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Diluvian Blessing

May the road rise up to meet you
when the tide defeats the town.
May you find a way
to get your kids to Georgia.
May the wind die down.
May the sun show you mercy,
the former inhabitant
of an elaborate circuit
of thermally optimized dwellings
and automobiles.
May the rain fall soft
on your broken city,
pitch black, dazzling
in its downed power lines,
volatile snakeheads
sparking and snapping,
hissing at legions
of disinterred dinosaurs,
liquefied, blooming
from the exhaust pipe
of a surrendering god
on his way to the state line,
hands at ten and two.

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Ten Ways of Looking at Hunger

I

Stars dazzle in the ashen sky on a cold night streaming and making long traces
of hopes bouncing from one end to another, tracing a path for you to place
your wish. A wish is hunger in its infancy.

II

A simmering passion rises from the dearth of your acceptance, birthing at the
corners of your mouth. Lingering desire scorched by societal norms and you
wait to exist in a different dimension. The language of the wound is love.

III

A cold gaze on the morning of the funeral waits to gulp down the memories,
as you bury the remnants of your happiness in a warm womb of trowled earth,
whose skin is broken by the lash of overnight rains. Acceptance is a fallacy.

IV

An incessant desire to look for the likeness of the soul, as your identity sits
like a square knob in the circular opening of this godforsaken life, and your
identity is solely defined by what lies between your soft supple thighs. Love is
an elegy for acceptance.

V

An uninterrupted clacking of soft beaks, as it waits for the next morsel, pushed
down its supple throat as fledglings make their home in the oak tree in my
courtyard and I think of a thousand ways to call their hunger my own.

VI

A desire for survival as the frail scorched hands of a child hold the photo of
their bombed city, carrying the identity of a refugee, looking for a stranger’s
embrace. A single night demarcates your identity.

VII

Searching for a definition of elusive peace, as he breaks another morsel from
the dried rye bread making a constellation around his courtyard, giving
sustenance to the gray-winged visitors flocking his courtyard. A lame excuse to
fill the emptiness in his weary old heart.

VIII

A life nothing but a deluge of expectations, waiting to jump across the gushing
terrain, in a race for survival, spawning only to meet death in a run for life. A
shimming desire in the cold white eye of a salmon.

IX

An unsung, unfinished lullaby that will haunt their existence forever, as they
decide on the color of the coffin matching the dress of her doll, thinking of
ways to bring that last phantom smile to her face.

X

Hunger speaks in thousands of ways, in a language unknown to many, and
yet cleaves a soul asking for more. Making thin sluices of suffering, desire, and
loneliness, scratching a path in our existence to carry pain. A flute carved deep
to sustain melody

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Rise

Rise,
rise above the opinionated heads
on stooping shoulders of demised desires
on your sturdy legs or stilts
but rise and become the voice of the unspoken
war cry of the mute
hoarse whispers of the fallen
in the crevice of night.

Rise,
when their tongue is sliced and gutted out
and vultures are feeding on their dead entrails.
Don’t be a mute spectator
they will speak through you
like an apparition,
like a ghost in the machine,
and will beg you to stay.
Be a Massiah
ready to be burned at the stake.

Rise,
enrage their souls
buried deep in their shame
your tongue born out of fire
raising hair at the back of their neck
speaking in an unborn tongue;
like a catalyst for a revolution,
you give them a mission
a purpose,

a reason for their crestfallen souls,
a tourniquet for their bleeding wounds,
a moment to survive,
a shiny glimpse of the future.

Rise,
bedazzle them
rise like Phoenix
out of thin air
devour the stench of pointy accusations.

Rise up to see a new dawn
like the hope,
neatly tucked in the crevices
of the unbroken seed.

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Topography of a Wound

What is the topography of a wound?

The origin and provenance of its existence
and its presence defined by its gaping mouth
by the broken semantics of love, hunger, and acceptance.

An old haggard face trying to find its identity
in a shattered mirror to salvage the possibility
of finding its crochet voices in haunting
broken cold corridors of life.

What is a vernacular of pain?

When it screams, haunts, and rattles
us in the night
trying to find flesh lodged
between its saw-edged teeth.

A ghostly presence—
This scar, this wound, has deeply etched in our souls
its haunting melody like a protracted fog in winter
bouncing off thickened concrete.
like a bullet ricocheting in the dark,
like a faint voice in the shroud of the night.

An elegy is an acceptance of the truth—
A black body in the middle of a protest
bare naked with arms splayed
pinned like a monarch
ready for the dumb menageries.

Another news making the headline
for its mindless span of a news cycle.
Prey ready to be devoured
trying to find that sliver of empathy
in the white of your eyes.
Pinning knees on the harsh concrete
as it makes deep impressions
into the hollowed past of this country
asking a bowlful of questions
in its bleary eyes.

A question laced with a deep hunger and empathy
a hunger that rises in my throat,
panic throbbing like a taut wire
devoid of its symphony.

Fear courses in my deep black veins
as the thick blue knees are pressed
a little harder than the last time.

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How to Save a Child Fleeing War?

