Oasis

I wandered down a busy street looking for something to eat,
and by the street corner I found a woman in a booth serving shish kebabs.
She wore a shawl and I was curious
"Where are you from?"
She told me "Egypt" and smiled
I asked her if it's always hot over there and she could only
repeat her first answer and nod.
She cooked for me like I was one of her children,
ignoring the greasy sweat on her high cheekbones
that were round like empty bowls.
Her smile stood out to me, not because of the gaps between her teeth,
but because her smile erased the parts of her that we would name ugly.
And I saw the spirit inside her revive her body and repaint it
with tear drops and sandalwood incense,
so within these strokes appear a Mona Lisa,
wearing a sapphire cloak, her face like amber stained glass
handing me the juiciest chicken kebab I've ever tasted.
I thank her with the widest smile in years
and leave her to greet her next customer with her gapped teeth.
She occasionally wipes the Nile rivers off of her eyebrows with
her shawl, black like a rosetta stone of
maternal love decipherable by those who care
to give love in return.

Nectar and Ambrosia

We witlessly drink beer as if it
makes our bones stronger.
Perhaps it quenches our wish to one
day drink gold and become Greek gods,
so that when I finish downing this cup of riches,
I am impervious to any amount of
physical or emotional harm.
I can also sharpshoot this ball into your cup of
fanciful grudges,
regardless of where you strategically place it.

Sunburst

Something draws your gaze
Into the brushstrokes of this exotic face
Like it was parchment
And my features were mystifying to look at
Like ancient symbols
Whispered in forgotten library sections
Storing books whose pages
Have not tasted the sweetness of sunstruck
Autumn air and can barely breath
Without asthmatic strain.
And when you see these pupils,
You see the brittle bindings and
Little tying together of the spines
Of Old French romances
And Sanskrit love lyrics
That garner their golden letters
For one last sunburst through the pores of my smirk.

And we haven't even spoken yet.

This Ledge Here

I know of a humble little ledge
That overlooks the wet walkways
Past the pile of bricks and glass beneath my feet
Beyond the streets and the concrete
Beyond mp3s and wifi connections
And into the distant, lampless fields

I sometimes lay on this quiet ledge

If you're a person like me,
Then hearing nothing but the sound of your own breathe
Is a pacifying serenade you can almost slow-dance to
If you are curious like I am
Then you've stared up at the ceiling in your bedroom long enough
That things start to vaporize in the glitches of your optic nerves
If you behave like I do,
Then you have stolen a gaze at the sun,
Ignoring the pain to see a curdling circle
Of boiling rays that vary in shades like a sonogram

If you're a person like me
Then
1. One congrats weirdo
2. Just kidding
3. This ledge was meant for you, because you and me,
we would get along well

On This ledge right here I lay-
The air is cool as I lay flat along the border of
A 30 foot drop

My left knee points towards a Gemini Star
As nighttime queries beg to be quelled
By a sonorous lullaby
So I ask the black sky if he knows any good ones
...And I, take his silence as a no

For I can do nothing,
But hear the voice
Of an old and distant Nana, my Gramma.

Her feeble eyelids await their deadline,
When her soul will wriggle its way out of her nostrils
But for now they are packed with plastic tubes.
I look back and see miles of my materialistic homeland
Where life is less coveted than youth,
And I know,
That many do not deserve to have
What they think matters most

I know God won’t instantly make things fair
But I do ask him again
If he can spare a little comfort
And I hear a voice,

“You are not meant to live in this world,
You are meant to inhabit this universe`
So walk like gravity does not define you,
Like the inertia between your dream-like musings
And free flowing crystalline atoms
Is amassed by the square of your potential to grow

Every single one of you
Has a name transcribed in the highest of heavens into calligraphic star clusters

So live like the stars are spotlights crowded to get a good look at you
Like your tomorrows are
Shaped by the ethereal bonds between your heart, cerebrum and soul
Because they are”

Over this ledge I peer, well comforted
The light on the wall below me illuminates countless names
The marks of self-aware wanderers
Who touch their essences into
A wall of bumps and crevasses

I realized that every cigarette I've ever had
Has merely gotten in the way.

I grab the moon with the space between my fingers,
Admiring this ball of glow once more
This is why people visit this ledge
To be with no one but the cosmos, and the names

As my tribute to this concrete ledge that sustains me
I find something sharp (to write with, of course)
I find a blank space
And I voice my mark in stone

Everything I Need to Know about Sex is in Rock and Roll

My father once said to me, "Son, watch Jim Morrison purse his lips,
With a sliver of breath between him and the microphone head
Watch him gently kiss the notes into its every orifice
Now he rarely opens up his eyes, because he can't help
But see through women's clothing
Watch him clutch the curls of the mic chord like lady locks
Watch the mic stand drips with skin juices
As he wraps his hands around her neck
Watch his loins sweep her off her dome-shaped base
When he slowly swings his left knee around her slim body
Watch as the multitudes shake their tails to the rhythm
Of Jim Morrison rocking the mic
Rocking, rock hard
That, my son, is how you treat a woman"

They call it devil's music
But Lord knows I'm no Voodoo Child like Jimi Hendrix
I am but an overflowing cup of hormones
A puddle of marrow and a trellis of veins
A puppet of bones wrapped in dust
Jamming to the pulling and twisting of guitar strings
If sex is a song then it was written by the first man,
Passed down by songsmiths, and experienced by posterity
If sex is a dance then I only know how to let my limbs
Move with the sonic waves of eroticism that pulse through me
Because up to this point, my ability to rock
Has been mostly self-taught, fine-tuned and furnished,
Ready for the next foxy lady to emerge from a purplish haze


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image credit http://flyingplasticmonkeys.blogspot.com