SOUK AD-DAHAB
Where are the warblers of Ghaza?
Now silence is your new ghazal.
Your boats and bathers have no coast.
Iron Stings are your only shells.
Your olive groves are uprooted.
Jackals disfigure your gazelles.
Muhammad’s forebear and St. George
and your children share the same tel.
What happened to your Gold Market?
Once it was filled with syllables
of lovers amnd mothers-in-law,
but now with ancient ones. They sell
their heirlooms, memories, and pasts.
They need cash to survive in Hell.
0, your warblers and your sunbirds
have swallowed all your lost ghazals.
AGAINS
onces once agains
the cradle’s always in the grave
eternities forever themselves
draw me, a circle, as I live
seasons circulate
my beginning marks my end
waves clockwork their way
my end marks my beginning
and night noons anew
period my center when I die
trees seed trees leave trees tree
visualize thus my constant eye
new monday becomes a tuesday again
YES, I HAVE BEEN TO INDIA
Yes, I have been to India. To that crazyquilt sari of piecemeal continua. This corner of culture remnant here supraimposed with that antic pocket there — all portions piled on, fu/ture/past juxtaposed and jangled, the
Mangled jazz of sitar/synth. In all this harem, whose hair is being plucked?
Yes I have been to India. Traced the serial Gandhicide graffiti through each election warren and heard the turbaned urban politicos scrawl their sloganscreed upon eager puppetdom. And thus learned that here, like home, the public part of man is apportioned mainly between play and display — performance shivas into form.
Yes I have been to India. Aboard a portable bedlam chugging from the station, a neverend circus of practiced infant beggary — already, no gesture out of place, a persistent pantomime of persuasion and despair (yet my only alms a stone stare and stubborn refusal to be moved, and my sad wonderment athow the heart can harden so, and how soon). Meanwhile, the Hooghly dawn unfolds in pinks and peach….
And all emerges from India. And all merges there — pedestrians,pushcarts,palanquins,pigs pressed together on the pavement with the trucks, trikes, bikes, and buses — like the constant blendings of ancient gods and newer fads. The whole universe, in India, remains submerged except for heat and mosquitoes.
DECLARATION MANIFESTO PALlMPSEST
When: in the course of human events
when: in the course of development —
it becomes necessary, for One People
(class distinctions have disappeared
and all production) has been concentrated
to dissolve the political bonds in the HANDS
which have connected them with another
of a vast association and to assume
(of the Whole Nation) the public Power
among the Powers (of the earth)
will lose its political character
the separate and equal station
to which the laws — political Power —
of nature properly so called (and of nature’s
God is merely thr organized power)
entitle them of One Class, a decent respect
(for the opinions of mankind)
for opposing another Requires
if the proletariat (during its Contest
with the bourgeoisie) is Compelled
that they should declare by the Force
of circumstances the causes, to organize
itself (as a class) which Impel it
(by means of a revolution):
it makes itself, them, to
Separation.
We, the ruling class, HOLD these and,
as such, truth-to-be, self-evident:
That, All Men sweeps away,
by Force are created,
equal the old conditions of production —
That: they are Endowed. Then, it will,
along with these conditions,
by their creator, have Swept Away
(with certain unalienable rights the conditions) —
That: among these are:
life for the existence,
Liberty
and the pursuit of class Antagonisms )
of happiness —
That: to secure these rights,
And of the classes generally,
goverrnments are instituted
(among men) and will thereby
have abolished its own Supremacy,
deriving (their “just” Powers
from the consent (as a class
of the governed) —
That: whenever in place of the old
(bourgeois society)
any form of government becomes
(with its classes, and Destructive of these ends
and class Antagonisms),
it is the right of the People
to Alter — or — to Abolish.
We shall HAVE it
(an association) and —
to Institute new government
in which the free development
(laying its foundation of each
on such principles)
is the condition foir free development —
and organizing its Powers
(in such form as to them shall seem
of all most likely)
to Effect their safety and
happiness (prudence), indeed,
will DICTATE.
DEIGN NOT TO NAME
Unanonymous assassin
spots his mark
marks his hit
his king his icon his president
hits his mark
marks his spot
Dealey Ford’s Dakota the Lorraine
–Onan animates his action
…