--
Visit
Go see the tomato vender.
There’s a highway there, a black tarmac across the blonde desert.
The Bedouins come there to beg, the children with the angry eyes.
"You sir, Englishman, you American, you are rich and I am poor. Come give to me what I deserve, I deserve your wealth"
(Our wealth has corrupted us, given us more power than a man should bear, our wealth has killed us.)
And the women in the background, they dance, they wreathe, they form figures slender and eerie.
They are alluring, they draw you away, they pull you across vats of snakes, they wrap you around…
--
The tin roofs, the rain in the afternoon, the woman carrying water on the top of her head, her shoeless feet, the log she balances on, the birds, the winds that blow out of the sea, the rain clouds that dance in such perplexing rotations.
An Indian woman sets down her brass decanter of tea.
Her little finger cymbals clang, they clang as her belly button undulates before your nose.
The spices -the clove oil, the nutmeg tea, the red berries smeared on her lips, the odor of coconut milk, the jingle of her belt of gold coins, her amulets, her necklaces, her sharp teeth, her razor edged words spoken in another language that you do not know but understand, her sisters, her brood, the wax of the candle that burns the flesh of your naked back, the wax that coats, the wax that forms layers that cake, they sell your soul.
--
The bus rolls across the dust of a thousand miles of desert.
Tires whir on the hot pavement, pavement thick with potholes.
The ferns, the fronds of palm branches, from days ago are still on your mind. They were where you were and are where you will be, and soon you will be there to bathe in the cinnamon waters, to rub your skin with the oils scented with cardomman, to drink the tea masala, found
within the whitewashed walls of heaven in the desert.
--
The trumpets call out in the evening, in the purple light of the orange dying sun.
The floor carpeted with geometric designs - the reds, yellows, and greens; the flowers of Islam, the feet without shoes, the hearts given to the mind; the song, the knees of the man from Mali thick with calluses from praying always towards Mecca on sea or land.
The minarets rising into the TV antennas, the boxes and rectangles of cement walled buildings, the crumbling architecture.
The men in black suits, the silk suits, with the white shirts and red ties drink gin beneath the slow moving teakwood fans, the Aussie’s hat on the knob atop the back of the chair, they look out at the time of afternoon prayer into a nearby mosque.
--
By the slow trickling waters that wash the pebbles, a dark haired woman sings of her lover, a dark haired woman sings of her man, the man who left long ago, who took her heart with him, the man who was killed in a war, who was surprised by an enemy, who was abandoned on the edge of the desert, whose hat, blowing before a wall of dust, blew all the way back to her, to rest against her legs.
She picked it up and wept.
--
A dream, a coming to my senses.
Here I am in a small village, an old shriveled woman squeezing water and lemon juice from a rag into my mouth.
The corners of my mouth, my eyes, caked with crusted sand.
I spit up, coughing out dust, the dust of centuries.
I remember being alone in the ruins of a lost city with strange writing on the walls,
images of people orgiastic, in some feast, at a table laden with fruits and birds and deer.
Not even a bone was left, not a tear, no sign of suffering.
They were gone.
And I was thrown out. I couldn’t even die there.
I was cast away by the winds.
My notes, my memory, my purpose, eroded away by the blowing, howling, haunting sands.
The woman holds me in her arms.
She hugs me.
--
So I lament, I weep, I moan, my face in the seat of an old chair, my naked knees upon the cool stone floor.
My heart in my hands, and I can’t hide it from the ravens, the shadows, the darknesses, that circle around me.
I in my white tunic, an American in a foreign land, a man in a burning fire, touched by the cool moist lips of a woman wrapped in cotton, a woman who hid, a woman who touched me, who stole my kingdom.
It toppled, into a tumble of stones.
What had I done?
Lost.
The winds blew, the dust stirred.
I could not raise my head.
She stood behind me watching, coming at last to lay her fingers lightly on my cheek.
