She got in a car with him.

She was one woman, who
often replaced the apple with a dick,
and took pleasure in it like sin.

Asked him, “is your cum toxic?
I hear your pregnant women get nauseous often.”

She got close enough to catch his scent.
Noticed, men’s cologne smells like sex,
And wondered if its made that way
because men hesitate to spend on anything else.

He pushed his way up her shaved pussy,
And it burnt.

Called her Mamma,
as he urgently dug his way back into a womb.
His sweated face almost resembled a babe in tantrum-mode,
while he realized he is still an infant,
but nothing but a fringe fits anymore.

He came inside her,
like she was a house.
Never rung the door bell, claiming he did not know where it was.
But his wife had told him a thousand times
That it was right at her clitoris.

She had collapsed in a puddle of her puke in a public bathroom a few days afterwards.
The pregnancy test showed a plus sign.
She figured she was positive…

Happily pregnant with his twins,
Thought of naming one
“Garbage”,
in honor of a white trash heritage.
And the other

“Aids”,
who would get the best of both worlds –
A name that meant relief,
but when capitalized implied death. She thought it was deep,
so he’s the one she decided to keep.
Rest assured, death does brings relief to some.

She finally decided to dispose of the life the man had disposed inside of her.
Garbage cried for his Momma as the trashcan cradled him.
He cried loud, but with no sign of arms,
he grew quiet

and died.

She walked into the dark.
I had found her,
hitchhiking her way back to the motel,
munching on an apple,
headed back to where it had all begun.

Its residents hurried out of houses in glamorous colors,
shades,
suites,
dresses
and hair-does
to clubs, street corners, bars and pubs.

The city knew it had to make a noise.
It had to make a beat -
For the baby making,
For the booty shaking,
For Mr. Duncan, the drunkard on Orchard and Stanton, who dances out of his shoes,
For my blues.

As for the buildings on the hill,
you could see that the night had transformed dicks into light switches
Turned on and back off.
The blinking of bedrooms was proof of the heaving ecstasy that the sun had caused.

And so in the dim of this world,
On his balcony, a woman walked up to him.
Composing Jazz with her bare feet,
like a gypsy or my midnight heartache.
That night was a special one,
because there was no weight in this world but a see-through shirt on her back.

He pulled her in.
she swayed her low pitch against his upbeat,
Asked him to find his grip on her tempo.
She said, “tonight,
we should dance our cracked hearts into glory”.
He had nothing but memories of Nina Simone from the day before
and black coffee in his stomach,
Hell, he wanted to dance…
Man to woman,
because truth be told
no one but Gaye fans know how to put a quivering end to a debaucherous night behind the grapevine.

And so they danced themselves into dirt.

but there was time still…

There was time to get pealed, naked and sweet.
That night between the sheets,
he took her B sharps into his mouth like two pomegranates.

He told her “this is the end of Stevie Wonder,
because I might run my lips down your harmonica
But today we aint calling to say we love one another.”

She whispered to him in quavers;
“work your grandfather clock pendulum”
he said, “ I want my hands on your hourglass.
Lay your soul between my guitar strings,
And lets make something more everlasting than sweat.”

…And as the last orgasmic sand grain slipped through her frames
they ended,
intertwined on the cold floor like a treble clef.

Weird…
I never prayed for a man to leap over me,
Every once in a while,
I like dare myself to feel what it means
to be down-to-earth enough to get stepped on.

Whatever shine a nickel can have
I have downed in one gulp.
Whichever moon I craved
She has grabbed by its hair
And stapled on.

I think I’ve come to know her,
Better than I know myself.

I know
She is a revolutionary.
She wears her past on the dark side of her face
She has beheaded many men.
But made sure she stayed long enough to own their tales.
She has too much Venus specks.
She complains of stomach burns
Too much heat…
The supernova in her blood,
Kept her on the run
Until she got into the habit of stepping out of her footprints
Just for the sake of it.

Today,
I am high.
I live like crescents.
I stay away from falling out of grace
by biting on to the sky, and holding on..

I gurgle whatever darkness is out
Open my mouth just to taste its magnificence.
I’ve tried swallowing the heavens in breaths before
But last night I choked on stardust
in the static moment
following… “I love you”

I waited for the aftertaste of everything
…it wont come to me.

I might sound awkward
But some days…
Even when its undeserved
all anyone needs to be to someone
is something worth looking up to.

Swallowed

a friend in-

To a secret,

black as a Sunday

morning shadow too clean

for its own skin. I had told

someone I’m in love with I wasn’t

‘man’ enough to be unfaithful. I

was too much of a ‘virgin’ to be trusted.

This is as Palestinian as the intifada,
From Qubbat al-Sakhrah
To Kanisat al-Qiyamah,
Pass by the Wailing Wall,
And shake off the dust,

Will you promise to continue believing in fragile dreams
Even after they tear them down,
Even if it leaves you with nothing but pain,
As much pain as digging up limbs and scraps of flesh from under rubble,
slowly you see it so perfectly resembles someone you love,
And they’ve been missing for so long
Will you promise to choose to live after this?

