LABOR IN THE FUTURE
Continual production
at the off-spring factory
depends on joyful toil
as per union contract.
THE LAMENT OF AN OCTOGENARIAN LIBRARIAN
The ears of gray age
are evergreen
to flattering
young lips.
Wrinkled fingers page
through libraries
of memory
for quips
and smart repartee,
but arthritis
turns books to dust
and bugs.
The passage of days
makes men flaccid
and takes acid
to love.
EIGHT THESES
01.Though may flies,
we measure our lives
in terms of many eons
02.Love is equal to hate
and both can be misplaced
03.We jackknife ourselves before a cross,
a crescent, a star, a lotus,
04.We walk our lives on that high wire
we stretched between the mountains
05. Reason is trumped by belief
and faith may be deceived
06.Since we invented sin,
then we must devise synagogue
07.On one side the fountain,
on one side the fire
08.Devotion to the mosque
won't delay the mausoleum
BECOMING A POET
I never learned to talk,
knew it from within;
didn’t come by the laws
of any alphabet
but stole them from the din
of fortune’s graduates.
The body drives the mind.
My throat knew how to sing
before it learned to rhyme.
Until my eyes could read
I thought that I could think.
And then, I learned to weep.
QUBBA AL-TURBA AL-SULTANIYYAAnd Other Intimate Architecture
There was a trivial citadel
that existed to impede access
to your perfumed garden paradise.
And you were its timid sentinel.
I was just a dutiful student
who honored all my obligations
and practiced my prayers and prostrations
with you, my own beautiful student.
My fingers worshiped at the twin domes
that heaven your naked marble mosque.
The minarets misted in the dusk
and we infidels were left alone
to prove the functions of 2 in math.
That exercise exhausted our thoughts
such that we taliban soon forgot
the rehearsed sureh of The Straight Path.
We had one last equation to solve--
my fixed ambition was to conquer
your famed fragile but stubborn structure,
penetrate its crenellated walls.
Our algebra engineered a bridge,
and it carried me over the edge.
