Category Archives: meta-4

The Original Apple

I met a muse who was born a goddess. She played down her powers until she met me. She served me eternal wine, promised barrels of honey. The original apple, she said, was mislabeled: a classic case of failed marketing. The apple was nothing but the right breast of Eve, a metaphor lost on uncreative men. And no woman cared to explain.

I hope to meet my heroine among the newcomers, before I deplete my energy or worse yet, stay untapped and left to rust. I will find the biggest forest on the planet, set it on fire, and launch my worries and doubts crashing into its center. My heroine is out there, but I’m not sure where, or which country she belongs to, or what century she comes from. What books have her name? Whether the ocean could preserve our fingerprints.

I plant promises for the music to outdo silence, and for love to outshine the sun. If that is not commitment, the sky must be an illusion. The mountains will need to flatten themselves and absorb their dwellers’ meditations.

My heroine is out there and I swear to furnish the night for her. To serve her the spring on the palms of my long arms. With her grace, we will fill the front pages of newspapers, tap into the talisman’s secret channels, and rearrange the letters of alphabets.

My heroine and I will open a school for lovers, and ask them to dress poets in rare silk, or exotic feathers, from obscure islands; urge them to melt the world’s literature and apply its ink to their eyelashes. In the humanities, a new discipline will be inaugurated.

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Beach Town Midwinter

She feels like a beach town midwinter.
The alleys are empty, the streets wet,

and the ocean is left alone. The waves
may be louder, but they yield no interest.

Cold and somber, the beach town can’t be
recognized. Unlike summertime, it is deserted now.

The long nights of winter are a relief, however.
They save face from daylight’s constant humiliation.

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Harvey

A young soldier picnics in the countryside,
searches for butterflies and long-stemmed roses.

Fresh air runs through his rifle. The woman beside him
sports a long skirt and a camera around her neck.

The fields are blunt and honest;
with their secrets extended, their flaws exposed,
they feel intimate.

Here, the birds’ singing and trees’ whistling
are welcoming songs. The winds
in their contradicting directions
don’t disrupt old women’s prayers,
and the laughter of their children.

The soldier and the woman exchange moments of solitude
with their inner worlds. For fear of living on the margins
or rendering their presence obsolete, they open up
through a language marked with loneliness.

The woman thinks of a future
where her own daughter takes the dog for a walk.
The tough questions asked at parent-teacher conferences.
The many long hours
during history classes to sit through.
And the introductions around dinner tables.

What do you do? they will ask.
Their inevitable reply is interesting, no matter her answer.

Except when her listener has a reservoir of emotions,
like someone raised in the countryside,
where dancing was a doctrine,
and connecting with others is a way to draw strength.

Only then she could reach back
to the deep wounds of a past alive.
Although protected, the past is still haunting,
and exhausting to retell.

She devours her listener’s soft touch,
the sincere and passionate gaze.
A heart is opened: tender moments are born.
A shared experience she will revisit often.

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Praising Bureaucrats

The enormity of the tasks never intimidate them,
bureaucrats will keep at a job meticulously
without showing signs of fatigue or boredom.

Indifferent and with the determination
of someone looking to level a mountain
using nothing but an index finger

to pull down one inch of dirt at a time.
To make the mission succeed,
other bureaucrats soon join in.

I have come to appreciate the slow motion
of the bureaucratic train.
Even if it derails, it can still get back on track.

There is wisdom in being slow: ask the turtle
how its shell grew tougher with each slow step it took.
The thickness provided her much desired protection.

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Mustafa, the Gravedigger

Late in the afternoon when the wind picked up, the sky darkened, and people were rushing home. Mustafa was on the field was. He is an Egyptian volunteer translator in Lesbos, turned gravedigger; he rose up to a burning duty: to offer a dignified burial to his fellow brothers in faith. In this foreign land, Mustafa is a student, a migrant who managed to safely cross the cold-hearted Mediterranean to Greece. A case when a student visa offers a safe way out.

After bodies piled on the shores of Greece, Mustafa decided to bury dead refugees, Syrians and others. To honor them and let their beat bodies rest in peace. Today he buried two women and a seven-year-old boy. Laying down the body of a child hits him the hardest. Being the last person to touch this kid’s corpse before trusting him to earth.

After he laid down the boy in his grave, the old Greek lady from the grave next to his greeted him. The child made an effort to introduce himself: Sami is my name, and this is Leila next to me. She is not my mother. Last time I saw my mom was the night the planes bombed Aleppo. She trusted me to her cousin— my aunt. I cried my heart out that night as my mom kissed me and promised to soon join me once we reach Greece. My father was the owner of a successful sweetshop. At school, before the war, my teacher spoke often of a spring— Arab and splendid. I imagined green fields, butterflies, happy children, and everything sweet. I imagined our classroom to have wide windows, big backyard,
and lots of crayons of various colors. I love to draw birds and happy faces.

The men ordered the war: many of us were killed, displaced,
our lives suspended. Nothing has changed then, the woman interrupted. I have lived through two devastating wars.
Futile murder, savage and inhuman; the systematic killing
of innocent people— being Jewish was their only crime. It left permanent stains of shame on our humanity.

In the name of something abstract, people take away the most concrete thing of all: life. In the name of something or the other, our continent killed over sixty million people.

I see you are tired. It must have been a rough trip. Your mom will find you. I know that because mothers keep their promises. My name is Maria and I am pleased to have known you my dear Sami.

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