Poetry

Just one recalcitrant patch of hair by the left ear refuses to join the crowd and age, thrusting itself into glaring visibility with assertive determination while pronouncing, “This is who you once were: dark-haired, youthful, full of unexplored opportunities and...

I suppose you might have left it there yesterday on purpose, or maybe you didn't. Perhaps it flew from the plastic bag hanging on your motorbike or out the car window, unnoticed. Still, it seemed odd to find an unopened, stamped and addressed envelope lying on the...

Trees bent over  like prostrating monks to give us their fruit,  ripened like mischievous children.   Fish jumped up  from the briny deep  to give us  their slithery, twisting bodies   Plants welcomed  scythes and hoes as we sliced off  their nutritious...

It’s twilight.    Not especially interesting clouds block the blue.  It’s been raining often during the last month.   The grey clouds and green trees, exquisite with  a touch of sun a bit later, leave stark silhouettes.   The rice has just been...

No, Martha, I don’t want to make Curried Chicken Salad for my beach party: with two cups of mayonnaise and blistering sun, I could become Botulism Bertha, a worse menace than Typhoid Mary!   Nor do I want to make Belt Buckle Frames or get my hands all purpled...

The apple trees  were loaded with fruit  weighting down  thin branches until tumbling onto  dried leaves.   Worm-eaten, gnarled,  mushy on one side, not sprayed or  genetically modified  and better than  any eaten since. ...

Apricot season lasts  only a few weeks. In Gaza, war talk  stops in anticipation  of the delicious fruit,  called in Arabic, Mish Mish.   How many orange tabby cats  have that name,  carry the memory of perpetual spring,  of life forever renewed?...

And so dreams drape across days like old clothes ready to be passed on as remnants of the past,  when tranquility rests on present facades which only  look solid on lies or hopes, we don’t know which isn’t  surprising as one only takes while the other gives,  while...

Death, death, death everywhere in Gaza as brackish tears  fall into polluted water. A nation is mourning as the young  join together in daring danger, sometimes only spraying  black slogans on clay walls before being gunned down by  smiling soldier sociopaths wearing...

The broken bamboo blinds are down  even though the sun is not shining  directly on this part of the house in Bali  where a fan palm leans against the balcony  and a purple orchid paints the scene  with color.     I try to imagine the beige blinds as a map,...

(This poem was made into a performance piece and presented at The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October, 2011)     While soft city noises flow through dim-lighted streets and the Nile continues its inevitable passage to the sea I sit quietly,...

There was nothing to say about it because who was to care? I wasn’t the most loveable of offspring nor  one of the most talented, funniest  or outstanding, no doubt just  the sort of boy to be molested when others were sleeping, or  at least pretending to.    I...

  The streets are jammed with old cars, luxury cars, battered trucks, buses,  microbuses, motorcycles, bicycles, donkey carts,  and stray cats and people  weaving through stalled traffic.   Men in faded, colorless clothing, are attempting  to sweep into...

Sitting in a hospital bed waiting for what? a meeting? the voice of authority to speak? another sad, sick face to appear? a child missing a leg hopping back to his dismal room? Outside the Nile flows as usual. Cars and trucks crowd the streets, as usual But nothing is...

Egrets are all over Cairo, clustered in trees  like huge, feathery beasts spreading  their angelic wings before blessing  trees and parked cars with thick white splats.     In the rice paddies, each resting on one leg,  they are graceful ballerinas gazing over ...

Faded plumes rise out of the large, cracked flowerpot, the grey-green fronds resembling tattered boa feathers falling off a worn-out peignoir now lying in a discarded heap. Imprisoned in an ochre clay jail, the plant struggles while beside it a yucca blossoms,...

Some things look better at night –  placed to optimum advantage on the red granite windowsill, the Crown of Thorns, straggly in winter with insufficient water, transforms into an elegant, finely crafted sculpture    overlooking endless aging buildings  in...

Oh, what’s to happen to that boy filled with tales of heroic exploits and impossible opportunities  mouthed by a slick salesman seeking to line his pockets with  a hefty bonus for each recruit?   What happens to that boy sent  to some god-forsaken place with an...

To Brueghel it was spring, a time when crocus burst through the snow lambs and calves trot beside proud parents and farmers plant crops and promises. It was then that Icarus’s wax wings dissolved into sticky drops, thick tears slipping first to signal the rest was...

Looking from the balcony I watch while he moves down the path salaaming sideways, cheap rubber sandals gripping pebbles, sharp, painful to tender bare feet, but familiar points for him. On his head balances a large sack commonly used for fresh rice, now filled with...

It was the day he’d long been waiting for: A one hundred twenty-five-year sentence Truncated into this day. The fan overhead spits out bits of sliced moths Along with pieces of browned grass from nearby Fields where sand smothers struggling shrubs. Hanging onto...

My mother tried to kill herself so many times and didn’t succeed we lost count. Didn’t care. “There she goes again,” said my little brother. So, when she announced one afternoon that she’d locked herself in the upstairs bathroom, swigged pills and paregoric and...

WAITING Life is a series of waiting: to be born, to grow up to go to school, to stay up late. It is waiting for grades for passing for graduation for promotions and validation Then waiting for a friend, a boyfriend a husband: waiting for him to come to bed and...

Oh earth, What is happening to you? Day after day your body is abused And your sagging tits no longer Drip with thick milk. Your scarred belly No longer holds the promise Of tall sons and fertile daughters Bursting forth from those hidden Places from which all bounty...