Idiomatic
Dear,
I am painting the baccaras today, because I love the way the edges fade from black into deep red; light where there should be dark. I have pools of viridian and vermillion,drag shadow into the light like we once curled our backs against the world and kept the places where we touched warm. You once told me a cynic was a rose blackened in the bud, you were right about most roses. But not about baccarras.
I had my last class yesterday. Hoda asked all the interesting questions as usual. We were discussing phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions. We laughed when she asked me if it was correct to say “we hanged” and I demonstrated its connotation by circling my neck with my hands sticking my tongue out, and saying generally it refers to humans and this particular event. I am not as fluent as I want. Drama substitutes. Black draped shoulders shake around eyes ignited with laughter. We say ma a’ salaama for the last time
It means this. Taghreed has gone Egypt hoping to find a safe place to raise her sons. Maryam is a monument of Russian plastic surgery, she wants be as young as she was when her family was killed. Salwa has found her nephew in Indonesia, with some distant relations. She was terrified he had been seduced by “people.” There is a new Thai masseuse who uses the string method of hair removal, I have finished the portraits, and destroyed the photographs Here it is difficult to find paint, but nothing is impossible. I have artists quality turpentine, alhamdulillah. Small appetites satisfied, don’t necessarily grow. At home people on the coasts who read the news will tell me something I don’t know about the butterfly effect. A bat will wave black wings over his victim fanning peaceful dreams while the red flows.. Somewhere far away darkness will descend unopposed. Nothing is without consequence.
The veil that hangs over the stones in the souq is resolute. The sun that fades everything begins to fail, as dust makes a lens of sunset. The mountains begin to unfold their ridges like black rose petals that keep the light curled away. Just for a moment, the fire seems to flare from deep within and of course I thought I’d write you because you never knew about this. Beneath the blight, like a book charred in the fire blasts from its binding, words at the center remain. Though the years advance and a carapace of darkness covers me, baccarras will always send my thoughts to you.
S
old saws, don’t cut anymore
Blackberry autumn
oh my fingers no longer oppose
age comes and dexterity goes.
And despite all I’ve done
I can’t text anyone
for I am no longer all thumbs.
enthymeme
My tongue is more sharp than my wit
and my malice is cut with a lisp
so it goes without saying
when my own praises braying
there’s likely more to the less of it.
mechanical assistance
My glasses are bending my ear
their oracle perfectly clear
when your waist and lens thicken,
and time’s steps do quicken
their echoes you likely won’t hear.
So beautiful. Just leaving a comment makes me feel like an intruder. But really. Do keep writing.
:)
The Air Is Full Of Noise
At both ends of the world philosophers
must practice concision lest their tongues freeze
on the pump handle of their own wordiness.
Above the ice fields their teeth click in cold fear
of all-you-can-eat poverty. Paid by the word
they blow grasshoppers into their sleeves, positive
the poles will shift soon with negative consequences,
for all but themselves.
On magnetic fields lawyers’ filings
arrange themselves to reveal escape clauses.
Like grasshopper clouds they make brief
work of justice, according to laws never
written by the disinterested, but applied neutrally
to intended victims. Pronouncements of the dark
shouldered philosophers of the bench read like poverty
is just one letter away from poetry. Less than wealth
and more than subsistence is left to be gleaned
from dissenting opinions, upon which we all sit
getting the last laugh.
In the littoral the sawgrass greens, scissors
like grasshoppers jawing the legs of those who stumble
on the verge. Philosophers, lawyers, judges fall
upon the mercy of the fallow. No one is released early
from interesting times, just for good behaviour.
The sun drags overexposed tongues to dry silence
in fields unforced to yield. Ordinary voices
are paroled in the quiet, affirm,
poverty is a virtue wasted on words.