"cairo" poems
A pale homemade dress hung to dry in the blazing sun;
It's original color not quite clear but presumably purple.
That stain that never faded, a spot of innocence...
I closed my eyes and remembered the night she wore it,
Childlike with that smile of hers.
He threw promises of love and eternal bliss;
She believed his words and followed him to the train-yard.
An invisible moon hovered over them as they entered
An old rusted cart, abandoned for years and years.
He didn't bother taking her dress off,
She couldn't wait to feel loved.
Right there beneath a dark sky, a man stole a girl's innocence.
But how can love find it's way through the Cairo Slums?
Where human lay on top of another, like cracked bricks;
They bleed.
A grayish sleeveless undershirt hung to dry in the blazing sun,
It's original color not quite clear but presumably white.
That rip that was never mended, a tear of hope...
I closed my eyes and remembered that morning he wore it,
As he maneuvered through downtown traffic
Trying to make easy money, as ordered by his jobless father.
A child of seven or eight running around with beads of
Sweat rolling down his tiny face.
Mr. Policeman grabbed him by his shirt, slapped him around,
Beat him to the ground for approaching Mrs. Businesswoman in
Her air-conditioned car.
But how can this child find hope for the future in the Cairo Slums?
Where human lay on top of another, like cracked bricks;
They bleed.
Let me take you down to the Cairo Slums,
Where people are animals in their nests
Of carton-paper, waiting for the big bad wolf,
To huff and to puff and to blow their lives away.
But soon you'll realize that evil's not born but raised,
That hate is brewed, and money is everything.
Let us disregard this urban jungle under a glass jar,
Let us use them for advertising or marketing our products,
Products they could never afford.
O' what irony, what strife.
The girl and the child never had a chance,
but they deserve one.
They bleed.
They bleed.
So without further a adieu,
Welcome to the Cairo Slums.
Oct 25, 2011
Oct 25, 2011 at 12:21 PM UTC
I am often under the impression that old fashioned street lamps
The ones with eight sided glass and black ornate poles
Are strategically placed by the city planning commissioner's office
To let me know the wardrobe is just a few dozen feet away
And it will take me away from this Narnia
If I just open the door
My phobia of opening doors gets worse every time I think I've finally found it
Only to walk right into the girls bathroom after lunch
On five alarm chili day at the cosmetology school in Little Korea Town
I don't like watering the plants
It makes me wonder why mother nature fell asleep on the job
But the plants are always telling me the rain can't get them inside my living room
So I started the fire that the insurance won't pay for
And the chemicals in the emergency sprinkler system killed the plants anyways
It also killed the fish
But the insurance adjuster wore gloves
So he's still alive
I would make a pretty ****** politician
I get upset at people who don't make sense
Though sometimes I don't make sense
I also have a bad habit of doing the wrong things for the right reasons
I have found Waldo three times
He says hi
Carmen Sandiego is in San Diego
Which makes that trip to Cairo a really bad piece of detective work
On a related note Al Gore is Captain Planet
And every time I hear a bug zapper
I think it is the bat from Fern Gully
But it is not
It's a bunch of dead moths in a box
Monkeys in a barrel
That's how my mind does things
Every time someone say "it is"
When "it's" would be acceptable
I remember The Land Before Time
"This is fun, it is, it is"
You are welcome
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 2:54 AM UTC
Plumped rouge with pigment
her lip fills to graze the ********
intent to disquiet the likes of de Sade
autografted with ocular detachment
should a Marquis wish to harness
the song of the morning
within a bandolier of Seine
to ensnare any bustled Persephone
gilted by discharge of ions
into a ménage of torment
through the Porte des Lions.
Hers is the tincture of doxy
caramelized and debrided of naivety,
empowered by the eve of invention,
swollen to curves and grounded in Paris.
Illumination defies pervasion
down to every gear and pulley
she has hushed through mechanization
and lulled by steam,
swaging a cacophony of flickers
encased in glass by the Lady’s watch,
where every rivet of her plate glisters silken
reverberation in cascade,
elegant, caged, and towering,
outspoken in silence,
ever challenging the Champ de Mars.
"Paris by Gaslight," written by Dionne Charlet, is the title poem to be featured in the upcoming steampunk anthology Paris by Gaslight, the third anthology in the By Gaslight Series from New Orleans small press Black Tome Books. Look for the first two collections of poems and short stories set in Victorian Times, New Orleans by Gaslight (ISBN 9780615801186) and Cairo by Gaslight (ISBN 9781516961528). Both collections feature poetry by Charlet, under the pseudonym Dionne Cherie.
