today is clearly not a beach day because i’m the only person here,
i guess Monday boxed everyone into suits and ties
and the workweek isn’t over
but the earth doesn’t dance to the thumping of their calendar
or bop to the ticking of their mass-produced clocks
it’s only Wednesday because they say it is
and i’d rather be deaf with two left feet
even if it means i’m lonely and the other kids won’t play with me—-
today,
i’ve got my own sandbox
reconstruct memories in hand castles
collect sea shells the shape of nostalgia
swim in my father’s tears and wish he believed in the glory of a high tide
uncrumple my mother’s broken down spine
with seaweed that i stretch to the sky
and my first love is two baby crabs upside down
that look like blood red hearts beating side by side
new and uncertain against grains of flesh
cuz our butterflies haven’t migrated away for the winter yet.

i’ve never needed church or religion, and I’m only 19
but these days I find myself – palms pressed,
knees itching to genuflect, and
wondering if God has gills
if he can carry downpours on his shoulders
swallow the sea and never choke on his own sanity-
i’m wishing for a rainbow sign
but the floods only multiply with age and time
someone up there spits on my white flag and mocks my flailing hands
as if to say i should have learned to swim or pray before Judgment Day.
friends are not fish, after all
and love is not a lighthouse…
so when trust becomes a sinking ship,
i go down with it–
hope can only float so long
until the bubbles burst into
angels’ breath and i’ve just got foam and fantasy left.

i’ve learned to count on nothing
but an unyielding past and my mother’s cracked fingers
but today, i have the beach to cradle me-
i sift through her for olive leaves
the waves tumble like sapphire bass beats
the seagulls…they’re just Miles Davis on a bad day
my footprints Sketch Flamenco in the sand
and the sky looks Kind of Blue
infinite like something i’d jump into
i’ve always wanted to get behind the horizon
see if shit is brighter on the other side
wonder what i’d find if the ocean and the sky
could stop lovin’ just long enough for me
to unseal their lips and jump into that space
once benighted by their kiss.
and i know
it’s only been three minutes
and that’s the third time i’ve used love as a metaphor
to describe things that are so – far – away
but i need to believe it exists somewhere -
so dear beach,
here’s my message in a bottle-
i pray that some people can be mermaids
breathe life into the rest of us
whose lungs may crumble under the brutal tentacles of time,
i pray that little girls can find glass slippers and pearls in your arms,
that i can grow old as your sands and still push the tide from my back
and that tomorrow,
someone else will find this.

But I was just a boy,
Caught playing hookie in one too many science classes
when you were already three grades ahead,
And I was just too good at fakin’ it with the advanced curriculum.

So I never learned that even the sun will burnout sometime,
No longer able to kiss two protons into one helium smile,
She too will die,
A collapsed star,
I never liked how black holes sucked all the light from everything,
I said I’d rather not go out like that,
I think there’s more energy in parting,
It’s best if we go our separate ways,
And you said gladly,
Just give me what’s left of my love back,

But I never realized that breaking hearts is like splitting atoms,
How chain reactions fill chest until it weighs critical mass,
Until ribcage becomes radioactive chamber,
And my heart, a nuclear reactor,
Erupting into the three mile island of my sternum,
This is the stuff bombs are made of,
This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
This is Doomsday,
Screaming “My God what have done” from the Enola Gay, with mushroom clouds in our eyes,
This is fallout:
When the nuclear winter blocks out the sun,
With the ashes of everyone,
because everyone is dead.
Reminds me of times I wondered if you would be with me if I were the last boy left alive.

And it’s a curse to survive,
Radiation’s fried my immune system,
So I’m left defenseless,
To rot in my skin,
The napalm of my bones burning me from the inside,
Only I will know what pain is,
The horror of amputated limbs,
After my family tree returns from war,
And fate hacks off all the branches of our future children,
My genetics feel more like genocide,
And I’m not quite human anymore.

So lets start over,
Bring me back to the Stone Age,
And show me my basic instincts,
Whether cavemen throw rocks at storm clouds to pierce nimbus for sunlight,
Like shooting through fog for the moon,
Like cigarette burns in Brooklyn back alley ways,
Like rockets blossoming in the sky at midnight,
as if we could replant our love with explosives,
Remind me what fire feels like,
Because I’ve forgotten how to glow,

And I’m the only living boy in New York,
And you were more than just another “F” on a science test,
But even Einstein flunked out of chemistry,
And look what he gave us,
Limitless energy and a nuclear holocaust,
So I don’t know what about this project scared me more,
The possibility of success or the chance for failure,
But I’m willing to accept the consequences now,

I know you’re not here tonight,
And I know it’s my fault,

But when all seems lost in this experiment,
Lay by my bed and teach me,
That even uranium, rapidly decaying in half-lives not lived,
Does not die,
It just grows old together.

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.

