Twenty years. Twenty years! For What?!
You crossed Russia’s border undocumented, comrade
Huh? And do you call that a crime?!
Bourgeoisie fool, you’re lucky you’re not dead
I recount the nights of faint, distant glows —
the dimmed party lights of summer —
of silenced streaks of fleeing light, tassels of clouds
adorned in fleeting whites,
on the broad balcony of the west, when the
incidents on the large vestibule of the sun sum up
their lives and times on seasons’ palimpsests.
The wild party closes by the stretch of the twenty-first hour.
Darkness, frightened, creeps in with the stealth of a departing thief,
the coyness and diffidence of an undocumented harlot.
Twilight aids the shut eyes of young irreverent bats;
drunk with summer's furiously spouting liquors,
like the denizens of an unclothed city, they fly low,
with gambolling wings, propelled by unseen strands of evening gales,
shadowing briefly the glints of pimping stars eager to witness the next day’s
orgy.
On the day of your party
Please be sure to invite
The Drunken Clown.
He offers steady humor
At a pace everyone can measure.
His drinks, give love and laughter ,
his expressions: love and empathy.
In a graded lawn he falls and tumbles,
His eyes red and bleeding,
Look to him to point and laugh.
Our drunken clown gets his payment
In full, pursuing the right wingers,
And guffawing with the left.
His sincerity bobbles in an ocean of booze.
Cheers and Slaintè to our drunken clown.
Salud, and Prost!
To our home
And I sleep the sleep
Of a thousand filtered souls,
In ungracious betterment,
And a hope to die by my own hand.
Vicious visions of a youth undocumented,
And a prayer I never have the balls to do it.
If love were 'dark matter'
it would be the size
of a small kidney stone.
Hate is
an intestinal tapeworm
that gnaws at our vitals,
though most folks
remain unsure just what 'vitals' are.
The human brain
does not write poetry,
it merely crouches inside one ear,
while shouting into the other.
Poetry abides at the center
of an ever-expanding constellation
deep within the pineal gland -
that physical presence
manipulates, as many as
ten fingertips or toes
plus, a sloshed Calliope
swinging back and forth,
as she clings precariously
to chandelier-like Adam's apple.
Lips learn to think for themselves,
with the help of undocumented
angels.
Thus, naturally
organically produced poetry
can easily be manifest
while a nose dips deep
into a foaming glass of beer.
My tears dried up when I began to commit sins,
In the furnaces of misery, my dreams were consumed.
In the darkness of my impure soul, love committed suicide.
I look at humanity with the dilated pupils of an undocumented illegal immigrant.
I have dark skin like my deported ancestors.
In my bruised heart burn the flames of freedom, equality and fraternity.
Under the weight of carnivorous chains, my ancestors suffered for centuries, so that I would never desecrate my identity.
The tortures of the slave trade and slavery are etched in my tormented mind.
In the darkness of the ruins that humans revere, I wander like a living dead in search of eternity.
The ephemeral pleasures of this polluted Earth did not dominate me.
I love life with the murderous impulses of a drug addict who knows that one day death will liberate.
An ocean of tears to drown this procession of hidden dramas.
The alligators will not stay in the water,
they head for strip malls, for chicken noodle joints
or sports bars for fish taco or spicy wings.
They get their nails done in a Korean salon
paying in Spanish gold.
The two legged;
the cranes, herons, and humans
edge around the gators.
Occasionally, rowdy boys bounce stones off
their scaly hides.
The unflappable crocodilians slyly grin
for they are ecologically moving-in.
Shrewdly, the reptiles are styling
alligator belts and boots, or sell gator skin handbags
from wayside stalls and booths.
The Floridians have become inured
to these green interlopers. Some seeing opportunity,
rent them housings with few tenancy rules
and ‘must have’ pools.
Sadly many furry pets keep going missing;
and not just the Cypress trees are stumped.
It’s a new era, one to be nearer together.
Undocumented or free-range, no longer estranged.
but one shared love for chicken, be it raw, fried
or grill flamed.
He had concubines
He had call girls of curls and of wool
He had gigantic heart and tender soul
He had had desire for his nurse
He had witch hazel blending with his kisses
He had invited comfort and joy to partake
He had hunger beyond measure
He had his menu spread out before him
He had an ear for foreign music
He had the nerve to eat and become gluttony
He had licked clean the plateau of plenty
He had had dinner, desert, and adoration
He had keen understanding of a woman
He had stood seven feet tall, yet silent
He had puppy dog eyes with tears when I left
He had gazillion stories undocumented.
*
Always the plastic containers,
leftovers maturing stacked in gelid wastes
where pork slumbers among the peppers,
chicken spooning with onions and cabbage.
The polar remains of once tropical meals
transformed into undocumented containers
to be opened far too late.
A curried hash so ad hoc that it could be
the flotsam of a ravenous hurricane.
Zipper bags squelch under groping hands,
carefully wrapped comestible debris
speaks to the eyes more clearly
than any warning sign could.
Dinners and snacks survive
as half-eaten life-forms
buried behind a white doored crypt.
Some, a few only
may be resurrected, only to be boiled
into innominate concoctions
by a cook who once loved them
way too much.
All blondes wear diamond rings and drive Mercedes so old.
All brunettes wear green straw hats and plant marigolds.