Based on the fact that; “More than 10.5 million people have been displaced by the
war in Ukraine. That number includes 4 million who have fled abroad, half of
whom are children.”
                                                           —The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2022

i

Open your palms and hold gently
as if you are nursing a wounded bird left astray.
Look for places where a soul has been scarred
those deep ravines of grief slowly making their way.

ii

Gently inspect each layer of their existence,
as it has been shattered and ripped in places.
Look for scathed memories that have been fissured
seeking acceptance for a soul lost astray.

iii

Wipe their face pitted with streaming tears
as they make thin sluices–
for pain deeply carved in their heart
madly hoping for another brighter day.

iv

Unburden their soft shoulders
carrying remnants of a bombed house,
a last toy, and a crumpled family picture
they could barely save.

v

Try to lessen the ache of standing
over a mother’s grave, a day before,
which left them with the inability to voice any pain.

vi

Gently wash their grief of losing a definition of home
being branded a refugee in a span of a single day.
Comfort those soft feeble feet carrying anguish
of a thousand bleeding hearts looking for solace in a stranger’s embrace.

vii

Make sure there is no sudden noise, as minds of grief and terror
get triggered in innumerable ways. Refrain from asking questions
about leaving in the middle of the night, to an unknown place.

viii

Make sure to shower endless love and comfort
on this innocent soul whose life is paying the price
of a senseless war conceived in the devious minds
of tyrants and their greed-stricken ways.

ix

Don’t take them back to the streets
laced with the dead bodies of their loved ones
and their home now turned
into a place of pitted mass graves.

x

Try to teach the lesson of our faceless humanity
this world has to offer to a five-year-old orphan
holding a crumpled photo of their family,
in their soft supple hands, refusing to give it away.

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Deciphering the Madness

I ask the night, feverishly
as it rests on the caliginous back of time
like a thick rope going through
the wide-open mouth of a blind wall
rubbing against it, leaving marks on its existence.

Like a divine mark on the forehead
after kneeling before exalted Gods
countless times.

I ask myself.

Is it ever going to be alright again?

Thinking, as I take a second glance
at the empty streets of my house
longing for the clickety-clack of footsteps
warming its thick cobbled skin.

There is a method to this madness
that I used to discover—
every morning looking outside my window
counting hurried whispers of crowds
as they move towards the station like a mass exodus.

Now I long for those sights I normally abhorred
the state of normalcy of what it was before
as the light sheepishly makes its way
through thin wooden slats of my bedroom window.

Is it ever going to be alright again?

The pinging sound of the garbage truck
backing up in an alley,
soft paws scratching as they dig through dirt
in the almost bald spot of the park
joggers clad in sweaty bodies
heaving to take in another sliver of breath.

Is it ever going to be alright again?

I look at tiny finches weaving a nest in the oak
tree outside my apartment,
as they decipher this reigning madness
carefree weaving home for their future self.

I say to myself,
It is indeed going to be alright again.

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N(t)= N ⁰ e -𝜏 ln(2))t1/2

    Curioso

What is the half-life of sodium?
              Who cares? Just apply the formula.

What is the half-life of a refrigerator?
              The day before the warrantee expires.

What is the half-life of a rock?
              Longer than you, girl.

What is the half-life of an atom?
              No one knows. If you halve it, the world will explode.

What is the half-life of a head of hair?
              About forty years, the same as teeth, eyes, and ears.

What is the half-life of chocolate?
              Two seconds. Three if it hits the floor.

What is the half-life of a memory?
              It depends on whether or not you have a picture.

What is the half-life of love?
              Forever.

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Communion

    Andante gracioso

My hands, heavy as prayers
divide the yolks from the whites,
the stirring spoon, a silver sigh.
It is as if I had spent the whole day
crawling through the hours.
on my hands and knees
for I cannot forget my own
son’s freshly broken body
fragile as an eggshell.

Our sorrow
beyond void and hunger
has been too deep to swallow
longed for the taste of avgolemono soup,
to feel inside the deep scour of lemon
pungent, tart, and acrid.

Yet, somehow, tonight,
this task of creating a difficult soup
works its way by accident to perfection.

Our table set for four,
contains an empty bowl,
for we agree he is with us still,
lucent in our spoons.

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Out of Tune

    Mesto

The E flat key on the piano is             dead
the hammer         frozen
in place unable to strike the string

I press on the ivory                 over
and          over           but no
song    only a fistful of                silence

I want to play Our Love is Here to Stay
a melody I can lean into for consolation
but with each dead E flat the       tune             thuds

with a hiccupped           gap            in the             song
as if typing love          lyrics   on  a typewriter
without          an            L

never able to say the word           Love

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The Oldest Living Thing in Maryland

    Con Fuoco

When I looked in the fridge, there on the rack,
lying under the dried out and left-over cheese
now pocked and dark green,
a new patterned glass colored rust,
sheened with gold, and with blue,
and over the brew, I saw hatching
within, embryonic new colors,
a red rise of skin, and the lace of new wool
in soft green mellow-marsh and gasoline yellow.

I saw liquidy fingers reach and rise
to give girth to orange-ringed circles
of a long ago peach once firm-fleshed,
with now a glowing new pattern of hair,
tin-gray blue and thin growing.
No longer resistant, but quaggy, full blown,
a new resurrection, I think of my own.
Avanti      Avanti

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