Trappings of femininity
Cagey breasts, Alexandrian perfume
An act of seduction
Not stupid in blunt fingernails
Painted rose a caressing owl
Scratches blood and snatches wallet
In crafty hands Love towels roll
clod in time my flesh intersects
the heat, boot and crawling insects.
Foraging through time's annals
Peering through the faded panels
Catching a glint through corroded channels
Seeking the sallowing bridges to re-enamel
Shuffling along desert lanes beaten down by Assyrian
chariot trains
Walking subsumed Royal Persian road, linking cultural
chains
Striding through exhumed Alexandrian cities'
ethnocentric strains
Strolling pebbled Roman boulevards accentuated by
aqueduct drains
Riding the Mongolian steppes listening to the murderous
refrains
Traipsing through gold-crowned Ottoman mosques
sprouting Christian veins
Lumbering penitently along Via Dolorosa grasping
sacrificial blood stains
I felt I had not learned, and knew nothing
Of the analysis of a flower
The more I read the darker became my cave
When the boulder of your name
Was rolled like Sisyphusian task upon me
What did he not know
Who said so many things before Christ came
I set out like a river
Tumbling down an impolite hillside
Looking under the dress of stones
And caressing the dirty feet of bridges
Some who sped ahead of me
Came back bruised and salted by the sea
Yet I was determined
Because of your Alexandrian beginning
To let you know
How unwell I fit with crowds
Making status statements
With nuances of the dead classic
And all in vain
All in vain
It was not the donut that he liked
It was the hole
The empty center we pay for
With dead days
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