Nov 3, 2016
Nov 3, 2016 at 2:44 PM UTC
Africa is beautiful and beautiful is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland of love this is Africa
What's in Africa? What's there to see?
I asked myself on the New Year's eve
I thought that I was good in geography
But I didn't know Lagos or Nairobi
I might be ignorant, I have to admit
About Africa I knew just a little bit
The great Sahara - sands of mystery!
The Nile river - so much history!
Africa is magical and magical is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland of joy this is Africa
Namibia, Nigeria, Niger, Angola, Algeria
Burundi, Benin and Libya, Lesotho and Liberia
Burkina-Faso, Botswana, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana
Djibouti, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Rwanda, Gambia
I saw a film on Serengeti Park
A one of a kind, a must-see landmark
I watched a documentary on pyramids of Giza
They're much much older than Mona Lisa
I heard that oldest coffee plants
Take their roots in Ethiopia's land
And that samba, rumba, funk and jazz
Take their beats from African drums
Africa is beautiful and beautiful is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland of love this is Africa
Cameroon and Congo, Malawi, Mali, Morocco
Côte d'Ivoire and Kenya, Mauritius, Mauritania
Tunisia, Tanzania, Eswatini, Eritrea
Sudan, Senegal, Somalia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan
You can travel around cities of Africa
Like Cape Town, Cairo or Casablanca
If you're in love or plan to be
Go to Zanzibar, feel that ocean breeze!
Climb up mount Kilimanjaro
Watch the zebras cross the Masai Mara
If you're adventurous, you're a dreamer
Take a wild trip down Zambezi river
Africa is magical and magical is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland of joy this is Africa
Comoros, Chad, Cabo Verde, Democratic Republic of Congo
Ethiopia, Egypt, Guinea, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Togo
Madagascar, Mozambique, Central African Republic
Sao Tome and Principe, South Africa and Seychelles
Africa is beautiful and beautiful is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland, I'm on my way to Africa!
May 3, 2022
May 3, 2022 at 7:33 PM UTC
It was a beautiful night,
Which is rare in this city.
A full moon illuminated
The dark sky with great
Brilliance like a devine
Light bulb hanging over
The earth from heaven.
Not a single star out,
But that wasn't new
For big old Cairo.
A light breeze blew
By as I stood in the
Balcony of my family's
5th floor apartment
With winter's shy
Fingertips touching
The air around me.
I took a deep lung-full
Of this beautiful weather
And coughed like an
Eighty year old man
Suffering form mean
Tuberculosis.
The burning of the
Rice hay, they say.
Nov 28, 2013
Nov 28, 2013 at 5:03 AM UTC
Shall I get drunk or cut myself a piece of cake,
a pasty Syrian with a few words of English
or the Turk who says she is a princess--she dances
apparently by levitation? Or Marcelle, Parisienne
always preoccupied with her dull dead lover:
she has all the photographs and his letters
tied in a bundle and stamped Decede in mauve ink.
All this takes place in a stink of jasmin.
But there are the streets dedicated to sleep
stenches and the sour smells, the sour cries
do not disturb their application to slumber
all day, scattered on the pavement like rags
afflicted with fatalism and hashish. The women
offering their children brown-paper *******
dry and twisted, elongated like the skull,
Holbein's signature. But his stained white town
is something in accordance with mundane conventions-
Marcelle drops her Gallic airs and tragedy
suddenly shrieks in Arabic about the fare
with the cabman, links herself so
with the somnambulists and legless beggars:
it is all one, all as you have heard.
But by a day's travelling you reach a new world
the vegetation is of iron
dead tanks, gun barrels split like celery
the metal brambles have no flowers or berries
and there are all sorts of manure, you can imagine
the dead themselves, their boots, clothes and possessions
clinging to the ground, a man with no head
has a packet of chocolate and a souvenir of Tripoli.
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Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.
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I am mama Africa, mother of humanity
My soul flows in all people in all places
I am Queen of Shebah the essence of beauty
You see me in people, people of all races.
I am mama Africa yes, I'm the Ashanti Gold
look at my jet black soul, I am forever young
I am ancient, dark, golden glorious to behold
Akwaba my children, sing me the Ebone song.