All tall people play golf on Saturdays and are Methodists winkers.
All Americans are overweight donut-eating, chocolate milk drinkers.
All Africans wear their hair in braids, and despise tattoos of a girl.
All Mexicans like hot taco sauce and dance in a frenzied whirl.
All old people want to be young, and resent their mother.
All only children want siblings, wishing they had a brother.
All men want a crazy, out-of-control woman in their bedroom.
All divorcees want to marry a millionaire who is not full of gloom.
All Republicans want a dictator to be president who is angry and blue.
All liberals want to give free food to the undocumented, and do.
The minute you think of people as a group of “all” you are wrong.
Please memorize this poem, and sing it as a song.
If you cannot see this by now, then I must join the throng.
For I have written this poem entirely wrong.
time marches on
reality's fire consumes—
dreams go up in smoke
Dishonest weights, deceptive scales forsake
as chains of injustice rake the flesh
of the preyed-upon bleeding, amid wild
wolves feeding, soft sheep bleating,
protestor's pleading, jurisdictions cheating,
cajoling, wheedling, injustice repeating—
jurisprudence at the confluence
of affluence and influence
~undocumented lies exhumed
unmitigated truth entombed~
They have their thumb on the scale! We
have sussed every detail on the field of
debris, some so fiercely taking a knee,
others shot trying to flee! "I can't breathe,"
"I don't care!" Why don't they care?
Of what justice is meting beware!
One higher than the highest is watching,
waiting to signal the one riding to conquer
and complete his conquest. What's the true
future view? What more can we do
before we become past tense?
tragedies worldwide
flooding my senses daily—
fill my bag of tears
The strides wide with determination,
Through ups and downs of the day’s admiration,
A life of bliss and diss with undefined procrastination,
Gone wide and wild with the days’ words of deception,
Of emancipation from defined virtues of misconception.
There is you that walks and seems to like not,
The strides and steps aside, in determination,
The full-on health with skins tendered in motion,
Indescribable beauty that sees not the perfection,
There is you with the origins of declining lot,
Smiling with pride in the thickest of days’ guilt
The unlucky in all; in the redemption of the world,
Undeniably determined but sees not the imperfections.
Happiness is in the undocumented form of emotions,
Purest in the forms bred and nurtured in creations,
The you that perceives to see the good in all,
Is not the you that sees the good in all,
By Hudhaifah Siyad Mohamed
3rd Sept 2019
I realize
I have real eyes
That see real lies—
~Nearsighted
(rule of law)
~Farsighted
(rule of lies)
~The "ayes" have it
(hidden agenda)
~The "ayes" have it
(secret addenda)
~The "ayes" have it
(hate crimes)
~The "ayes" have it
(critical times)
~Unmitigated truth
(entombed)
~Undocumented lies
(exhumed)
I realize
I have real eyes
That see real lies—
~As the world cries
***
12/13/2019
Photo "Imposter" by Gabriela Ferreira on flickr
Always the plastic containers,
leftovers maturing like potted gardens
stacked in gelid wastes
where pigs are plumped with peppers,
goat spooned into onions and cabbage.
The polar remains of once tropical meals
transformed into undocumented river craft.
A curried hash so ad hoc that it could be
the flotsam of a slaughtering hurricane.
Zipper bags squelch under my groping hand;
stomach turning, carefully wrapped debris
speak to my fingertips
more clearly than any danger sign could.
Dinners and snacks survive
as half-eaten life-forms
buried behind a white doored crypt.
Some, a few only
may be resurrected, only to be boiled
into innominate concoctions
by a cook who once loved them
far too much.
Now...
The pat-down at O’Hare is intrusive.
I don’t look at the probing hands
or the dead bored eyes.
Schools of out of depth aliens,
are funneled through small holes
in an invisible net.
Then...
The Ellis Island cop is also bored.
He speaks ponderously,
as if the boy had no more wit than a fish.
Now...
I carry a man-bag over my shoulder,
it holds my documents.
The customs officer talks to me
in a sign language made audible
through pursed lips.
Then...
Sean looks up from his low-brow cap.
He dares not speak
least his tongue reveal
a patois of Connemara peat.
A crumpled birth certificate
is produced and stamped.
Now...
He studies my papers,
thrusts them back without a glance.
Then...
Sean keeps moving;
waiting to be pulled back,
not knowing
that the future will pull him back anyway.
Now...
Outside the terminus, Americans depart
in checkered cabs for Atlantis,
and other undocumented places.
~~~
Backward word exceptions for me
from mothers cold lipless tongue drips lies,
White and stagnation
void of a life.-
Is nothing sacred mother?
My mother?
Is nothing pure?
Even babies defecate and are never clean anymore.
I fail--as she fell.
But two eyes are better than three
and doesn’t allow such and such’s brain to bleed.
She had her head on the floor but she had her eye on me.
Lips soft as a kiss and open for guests but no feelings
there was no life there
nothing intermission to flatten the flowers and lost.
Further expeditions into my fragile fragmented psyche
leads one to a temporary understanding of life
through the perspective of one afraid of conformity
yet change
yet being identified as a same
the same-ness is a blow to the ego center
bordering on ego death
but only by a completely Egotistico way
you and you and you and me I you and we
our seasons the moment we are zero: a free radical
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