When their soldiers come marching into this Gaza strip,
Suffocating our melodies into their lethal rhythms
When even this earth starts shaking its hips to their bombs,
a soldiers feet starts stomping the concrete.
Will you belly dance to the beats until he bows down to you

Dance as if to prove to everyone nothing can break you,
let them know our sweat will always be easier to trickle than our blood,
Palestinian woman,
let you shake your hips
remind them of your flesh,
and how mortal it is,
they might have forgotten,

Believe me, only I know the difference between sweat drop and tear,
I see you
Dancing with wet cheeks, but smiling,
Still smiling,
you Arabian Queen
I can feel you breaking,
Remember only I know the difference between shake and tremble,
I promise they think you’re dancing,
But I see you crave life,
..And I wish I knew how to do it like you,

Laugh,
when they tell you our guerrilla fighting men got them thinking we were apes,
they don’t know this is as human as anyone could get,
We fight, because we crave life,

Can you ever crave life,
Like 4 Palestinian children,
Found starving,
Have been holding on to familiar corpses for days,
Cuz only in our deserts does a mother’s flesh freeze,

Crave life,
Like Molotov bombs,
Let that final blaze shine when you break and go.

Look around,
See men strap bombs to their chest as if its Palestine’s life-vest.

Stand as strong as these millennium old olive tree in your back yard,
Prove them wrong
to think ages of hardship can uproot you from your land,

When they point their guns at you
Will you take out your slingshot,
No, dont kneel down
not even to pick up rocks,
see, we are in no need of them
Take Stars of David,
Kiss your pain into that ancient peace sign,
And send it over,
Maybe it’ll hit them…
that this was never what their king had taught them,

Before they pull the trigger,
Will you take your most daring dream,
Pull the elastic of your slingshot far far back,
Aim at the sky’s abdomen,
cross fingers, hope hate does not shoot it down
then just…let go,

Will you watch your mother launch prayers into heaven like homemade rockets,
You hope they don’t shoot them down,
You know this is everything she has to defend herself with
but she
she prays they don’t shoot you down,
You are everything she has left,

Will you take your tongue for a rubber band…
Slingshoot Quran before you fall and hit ground,
Let them hear God speaking in poetry,
One day I will swear to them you are human,
But I don’t know if they’ll even believe me,
Please just continue believing
Believe in life,
Never stop slingshooting
peace.

at mid day, we would write our names on the walls of narrow alleys,
let the sun rays stare at them.
they were everything we could call ours.

Besides…
We were just like our countries,
Arab, and messy.
our kings treated world maps as if they were high school bathroom stalls,
signed I was once here Mr.
As if the world ever gave a shit.

well, unlike our kings,
we were no fools.
we wrote the names and then laughed at ourselves.
“unapproved sovereignty”
we hid under our beds waiting to get caught by the parents.
like Saddam hiding underground waiting to get caught by America
it was only a matter of time.
but we…
we laughed,
and I wished the world would for once take notice of something beautiful before its gone.

Because after that mid-march night they held him down.
too much of a coward I watched from a distance,

Never seen him this fragile,
look,
never this weak,
cuz this time he wasnt stomping with his feet scaring the kids around,
his face was pressed against the concrete,
we was bent down.
arms and legs spread apart like a 9/11 airplane crashed on ground.

One older man had his pants down,
and the others were keeping the boy in place.

I was only a child but old enough to know
This isn’t how it should go,

Men would push in and out in the wrong places,
and they would alternate on him,

his screams might’ve been pleas
I dont know,
they were hesitant, they would break,
and then sound.

I hear him break under their weight,
If you were standing in my shoes, maybe you would’ve swallowed the silence too,
But maybe not, maybe you would’ve joined them,

They were done with him now,
his crevices filled with more semen than they could hold so it overflowed,
promising no children,
no legacies of whatever this is.

please understand we used to walk around with lollipop rings on our left hands.
I guess we were kids
naïve enough to think the world ever owed us something.
Maybe a dream, or a future,
After all, we were fools to think the world ever took notice.

They walked out on him,
one by one,
no one looked behind.
he stayed laying on his belly for a while
mind conflicted,
then he stood up and i wished he didnt
eyes pouring.
He’s naked
rectum burning,
and blood barely dripping down his thighs…

tell me what is there for us to love now,
we were curious kids, but we never wanted to know
we were as fragile as this,

left behind with
only disgust,
only nausea,
only stench of blood and sweat,
and semen
and wrong sex,

he was suicidal,
like civil wars raging within his skull’s confines.

untaught how to love,
we were beasts
no longer children
after this

not knowing what to expect from anyone around,
all we wanted is that they keep their fucking hands off us.

he survived that night, then chose to live though the ones after it,
only to make it to the day when he can look you in the eye
and tell you I was once here Mr.
like a name on the wall of a high school bathroom
begging you to take notice.
But on world maps he would always sign his name
Iraq.

see its you who’s doing it…
raping him.
see people and countries are the same thing,
he’s bent down,
and he has blood barely just barely dripping down his thighs.

…you’re pulling out now…
..walking away.