5.30.11: E 88th St. btwn. 1st and 2nd

Crickets and cicadas
buzz in fuzzy yellow sun
Flowers sweat and wither in the hazy Summer noon.

5.31.11: E88th St.

Barefoot on a six-p.m. sidewalk
The heat of Summer's day hovers 30 floors above.
around me
fat mosquitoes circle
but do not bite.

5/25/11

The neighbors are fighting again;
slammed next doors shake our bedroom walls.

CPW@86th St.: C train platform

Uptown bound
ground above me quakes
On the DT tracks, a woman’s hat.

Big Bang

Where is our big bang?
Where is the creative chaos who’s
cunt will bear our true brave new world?
Bogged down in the racket of a
hundred million iPhones
Lost
in the pages
of Facebook

i
am not a Phone
a Mac
or a PC

My face
may be a book,
but for my status
you’ll have to ask me

Hey
Step away from that screen
Look up
The world is burning!
Chagall’s horse has
long since shat out
Nero's violin
but just for us
they cleaned it off
electrified it
and plugged us in
and noone has noticed
the bitter stench
of our collective burning
ever since

Jerusalem is Beige at Noon, and at Sunset, Gold

Jerusalem is
beige at noon, and at
sunset, gold.

But for
mattresses laid out on
flat summer roofs
sheets,jeans and washrags flapping on
laundry lines
blue and white flags or
“HA'AM IM HAGOLAN” banners
hanging from open windows or
draping from balcony railings
_____________________(for whom?)
Jerusalem is
beige at noon, and at
sunset, gold.

But for
souvenirs heap'd up on sagging card tables or
hanging from walls in the tunnel like shuk-
_____________________Jewellry, and sandals,
_____________________narghilla and t-shirts
But for
wind tossed trash dancing
down three-o-clock-alleyways, &
cats who dart out from
cool parked car shade

But for the
long and slowly stretching
dark shadows of inevitability,
Jerusalem is
beige at noon, and at
sunset, gold.




_________________ha'am im hagolan - "the people are with the Golan"
_________________shuk- open air market place heavily frequented by tourists
_________________narghila- hookah

Shoko beSakit

She’s going to Jerusalem she says,
next month, end of June.
“Bring me a shoko besakit” I say,
knowing she’ll never get it through.
Inevitably, the bag would explode,
_______dousing
underwear and t-shirts in chocolate milk.
Plus, a Palestinian, she’d
never get it through customs,
a matter of grave national security! So
she suggests instead, she’ll enjoy one for me
there, snipping off the corner of the
baggie with her teeth, sipping
cold chocolate milk in the
Yerushalmi sun⎯
maybe in Independence Park. Finally, I say,
“Don’t forget the lachmaniyah.”

______________shoko besakit – chocolate milk sold in a sealed plastic bag
______________Yerushalmi – pertaining to Jerusalem
______________lachmaniyah – a roll, often eaten with shoko basakit

Girl

Seen from the bus
whilst at the bus stop
Sixty Second Street
through opened back doors
across busy sidewalk
girl sitting in Starbuck’s
window papercup coffee
looking out at me
Now the doors close
but the gaze isn't broken
though behind two sets of windows
she’s a galaxy away.