I am mama Africa, I gave birth to Mozambique
See all my plains spread from ducor to Cairo
Green my fertile soil, dark my soul so unique
I am mama Africa, roots of mount Kilimanjaro.
I am mama Africa, adorned with wealth infinite
Watch my strides, I represent perpetual grace
Hear me my children, cease to fight and unite
Come all ye spirits of Uhuru ,all I want is peace .
Jan 12, 2018
Jan 12, 2018 at 12:13 AM UTC
The regions’ magic carpets are a-beckoning
The brassware in the back bazaars aglow,
Exotic spice is nice
For a very reasonable price
And the camel market’s just the place to go.
But…
Afghanistan’s dark Muslims are scheming
The women folk are sharpening their knives,
When foreign troops depart
The bloodletting will start
With collaborators screaming for their lives.
The children of the Ottoman are smarting
For their neighbours are showing them disdain
By peppering with bombs
Along with Syria’s pogroms
And I wonder why the local folk complain?
Oh the sun comes up with glory in old Egypt
As another national leader meets demise
And old Nasser’s bile will burn
As from his grave he will return
To try to rectify his children’s Holy lies.
There are whispers of a strike at the reactor.
There are reactionary reactions from Iran
With annulment of the bomb
The region should resume aplomb
But I have my doubts this mixture really can.
And it never rains on dear old dusty Cairo,
Here, you never feel the chill of falling snow,
You may stalk the back bazaars
For the rare blue water jars
But you should really buy protection when you go.
And they whinge that all the tourists here are dwindling
That the middle Eastern charm is all but spent,
When the red blood flows like wine
In the good old Bhyzantine
As the peace of night, with gunfire, is wrent.
But…
The dates are really sweet
And the carpetry so neat
And the music is exotic in the night,
And with the flash of Asian eyes
I can guarantee surprise
As you flee for very life…with ****** fright!
Marshalg
From the dark Bazaar
23 October 2012
© 2012 Marshal Gebbie
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 11:06 PM UTC
Just as the pyramids would,
In the deserts of Cairo,
Snow-capped mountains gleam distant,
As if Kings on the Main.
This distance complete,
Through the eyes of the beholder,
As from a sea-sided office,
We with watch with wonder lust.
Bright streetlights,
And red lights, and green lights,
And stop signs,
As decadent name-change,
Perceives as if older,
As bigger, as bolder.
Musicians and artists,
Poets and Marxists,
Authors and boxers,
All convene to sing songs,
As egalitarianism,
Sings us a calm, blinded lullaby,
As the idea to be grasped,
In this young mind of mine.
They call this no small town,
In which not one arcade resides;
Gun crime is never,
In percent, as we ride,
A wave of communal,
Small-town "world peace,"
We'll take some money,
Off the governments lease.
In a sense we are distant,
Different, contesting,
A world which conforms,
As if all can and will be,
A slave to a master,
Sociopathic disaster,
As we run faster and faster,
Away from that stream.
We are the masters of our fate,
As we rate the world's hate,
On a scale from 1 to 10.
We are secluded,
Yet unconfused, not diluted;
We are more aware of this world,
Than it is of itself.
We set the sidelines,
As guidelines to life,
As we watch with some bias,
As we remain neutral to strife.
We are the Power,
And we are the River,
Ripped from the main-stream,
We create; we are free.
Sep 20, 2010
Sep 20, 2010 at 10:29 PM UTC
I've never been to China
I almost went to France,
I missed a flight to Russia once
I only missed by chance
Rome's intoxicating
The air there is sublime
But, I've never been there either
I just didn't have the time
I missed a train to Scotland
Bypassed Wales, and well Why Not?
There's nothing there in Cardiff
Other countries haven't got
I thought about the islands
Bui I do not like the sun
So I thought about a cruse ship
Still, I've never been on one
Alaska, has the mountains
forests wide and big brown bears
But as you can imagine
I've also not been there
I thought about Hawaii
but I never made that trip
I thought about the hula
And I thought I'd hurt my hip
I booked a flight to Cairo
Never went as you could guess
Saw a story on the news one day
And Jesus, what a mess
The pyramids had scaffolding
The place was full of sand
So I stayed home and watched telly
And then that trip was canned
I've never been to Ireland
or Cuba or Ceylon
And at the rate I'm going
It won't be long before their gone
I've thought about the Norway fjords
and lovely Swedish parks
but I've heard that all their fjords are filled
With big man eating sjarks!