Its one a.m.
And I should be dreaming of Princeton play calls
But I can’t allow my sight to darken
Because you see I’ve been in a fog
A ghostly daze
Much like your earthquake
That has sent me spiraling
In and out of that lava
That you so eloquently describe
I’ve kept Aphrodite
In my skyline for far too long
And now she’s stealing
My sunshine
Those succulent rays
That used to simmer my skin
Have now caused me
Melanoma
I’ve spent this last year
In a smoke screen
It’s been hard for me to distinguish
Clouds from
Facial features
Let alone
Love
From
Lust
I’ve been in a vegetative state floating through existence
Stepping over my fare share
Of roses
To get to a Daisy
And my love poems
Have been simplified to
“she loves me – she loves me not”
While plucking pedals
From these stems
And what’s more I never
Was really able to see the
Full beauty
Of this Rose
Like the San Francisco fog
Masking the Golden Gate Bridge
Much like your tectonic plates
Were rocked by after shocks
My water logged façade
Was dazed by a tidal wave
A merciless tsunami
That handed me doubt and stole my sight
And not even His palms
Could heal this blind man
Dear Friend,
The bigger they are
The harder they fall
Held true
In this Katrina
But not even
Flower Arrangements
Could be
t-shapen and blood stained
there was no Red Cross
in sight
and now I feel
like a flower gurl
at my own wedding
watching her stilettos
pierce my past
as if they were
meant to be sacrificed
pupils dilated
these headlights
struggle to illuminate
the pavement
they say if you made the bed
then lay in it
well I’m hittin’ pot holes in this road
and it feels like I paved it
I never thought I’d be writing this poem
But it looks like Dipolar Radar
Has once again
Lead this weatherman astray
“Your tropical storm has now been
Elevated to a hurricane”
So I boarded up the windows
And headed for higher ground
In the city
Of 5′10” beauty
Dear Friend,
Well if I’m Jay Gatsby
Then you’re my beam
Of light across
The bay
And she
Well she is
The asthma
Inhibiting my breaststroke
And these last 3 months
Have felt like a 100 meter dash
In the Everglades
Like a tornado twisted
Me like a clever braid
And spit me out onto
That road I paved
Dear Friend,
You see
It’s been awhile
Since I’ve fallen
To my knees
And prayed for sunlight
But our
Photosynthesis
Cannot happen
In its absence
Cause I feel like
Were in a foot race
Around the world
And a lunar eclipse
Just lapped us
So I guess what I’m
Sayin is maybe soon
My foot speed will catch up
And I can play Joshua
And freeze time
Or Hezekiah
And run it backwards
Either way I’ll make up
For lost time that has passed us
Like you said on
Some fairytale tip
When I can be to you
The way I leave this ink to drip

Yours Truly

I smelled my mother on me 9 months of amniotic fluid and wet butterfly wings.
Of prayers scented with morning sickness. My bendy plastic limbs.
Freshly oiled serpentine skin on me. It stung like vinegar.
And the taste of it would become one all too familiar.
The salt from the sea burned eyes that just learned how to blink.
This is Galilee. A smell as welcoming as breaking bread.
An aroma that bore your soul
Up and over its shoulders and taught you how to sail as your breathed.
Then doused by the stench of urine in back alley slums. Stinking slop and horse dung.
Of unleavened bread.
Of Bethlehem.
And all at once I loved and pitied man.

I smelled of wood- of puberty, of freshly squeezed Lebanese cedar with the pulp
still clinging to my fingers.
Knew the brashness of splinters way before they ever broke me.
Tied myself to timber to carry it home and laughed for the irony
I smelled the forest on me.
Of hammer-split silence and cypress that sings as it burns.
My carpenter’s belt next to the blacksmith’s metal wives rusting in the rain.
The iron the wood- they tasted pain. Knew it clench fist and up-turned palm.
All at once pauper and martyred God.

I smelled of lepers. Molten skin and untouchable. Adam’s heels,
Achilles tendons snapping in rhythm to Hosanna in the highest.
Of hospitals and the impatience of the dying.
Looked on in horror.
Spit on in public. So humility stinks of saliva,
of three loaves of black bread and the brine under fish scales.

I smelled of miracles. But the men hold their nose.
They will never know the smell of resurrected youths
who got the chance to break in their knees again.
Of a white shroud unwound.
40 days and nights with a giggling hyena for a stomach.
My beard smelling like the wool of shepherdless sheep.
Jasmine scented praise and burnt offering.
Smelled of earth with my hands forever drawing lines in the dirt.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Of severed ears and coward’s bones.
Of authority of anonymity.
Who is this man, that he casts out devils and makes the blind see?
Of saints-disciples- brothers- of men. Of 3 years of birthday celebrations in the round. Heads resting on shoulders then beside them on the ground,
of 11 bloody martyred crowns. Shaking. Garden praying.
Of lips with silver ducat teeth.
I smelled of an afternoon tart with citrus organs
begging once more to rinse in the Jordan.
Of ebony Palestinian nights -that cruel cruel mother.
Of the siren throats of Jerusalem’s daughters.
The familiar scent of my Father—
I had to climb to the top of a crucifix
Just to get close enough to breathe him in.

So when perched atop Calvary. I smelled everything.
Salt and vinegar. Temples. Timber. Hammers. Pine.
The Cat o’Nine and Judas’s broken swinging spine.
Wrongs. Palms. Lilies. Psalms. My mother. My Father. My altar. Manure…

The scent of flesh and blood was lifted from the ground, reeking of a man handled divinity.
I was crucified, buried, and rose on the 3rd day.
You smell me?