless shames.

All the Ents were dead.

And I didn’t care.

There to be born the boy of the backstreets

With few cares but grand emotion,

Tucked away, saved someday

For when Galadriel would nip at your face in French,

(You were dumb and only spoke American)

While I, caring little for her pâté, but fluent in French matters,

Battled her tongue word for word and dominance,

Shadowing you behind carnival Ferris wheels

And the inky black of locker rooms

To hear the swooners croon

“I want it that way” from the party inside.

It was I who taught you how to kiss her with my mouth,

Through my words I guided you and held your heart,

And then, we parted.

All three.

You two, through the inky black,

And me,

Outside in the dumb show of bro bravado,

With a pale flaxen love I brought for the night

To light my heart’s light as I was low,

In my body’s soul I shuddered and sought to show that glow

I wished to grow so greatly,

Gently grating the long and pang I wished for her.

But I’m no Aragorn.

And I miss my Shire.

I let her go.

She hates me still.

Still, like the muddy river bottom,

Merry Galadriel caked for many years more

And I swore that in my heart

I blessed the silent sticky which bore my friend away from me,

Into thee,

Lovely lady, you were a friend of mine as well.

And in those muddy river brakes, I cultivated flowers,

Not mine to know their fragrant smell,

I’ve grown these weeds to smoke, to ease my mind,

Every time I slipped a note between her hands,

Your eyes,

The twisted ties together, stronger.

I became all the more complicit.

And our budding cherry, seeming parted,

Was yours, both, together, never mine.

Only time itself would wash myself away from that mangy stream,

And when the flood came,

There were tears in little Merry’s eyes,

Her words, beautiful,

So clear,

All the mud had gone away,

The day I delivered her message of resignation to you with my voice.

It was her choice, not mine,

Brother.

Well he cried, and died, and died while crying some more,

In the days, the weeks, the months, the years who flow

And come never more for Galadriel,

“Love is tragic and hard!” he pronounced to me.

In a den of E, one night when the boys were left alone

To dictate the fate of the world as boys our age often do.

I gave him my quick and muddy reply,

“You lie, you are the tragic one, for your love has grown soft,

That’s why she left you merry and alone, boy.”

He called me, “A fuck” and I knew my place,

To serve his greater earthly facets and weave smiles for him

As he contemplated eternal bachelorhood at age 22.

Alone with me.

No more three.

He. He. He.

No man could breathe to the life unseen

The way young Merry’s life did for Sam.

We laughed and laughed and laughed

Until suddenly, at once, there came a crash

In the den of that foggy, dripping night,

And Galadriel’s body came floating over yours into the purple haze,

Let in by some crack under the door.

That night I heard you love her through your dreams,

And so it seems she will always till a plot of bitter earth

Near the junction of your heart and her mouth.

It’s what I have seen.

Friends don’t stay like evergreens.

That night I wandered aimlessly into my mind,

To smile the smile,

And make him forget.

To bless the memories that never happened.

To forget the girl or two I knew when I was younger and merry.

He introduced both to you, remember?

No, remember when we lived together in Harlem?

And heard the Negro speak of rivers.

Remember when lilacs last in our doorway bloomed?

The day the North and the South were knit once more.

Forever.

And I smiled the smile

To make myself forget.

In my mind you gave me that merry laugh,

Forever.

Tearing away from me, your Sam,

My games and imagination made a young Merry smile,

And like a wizard, transform him into a different man.

When I awoke, Galadriel had fled once more

And you were a different man,

No longer merry, and quite unlike my own.

Imagination is a devil and I prick it tunelessly on my heartstrings.

I want a woman.

But cannot see,

Who she should be.

If Merry would kindly pick for me, a wife,

I’d lay my soul down and smoke a pipe

For the rest of my days in the Shire.

But all the Ents are dead.

They have been mowed over.

And the Shire was washed away in the flood.

Remember? It’s gone.

Love has gone away and we chase Galadriel together,

Through the air, her hair, who will catch her?

I cannot say.

You have never seen the way I always let you leap up at her first, brother.

The memories of a lover, held in the hands of another

More refined and supple to carry a merry young lad away,

To play around those curves I learned of a longing last to be knit,

Fast to your soul through another.

But I can’t find her.

The day I do we shall be boys once again,

Forever.

Brother.

And under our giant friends, these Ents, we shall grow old,

Each with a grandson on our knee,

And wives by our sides,

Two houses, side by side,

Will I ever say, “Remember this time old friend?”