I've never been most anyplace
I ever set to go
I'm not sure why I stayed here
I really do not know
Next week I have a trip planned
I'm not going to Spain
And then a fortnight after
I'm not going again!
May 3, 2012
May 3, 2012 at 4:52 PM UTC
A is for Athens
B is for Berlin
C is for Cairo
D is for Dublin
E is for Edinburgh
F is for Fukishima
G is for Guangzhou
H is for Helsinki
I is for İstanbul
J is for Johannesburg
K is for Kiev
L is for London
M is for Madrid
N is for New York
O is for Oslo
P is for Paris
Q is for Quito
R is for Riga
S is for Shanghai
T is for Tokyo
U is for Ulan Bator
V is for Vancouver
W is for Washington
X is for Xianyang
Y is for Yerevan
Z is for Zagreb
Travel the world
see these places
meet new people
make new friends
take photos
make memories
always be happy
Aug 15, 2014
Aug 15, 2014 at 7:29 PM UTC
New York Sun Editor John B. Bogart once said
When a dog bites a man, that is not news because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, now that's news.
I think the same could be said of life,
at least, mine anyway.
Don't worry, I'm not going around biting dogs,
but I am living it up as if my life were a story,
because it is, otherwise, I'd be bored.
But, if it were up to my parents,
I'd be working some dead-end desk job
at some marketing firm shilling packaged bread
so I could pay off my student loans,
own a home, get a wife & make enough dinero
to march to retirement, just like everyone else.
Same 'ol story.
Dog bites man.
Isn't it more exciting to read
about a roving poet skipping around
the world from Cairo to Toronto
occasionally stopping to smoke on beaches
all the while meeting people
who seem like they're from a different dimension?
I'm not saying I want a book written about me,
but... if one should be in the works,
I know it'd be a real page turner.
Although, most in my generation has been told
we're all unique and special;
getting participation trophies in baseball
& ribbons for being in the spelling-bee,
yet we're all also told, or rather it's highly suggested we
follow suit & get in line like our parents & grandparents did,
continuing their stories of countless wars and conformity.
Same 'ol story.
Dog bites man.
But nobody will read all these identical stories.
That's part of the problem with people,
only a few are living like they have a story to tell
while most fade away in some gray apathy hell.
Well, my brothers and sisters,
I can only frame it to you this way,
if you had a choice between reading the headlines:
Person Does What they're Told Until Death
or
**Person Dies in a Skydiving Sound Circle **** & Bake Sale**
which story are you going to read?
Now, if you'll excuse me,
I have to make some magic brownies
because I'm late to my skydiving ****** education lesson.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 12:33 PM UTC
Success is a mere construct that is subjectively incompatible with professed spirituality.
Butter may spread with ease on a slice of bread, and it may not.
There is something appealing about the grains of sand which lodge in obscure places.
The texture of nature is truly fraught with the bliss and tragedy of North African mysticism.
Geology may be ancient, but so are the sensual indulgences of Cleopatra.
The construction of wonders remains to be perplexing; and I haven’t cleansed myself in milk.
Cairo is the epitome of occult curiosity where Anubis reigns in contemporary economics.
The All Seeing Eye promises safety at the cost of homage.
Identify yourself. If freedom doesn’t exist,
then why does the abode of the dead eagerly impose determinations?
Fly the flag. God bless America.
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 3:24 PM UTC
This is a memory of the time I first stepped into a plane,
When I took a seat by the window next to the 80-year old man
And as the world got smaller and bigger the only thing that kept me sane
Was that I was a lonesome traveler without a plan.
And all the while my insides churned and the cocktail washed the bile,
The man came out of the cockpit to tell us we’d almost land
In Cairo airport, and I could feel the stream of the Nile
In my lungs, and the smell of the mango in my taste glands,
I twisted in my seat to have a better look
At the sad earth I’d soon call my own,
But my lips deceived and my head shook
For Egypt’s glory furiously shone.
p.t.
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 6:34 PM UTC
His nose was Cairo’s Bent Pyramid or a pair of ergonomic pliers
And his loyalty was a slumped tower of Jenga pieces
And his skin was a film of thick oatmeal or cream of mushroom soup, coating the bottom of an untouched ***
His teeth, little tombstones sinking into the earth.
His logic was a pair of safety scissors chewing through corrugated fiberboard
And his insults were sharp staccatos
And his humor was a steeped tea bag or curdled milk
And his laughter was a Singer sewing machine choking on tangled thread.
