They both ordered eggs and coffee.
For her, two sunny side up,
and a large coffee with cream and sugar.
For him, one, his coffee black.

“Only here can a factory worker
become a governor,” she said.
“And a girl from the projects
an astronaut,” she added.

“The way I see it,” he objected,
“one loser somehow makes it,
and we all have to live with false hope.”
They didn’t talk for the rest of breakfast.

Violins and oak trees remind me
of the confidence of French women.

The gaze is sharp, the air crisp,
and breast size is not a measure of sensuality.

Taste bears witness, depth remains variable,
and intimidation is the common currency.

To make a point, to take an intellectual stance,
is part of the shared social contract.

National politics and bedroom dullness
flow together in conversations at dinner tables.

Joie de vivre est national.

Cinnamon, chicken, couscous, chickpeas, raisins.
Steam greets your face. First warmth, then heat.
An aura–rich of mixed flavors.

My earliest memory of this dish may be from age seven.
At home, my father cooked. My mother did everything else.
Couscous at lunch is a comfort, a trip into memory.

Cabbage stands high like a mountain guarding its people.
The round head cut into four, served in triumph.
Zucchini, the green, elongated tongue of many love affairs.

It touches your lips with careful heat, tightens the throat.
The heat is locked inside with passion like a jailer
watching over a ruthless criminal.

Carrots beg to differ–an orange opposition. They accentuate,
add color. Turmeric. Salt. Pepper and twice the ginger.
The secret ingredient is not my father’s gifted hands,

nor his lucky touch in delivering flavor. It is olive oil,
which turns the ordinary into a giant by lending character.
Thirty-five years later, I stand in the kitchen recalling

a ritual I watched almost every week in winter. As a father,
I am tormented by a heavy legacy, eager to please my son,
my guests. I fill the neighborhood with a magical smell

that makes even the most disciplined stomach roar.
My son will still feast on couscous for a while. Then dismiss it
for years, only to return to it with a longing urgency.

Maybe with intellect to support his quest. On a good day of health,
fresh mood, rain, and to celebrate I will satisfy his request.
I hope he remembers his mother preferred hers with tomatoes,

potatoes, pumpkin, and swore her favorite was served
with fish instead. He knows the act by heart. A part of his past.
The joy of preparing and serving couscous.

I bet he would happily step into my role preparing the heavenly dish.

Eyes gleaming, heart bright,
we hope for better days.
The smile of a child!
We welcome the rain and snow,
embrace light.

The cold can’t deter us.
The dark past is behind us.
We step into the future

where dreams
can fly. Hope takes root.
We dance to eternal music.
Echoed by leaves, laughter, travelers,
teapots, and powered by women’s hearts.

Early spring spreads into our heads,
lively, refreshing.
Softness settles back in.
Our first steps are delicate.
Our drinks are delicious.
Our thoughts are ambitious.

Magic fountains. Braised ducks.
Exotic baths. Cotton beds.
Feathers suspended midair.
Rose petals sparkle.
Cheerful whispers.
Wandering promises.
Attraction greets us.
Let us meet at a desired destination.

It is lonely
and the sobering confusion
looms and suffocates
any thread of reasoning
I cling onto to make sense
of a world in chaos.

I’m dizzy.
To cope, to understand,
to explain, to clarify is beyond
the realm of an experience still
forming, most likely to morph
into monstrous hatred.

Entrenched in the land of freedom,
ideas and feelings are enraged.
Hollowed almost violently,
mired in events
bigger than self.

Uneasy and depressed.
Not having an answer to
a world; thirsty. Filled
with torrents of questions
in real-time.

I need to bury myself
in a novel. Be lost in its alleys.
Pausing now and then to enjoy the view.
An elastic sentence, metamorphic.
Opening up new angles. To let the light in.

Nowhere to hide. No refuge, no excuse.
The benefit of doubt is bankrupted.
I was born to the wrong clan, ideology.
Facing the world is deadly.
Living as a coward prolongs hell.

The only option is
to shut up and hope for new winds.

Balancing the bills keeps us distracted.
The job keeps us occupied.

Where it matters the most, I have hope.
The elites may
understand complexities.
but it is the daily, the small talk, that exhausts.
Eventually crushing the dream to belong.

If you could briefly hold my hand,
lead me to the gardens,
I will follow: steady, incremental,
like the wind gust before landfall.

To create a space to breathe,
I rely on beauty.
Free me from the forms.
And toss out alignment, too.
Music stays like a drowning man
clutching a rope.

Loneliness is prolonged
and acceptance seems random.
Granted by a nod from the tribe’s chiefs
or a lucky encounter at a bar, downtown,
with a conflicted, vexed beauty
angry at her boyfriend
over a heated debate
about the merits of a sentence
a famous critic had uttered.

I gather pictures of women
who look like you.
Your eyes glow, sing,
and their light is cozy.
But it’s not your eyes
I am after. Nor your lips.
Body nor mind. But
your presence, happiness,
solitude, anger, pride,
and above all your rare and short stays.

Daylight is sometimes majestic.
Capturing it can be deadly.

Even when a critic tears
poems to pieces and feeds them to a shredder,
the poems are better off.
He might have been enraged,
but he cared.

The windows don’t know how to deceive.
The rain rarely discriminates.
When it floods, water can’t be discreet.

Sweet secrets told to you atop
the mountains, in the rain,
on a shaky ride down at dark,
with zero visibility,
will evaporate like fog
by the time you hit the valley.

Poets whisper to the sun,
flirt with the dawn, cry with the poor,
uproot trees, set fires for long nights.
They befriend the sulfurous moon.

Despite hope’s illusion
to be barely alive,
it was dead at birth!

My desire for you is
poisonous, spills over.
If I were to hold your breasts
I may faint
but I know I won’t be awed
the next time.
I would rather obsess about your absence!

My passion is rich, warm as your skin,
flies high with eagles and runs
with hungry cheetahs.
The weight of a child’s joy
on his father’s heart.