Brother, I do not know.

The tale cannot be told,

And I may grow old waiting for the woman who will never leave me,

The way men always do.

But that’s our way, to stay is pure folly.

Go to her.

I’ll be on my way, my Merry lad.

If I come by slowly or not at all,

Do not form a band of brave young lads to search for me, no.

Love love, it is the greatest show.

The Shire has detained me, that is all.

It is warm there, and reminds me of the games we used to play,

In the days long before she came,

And our play became your night.

Mexico City Dream

We are sitting in the dining room.

I love the way the sound your oxygen makes

changes

when you bring the cup of coffee up against your face.

Can you put some more coffee in? you say laughing, Como que me lo hiciste muy ligero...

The door crashes open. I forgot to lock us in tight

Comrades, show us the valuables and we wont harm you, he shouts

Guns pointing every which way

Oblivious, I reach for the crystal vase and throw it at him

I miss, there is glass everywhere

No one moves

No se lo esperaban

Tengo un problema, les digo, y creo que son los perfectos para ayudarme.

Ya calmados, se sientan en el sillon.

Her stories are running through my head

Of men who go shopping for their women,

Of a woman who dresses like a man, impossible to call her Laurita

Of the men who whistle when you walk down the street, the shame and the fear

Of 20% of the country piled up in one green house of a valley

No me siento Mexicana, y me da mucha pena

Por que? me dice, Como vas a ser algo que no eres, algo que nunca has sido?

But I was!

I would run and jump and beg them to take me to the cerrito

The cerrito!

I wouldn't understand myself if I met me now

I have always been a patriot sin patria...

Oh, and comrades, can we lose the soviet symbols please, they're getting overused.

I wheel your chair down the hall,

No corres, me vas a quitar las narizes

Si abuela

Deja los platos con agua, porque si no vienen las cucarachas

Si abuela

Lift your leg abuela,

Ok, now the other one. No, abuela, the other one.

You fall asleep with the tv on, the city still churning beneath our feet.

This Week; Or View From Afar Now

I've done a bad thing now.
Mother, I want to leave home now forever, catch a glimpse of contested borders and lay down beneath the hail of birds with the Tuscan sun in my eyes. I'll pluck a feather from each and mail you a million quills with dripping ink.
I want to float with my stomach towards the clouds in the Atlantic and be washed through the Triangle on a bed of torn fish and garbage.
I want to watch you from afar now. You look east towards the tallest ruin. I'll stamp my feet until the earth shakes and you can hear me wailing.
I know you're alone there. Chances are I'll be on home now.
But not before I've seen this world.
And oh, you nameless woman.
Each trial of my mine matters not and yet I still fear your touch and dark hair
pale skin and slender unforgiving.
Eyes of pride and eyes of wonder.
I worry now, you'll disappear again and draw my ire.
For you I'll send my silence from the breaks in the book burning line.
Maybe we can meet in Queensland and I can take you out on the river.
With your nonexistent parasol and ambivalence.
I've done a bad thing. Exeunt bravado.
I only wanted to bike the countryside in ambiguity and read my books.
But I cannot do it alone.
I want to struggle now with everyone. I want to struggle now with you.
I wanted to write published letters.
But there is nothing left to write.



Los Angeles 2011

One last quick poem
Like a kiss or its
Lingering on a summer
Day or night or what
Comes in between
Sheets of half notes and
Quarter tones that
Given due time
Will come together to make
One last quick poem

Train Poem II

Feverish on a train
Tel Aviv on a horizon
Blanket of lights
And a heater that
Costs the family
A fortune

I don't know what
I'm doing on a
Train where people
Stare at me, where
My notebook or
Its cover might
Frighten them and
Force them to get
Off at the next
Stop

I want for them
To become richer
And buy themselves
Empty pages too
So that everybody
In Israel can be
Lonely together

Jawaher Abu Rahma

Saturday was rain
And gloomy even before
I stepped outside
And heard about the killing
The blood that runs down into
The sewage pipes of Tel Aviv
Was washed away by torrents
Minutes of rain followed by
Minutes of sunlight
Dog walkers and children
Magnetized by whatever pulled
Them toward the park
How lovely, I thought
The water here makes blood look like
Paint on a sidewalk
So that when we walk by
Any curb looks fit for
A facelift
Where does all that blood run to?
I wondered
And whose veins does it pump through?
Because in my dinner I can taste it
In the lettuce and the peppers that we chopped
After we rinsed them with water
It was as if we had left them outside by the curb in the rain