Fear No.1

One day I will understand
that straight lines are necessary,
but optimism will quiet me
and I will conclude: this is not enough!
I will start burrowing in the garbage to become surer of my belief,
and right there I will find my childhood
and, overwhelmed with hope for despair,
Mania Grandioso will take me to the eighth floor,
where a blue-eyed Angel will make me feel deeply
the existence of The Eighth Day.

Fear No.2

Standing on one leg,
until I resemble my recognition, (more…)

Afar, the large polite world of language
here, the wide serenity of things
in the ocean’s bottom where it lives
how could it be considered otherwise?
In this art in which it exalts
if the first to pick up the chisel
united in words the brilliance of the humble color
the trace of what was seen the wide serenity of things
one half is night the other half is deception (more…)

Today begins
light with

sun-scraped
skies swim

in the
distance belowing

over greens
and the

golden mist (more…)

You are far away
Amid all the splendors of Sakura
And murmurs of colossal Spring;
Merging hopes in azurine sky
With the vast unseen meadows.

I can hear the whispers
Touching Toronto skyline
Saving last dews at the gates of dawn. (more…)

I’m out on the sidewalk in front of the Turkish vegetable market in the Susannenstrasse in Hamburg, bending over for a closer look at a crate of figs. It’s mid-January, late afternoon, cold and gray. In another hour it will be dark. The figs are green and purple and coated with a fine gray fuzz. It’s the fine gray fuzz that has my attention, conveying as it does a climate much more benign than Hamburg, Germany, now deep in the throes of winter. The fuzz looks incredibly soft and fragile, summery and gentle, and above all, transitory. It’s more like a state of mind than a state of being.

Being. That’s what I’m thinking about as I go inside to pay for the eggplants, shitake mushrooms, red chilies and figs that I’ve chosen. Being as a context in which everything is located, be it forever or even for a while. The young Turkish girl at the cash register is beautiful. Beautiful enough to be a model, or a movie star, or a pop star. But she’s just the cashier in a Turkish vegetable market where I happen to be shopping and that makes her all the more beautiful.

Beauty and fig-fuzz. That’s what I’m thinking about as I step outside and turn up the Susannenstrasse, flipping up my collar against an icy wind that must be blowing down the Elbe from somewhere in the frosty northeast. Beauty and fig-fuzz. Two conceptsóone abstract, one concreteóbut both ultimately finite. And it’s the finite that’s doomed to disappear, while the infinite neither comes nor goes. (more…)

1.

Like grandma’s quilt-
patches of colors on the
hillside.

Smell of toasted leaves
at my backyard-
lingers.

Talking to his self
on his dining table-
squirrel. (more…)

Out.

Bolt the door
Disconnect the doorbell
Cut the phone & modem line
Nail the letterbox shut
Blackout the windows
Detach the antennae

The Bin 2.

Vacant food
Great view of trees
clouds above valley
747’s turning
Conspiring partnership
Chin up= advice (more…)

Long white robes
sarees, shalwars
steaming Indian food
incense, flowers
heavily perfumed roses
white bindis
between eyes
blue, green or gray
tears
glistening or
coursing down
music
dulcet, sweet, soft
reaching high (more…)

fit my clothes
if you would fit my clothes
and take on a different
face
would we be more the same
when i was smiling too?

Mona inhaled the fairly fresh crisp air as she took big strides. She had taken up walking lately as one of her favorite pastimes. It was not that she enjoyed the physical exercise even though she did immensely, but her solitary walks and ramblings had become a metaphor for something else, for her need to “get out”, her way of coping with the unbearable bouts of restlessness that visited her. Walking helped vent her frustration, her disappointment at the way life had turned out, at how nothing had lived up to her illusory expectations, a viable even if a temporary release from the shackles and limitations that she felt encumbered her on a daily basis. Focusing on her feet, she often felt that she was trying to out stride time and place, at the same time trying to incorporate them within her whole being. What was she running away from? However far she walked she seemed always to return to the same place as if she were on a treadmill, walking on the spot. Mona shuddered as she zipped up her jacket feeling a strong gust of wind rattle through her; she had crossed over to the Cornice and could now view the sea with all its fury at close range.

There was something so beautiful yet so disconcerting most of the time about Alexandria in the winter. Today, it seemed that the whole of the city had been tinted or veiled with a thin film of murky gray. Mona blinked twice wondering if that grayness was within or without? Looking at where sky met sea, where water embraced air in a foreboding lock, where the ephemeral connected with the eternal, fantasy with reality, the mundane with the surreal …………the distinctive line that separated these two domains was smudged, bleary, making it difficult to discern, making it resemble an expansive grave of uncertainty. (more…)