His eyebrows were gargoyle wings
And his hair, a bushel of dry bear grass
He sang, and it was cough syrup
And his beard was a soiled litter box.
His fingers, dried seaweed
And the palms of his hands were month old dish sponges.
His spine was a curved dipper gourd rotting in the sun
His grin was a snagged zipper
And his temperament pad-less brakes or a wasp in September
And his kisses were apple cider vinegar and radishes
And his eyes were two bottomless stone wells, foaming with moss.
His gait was a vulture scrutinizing its prey.
His chest was the backside of a dung beetle.
His insight was a cataract ridden car headlight lost in a curtain of fog
And his knees were skulls
And his touch was a snug pressure cuff
And his compassion was a guillotine
And the last time we spoke, it was crucifixion.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 9:09 PM UTC
How shall I know, unless I go
To Cairo and Cathay,
Whether or not this blessed spot
Is blest in every way?
Now it may be, the flower for me
Is this beneath my nose;
How shall I tell, unless I smell
The Carthaginian rose?
The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here,—but oh, my dear
If I should ever travel!
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I was having a cigarette
On top of a ziggurat
When I asked the Sphinx
To say what he thinks.
He said I’d know what he did
If I were in the pyramid.
But instead I had got
Myself on a ziggurat
So, he couldn’t say what
He truly thought he thought.
Then the Sphinx said to me
There will be lots of mystery
And I am certainly not joking
But you must give up smoking.
Because an important answer
Is that ziggurats cause cancer.
I don’t believe that is so.
I feel I must let you know
That there isn’t a chance
I mean, look how you dance
With your body all flat
In those tall pointy hats
Your elbows look broken
So, I know you are joking
And making an ancient pun,
You are just having fun
With a modern American.
I will do whatever I can
To try to catch the basic gist
Of whatever I have missed.
Then uttered the Sphinx
You logic is missing some links.
I’m older than the pyramids
And you are all just kids.
Now you know what the Sphinx thinks.
May 11, 2016
May 11, 2016 at 8:01 PM UTC
This man I don't know
stopped me in a room full of paintings,
asked me if I knew that
Helonias was having an ******
as she clutched the head
of John the Baptist
and pierced the tongue
that spoke against her-
I had always thought
the woman was mourning.
Her face seemed contorted
in statuesque grief,
but, no -
She was *******
as she mutilated
the first cousin of Christ.
How, strange, how brutal
a thing to know.
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 6:45 PM UTC
THE FINE cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt,
Something Sinbad, the sailor, took away from robbers,
Something a traveler with plenty of money might pick up
And bring home and stick on the walls and say:
"There's a little thing made a hit with me
When I was in Cairo-I think I must see Cairo again some day."
So there are cornice manufacturers, chewing gum kings,
Young Napoleons who corner eggs or corner cheese,
Phenoms looking for more worlds to corner,
And still other phenoms who lard themselves in
And make a killing in steel, copper, permanganese,
And they say to random friends in for a call:
"Have you had a look at my wife? Here she is.
Haven't I got her dolled up for fair?"
O-ee! the fine cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt.
1.6k
alt. i.e.:
never give a monotheism to
the egyptians -
those ******* pseudo Nubian
camel herders know
jack-shit about
the value of encoding
sounds (can't match the mandarin,
their pictographic
became extinct like
the neanderthals) - or to put it
for a milder palette: here's
Ra's rhubarb... and here's
Gengen-Wer... now
match-up the rhino horn
to the donkey's tail
and the elephants trunk
with five blindfolded men...
they should be happy to have
a logic named after them,
happily dancing into Egyptology...
you get the picture,
i know the Mamluks defeated
the stinking horde of Genghis...
but i'd hardly think it necessary
to export Islam into africa to
get some sense on the matter -
look what happened when
christianity was exported from
egypt (the nag hammadi library
found by a shepherd in Osama's caves);
exporting Islam into north Africa
and hence further west
created the Shiah schism where
Islam belonged (in the east);
beware the setting sun;
believe me, it's personal, i'm not
******* on or burning flags
for the Cairo taxi driver to mind...
this is bedroom secrets' anathema.
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 8:18 PM UTC
I thought it would be more romantic than this.
I thought it would strangle me with its strangeness
Walk up to me with a sword in its oriental mouth
And bump into me,
Jolting me out of my occidental seat into the stinking dust of the gutters.
