There is always a shortage of things

Hi weirdos,

For today we have a couple of poems, or things which resemble them. Tomorrow maybe something else. I have many pictures to post, in addition, but at least most of them will have to wait until I get to Nouakchott and have a connection that will handle more than a kilobyte or two every hour.

Number one is about the weather....or maybe other things. Number two isn't really a poem but sort of a stream of consciousness ( even though I hate that phrase) musing. I hope its doesn't sound too poetry slam or something but oh well.

-Yours

Number 1

There is no thunder when you come
There is only the silence of white lightning.
There is only the wind from the west
and the eastern ash.

You are beloved by us
(even your rages)

You are beloved,
(but you seem ungrateful).

You are… a beloved green envelope of grace,
(left to be mailed
on a countertop,
left by the frenzy of hot hazes in the hurry of
their preoccupied departure),
which everyone anticipates receiving like a birthday check.

It’s set up, propped up, on a salt shaker.
It leans, blank-posed and unashamed,
a paper island on the glossy expanse,
its neat, frank lettering in capitals intones:

ITS TIME

Ugh, you are so good at
"setting to right", at
"starting anew", at
flooding our lazy wounds with the austere, clear water of good sense.

How do you do that? You must have had practice.

And while everyone longs for you, dream-like, like a good dinner,
I can’t help but fear for my collapsed house, and for
what you might find inside with your blunt, bright eyes.

I know its petty, beloved, but, your
wide gazes, pitiless as lasers-
(that is -less about seeing than looking),
what might they discover under the old, crusted dust of decay?

Oh damn.

If you dissolve the habits,
if you crack the habits, the hubris, my aloofness,
how will I ever make good again?
(Do you care? You don’t care.)

You are beloved by us,
(but there’s this):

though you cool,
you also corrupt.
Though you move soothingly,
you also rupture things which are none of your business.
You know? Beloved?
How will I ever make good again?

I suppose the best solutions make new problems,
while correcting the old,
containing the cause of their own reincarnation,
-aggressively running in circles and galloping,
heedless and fortunate, slipping the trail and
enamored with chasing the tale of the past-

I’m tired of looking at skies with anxiety.

I say: screw the green things! Screw those…things.
Let them turn towards sick turquoise and sea-foam,
let those screaming, antique yellows and
brittle, blonde whites,
-weak and flaked as apologies-,
go to hell.

Hell, I’m tired.

Plump my pillows, pussycat – I want to dream.

Dreamgirl? Beloved? Be a good kitty.
Don’t punch - just, like.. pitter.
Don’t grumble, just flatter me with liquid.

I’ll let you come.
I said, come down here.
Come on in, wise guy, but shyly, remember.
No funny business. No flames. I mean this.
I’m hot enough for the two of us.
I needa keep cool.
Hey-
Bring me something cool to drink.
I think that’s enough.


Number 2

lying prostrate on brightly colored floor mats
patterned in squares,
blowing smoke towards the palm-branch ceiling,
thinking about thinking about the nature of reality (really?, please)
trying to come to elusive epiphany,
to decipher the intellect of Bertrand Russel,
brown lizards scale the walls, nicotine floods veins but improves nothing,
a goat screams person-like, for her lost, irresponsible children
across the barrier of a stone wall (no ivy),
the hot wind, the low hum of voices carrying,
the ingratiating, ecstatic throb of flies,
the embarrassed rattle of paper pages fluttering,
a child with a snot-nose,
and the most adorable eyes,
perched in the doorway playing with a length of wire
(don’t touch that!)
fatigue, fatigue.

Minetou walks on Mbarka’s back,
the sickening slurp of cous-cous munching in repose,
too-sweet tea, (where’s the mint?)
blank stares, curious stares,
antipathetic stares across impassable voids,
veiled mouths, wrinkled mouths,
wrinkled, dirty lengths of unwashed cloth billowing,
beautiful, beautiful lips, regal, unaware, ignorant cheeks.
the deceit of faces.
flies burrowing in my eyebrows.

trapped, an inability to go either forward or backward, big needs
thwarted by laziness, by an inferior constitution,
brown soap cakes, thin sandals from China,
molded into the shape of tired feet,
scrawled words in margins in another language,
once alien, but now only feels like a provincial past.
no self pity. so much self pity.
unintentional, or intentional, oblivious rudeness.
(keep pushing, keep fucking pushing and just see what happens!)
walking in sucking sand,
tripping on rocks which blurt out sharp edges to
slice the ends of toes, just to be noticed
just to make the blood flow more freely.