I thought the Mohammed Ali mosque would wrestle me to the ground with its shocking bare immenseness.
I thought my nostrils would burn with the assault of unnamed spice.
I thought my ears would crumble with the muezzins call at noon,
When all the dogs in Cairo enter a canine Koran reading contest.
I thought the pyramids would crush me with too much history and indifference
I thought the city of the dead would turn my gut over in its emptiness and blank windows
I thought the Nile would bewitch me and turn my blue blazer to Joseph’s coat
I thought Tuten Kamens chariot would run over me
I thought so much and I thought so much
That it brought me here where I would not be except for Cairo
For Cairo was a poetic enema
And purged some foolishness from me.
She lightened my load
And with her sister Bombay
Will always be on my cerebral medicine shelf
To take in case of cabin fever.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 12:55 AM UTC
After, a long drawn out burning kiss
that opened a never healing wound
she leaves for the secret rendezvous
in a verdant oasis in a distant desert.
He didn't hear about her even after
light years, remembrance of that
kept on haunting him, for reasons
he wanted to find, he burned and burned.
On a full moon night after million years,
searching in the desert, long hours
sweating and tired like a haunted animal
he found a magnificent Spinx,felt connected
fell for that feminine allure, curved hips
hypnotic eyes of a hermaphrodite,swell of *******
that illogically prompted him to caress,
towering high at the end of an oasis,
wasn't it a construct of desire?
he stood, feverishly desiring those pouting lips,
the moment next, missed the one inflicted wound,
in a pit inside forbidden longings erupt
when speaking language of desire, poisoned fruits too
taste dark poetry, nature flows to symmetry
"No man or woman, loved me like that"
a whisper, then a hiss, in passion proclaims
there she was his one time lover, cheat, deserter
of his spirit's mating call, still he isn't free from delusions,
she abandoned him for another, in that too wasn't sure
yet another of her misadventure, does she repent?
"I didn't want to miss you like this" she says
"you mistook that I was in love with her, him or whatever"
entanglements, there were from the word go,
her eyes , he observed were sapphires,
her bleached white bones, were irresistible, totems
he wanted to preserve it in the museum in Cairo
her being grew in to him like an oasis
in a desert, a weary, insane, traveler reaches
just in time for the final peaceful hour before all resolve.
"Are you insane, what makes you do this again" a voice asked,
another million years would pass without any solace,
the sphinx, so magnificent then would be just a sand dune !
They hand in hand, would be walking over it,
that sweet oblivion would remain, birth after birth.
Aug 7, 2014
Aug 7, 2014 at 7:30 AM UTC
For some, certain places
hold a rather mythic oeuvre
in our veins; they are seen as places of magic.
Maybe a cyclist couple
have spent most of their money
on traveling the world for their blog,
their last stop is New York City
so that they may get pictures of themselves
at places like The Brooklyn Bridge, Lady Liberty
& that megalithic skyline reaching the clouds.
Or maybe a foodie from Wisconsin
just wants to try Famous Ben's Pizza on the West Side
because its New York fuckin' New York pizza.
Maybe a doe-eyed screenwriter skips
his flat square suburban town
to sell his words and soul to the sprawling sunny L.A
where dreams are made in pixels.
Maybe some New Age beaded wrist to ankle lady
spent her life savings to jump over the ocean
to visit the ancient pyramids built for a purpose
yet fully known.
Maybe a bearded dude
visits Easter Island to try and understand
the complexities of his ancestors while
soaking in the rich vastness of nature around.
Maybe I used to see places this way. Probably...
But in these places people live!
It's not mythology to them.
Maybe every night a homeless man prays
& begs for food on the late night A-train in NYC.
Maybe a middle-aged fading blonde couple
spend their time in L.A at a health food store
to recoup the savings they lost joining a cult way back when.
Maybe a Swedish teen traverses the trash
and littered-burned streets of Giza everyday
on her way to work
hoping funny looks aren't shot her way
for the way she dresses
or shouted at by bearded Salafi men.
Maybe a rare species of bug is unknowingly stepped on
in Easter Island.
Today, i see magic in getting lost on the NYC subway.
I found magic mythology on the beaches of Dahab,
80 miles away from Cairo.
I see magic in the mythologies,
while others live it,
the daily grind.
It's all around if you know where to look.
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 11:46 AM UTC