Aerial Canopy

This is the second edited version of a "photograph poem", one where we had to describe a photograph with clear details but while still adequately answering the question: "So what?". This poem may undergo a few more edits before I am pleased with it, but the following is one of the attempts:


A tenebrous figure sits on the tawny sand,
as the dusking sky turns from blue to purple,
resembling sweet peas as they age and
wilt. The diaphanous waves, each
oscillating back and forth from the horizon
to the shore, each swell folding a secret to be
unraveled like the thread of a spool,
its release imminent, tightly held by this man—
his emerald green eyes vacant,
his sanguine lips cracked, his shoulders
as vast as this sea. He looks up to the silhouette
parasailing, the white voile beckoning him,
he yearns to seize the braided string of
imaginary hemp, to lift himself up
and flutter away with this aerial canopy,
yet his terrestrial tendencies leave him
grounded, solitary on the loose,
scorching sand, as soft as the underside of
her arm, the ivory limestone rock formations
in the background as he contemplates
his escape. That is when she lost him,
her grip slowly loosening,
the woman whose eye of kohl lay
behind the camera, releasing her grip
from the metal, cool apparatus as
she walks away, burying her cigarette
and him in the sand, the smoke
ascending to the violent sky.

Dissolved like Alkasetzer

She had called crying and I had imagined the tears streaming down her face, her mascara drawing lines from her swollen eyes to her chin. She said, “Come home, I need you,” and that was all it took for me to pack my bags and return to the unknown. And thus, I boarded that plane unaware of the blatant alterations I would be presented with upon landing. Two months before we found ourselves at the edge of the depths of the Vaucluse, guitar in hand and Ricki Nelson songs trickling out of our mouths, our vocal cords vibrating and the sound of bliss echoing and reverberating around us. But now, as soon as my feet hit the tarmac and throughout the long train ride from Paris to the Avignon station, the blurred scenery dancing on my pupils, it was evident that during my absence, an entire universe had dissolved like an Alkasetzer in a half-empty glass of water and all that remained were infinitesimal particles of that which we had been. Ricki Nelson, laughter, summer trips along the Côte d’Azur, stopping at each alcove, each place, has now been replaced with a deafening silence and the knowledge of your imminent departure. And while you were contemplating your escape, getting out your scissors to cut the threads that bound you to us, we spent the nocturnal hours wiping the saline tears from our lachrymose eyes and blanched faces, each minute ticking away alerting us of the bomb that would absolve our current lives.

And as you snipped at each thread, severing ties, you allowed us to fall away from you, to keep falling into this somber chasm, our limbs flailing in the air, flesh tearing from our brittle bones as we screamed and cried, the sound muffled, stuck like dust particles in our tracheas.

I scratched, clawed at the film of our past, the images projected onto an imaginary white sheet in the crevices, folds of my mind but to no avail-- we were losing you. We were clenching our fists, our knuckles turning white and cracking and you were the sand trickling through our phalanges, falling to the cold, marble floors and scattering throughout the Provence with the gust of wind that was reality.

Cinder, Dust, Tears and Wails

The autumnal leaves fell
resembling burnt pieces of
thread after a fire and the ashes
was the dust that deposited upon
our doorstep, refusing to
be swept away. And she,
dressed in a red, cotton dress
shivered as the wind of reality
passed by, raising the black
hair marking her peach skin,
and gripping a broom in her hand,
the whoosh, whoosh reverberating
in the French cathedral ceilings, as she
attempted to sweep away the incendiary words:
I want my freedom.
Now, the stone house collects
cinder, dust, tears and wails
where it once amassed Francis Cabrel
songs, Cassoulet dinners, peals of
laughter and embraces. The ancient
green, wooden door has vanished
and allowed for the gales of misery to
infiltrate this once sanctuary,
each gust redolent of flesh tearing,
the acrid aroma of bile permeating our
olfactory organs, the scent suffocating us
as though a pillow was muffling our screams,
and during this slow death,
the woman whose cotton dress is now
replaced by a stain marked bathrobe,
clawed at the distorted face of her life,
scratched at the walls that were turning into rubble,
and I merely observed—helpless.

Marrakech Bazaar

I walk into the market, all five senses inundated by starkly different stimuli; the intermingling of cumin, nutmeg and cardamom synthesizing a scent of warmth and perfection; bright jilbabs of neon green, turquoise and magenta, embroidered with golden threads and fabricated of such luxurious cloths as silk, velvet and Egyptian cotton; and the deafening bustle of the locals, bartering for bread, spices and love. I pick up the heavy loaf of Moroccan bread, place an exquisitely tasting morsel into my mouth and at once I find home again. I spent years running away from this very place, ensuring my feet would not halt, that my heels would keep pushing on like a nomad in the desert in search of an oasis, only to find that the peaceful area amidst the chaos is right here; Marrakech. It is surrounded by this mayhem of humanity, with the stands concocted of grainy wooden polls draped with silk gauze, forming a cocoon of safety from the sun, that I feel rejuvenated. I hear the market women’s tireless chant of “Caftan 5 dirham. Fez, 2 dirham,” and see the lines of age marking their faces, as these women of soil sit cross-legged on the weathered pavement. I stroll the aisles of the bazaar in a stupor, relieved to be an unrecognizable face in the crowd, to be lost in the commotion that is the market. I look up into the sky; see the cumulous clouds disguised as wondrous flying saucers, Aladdin’s airborne rug, all reminiscent of this throng of women, men and children wailing for attention. Even the Marrakech skies are filled with the turmoil of life. Startled from my reverie, a man with chestnut-leather skin taps me on the shoulder, holding a brown-necked raven. This man, clearly a product of this sun-drenched country, speaks in our mother tongue, an Arabic dialect intertwined with French, and urges me to purchase this indigenous bird, one from the desert sands of the Sahara. I explain in my broken- Arabic, a result of my many years of exile, that I am unable to transport this bird, regardless of its beauty, back to the place I left. And, with wisdom only an elder possessing such enigmatic eyes, portals to the soul that that have seen the earth unravel and then reconstruct itself, the man utters, “Here is the only home for the bird… for you.” I gasp for air, having held my breath at such a declaration of sheer truth, and heave onto the cracked concrete floor, the vomit’s odor intermingling with Moroccan herbs. The infinitesimal fissures in the cement looking like a microscopic web spun by an industrious spider reminds me of this inescapable life; I forever will be rocked within he strong embrace of the Marrakech market’s indescribable beauty.

Halo

After he died, he came to see me just as he had promised. He talked to me of trivial matters, ardently attempting to evade the true reason for his visit. He spoke of this ethereal world where stillness fills your soul; where children’s laughter reverberates in your ears. Where there are forty-seven sunsets. A world redolent of summer rain with a tinge of pomegranate, added in for bitter-sweetness. He talked of all these things that were pleasant but rather insignificant. His words weaved around the treacherous crevices of our conjoined, quadruplet chambers, but we both were unable to halt our minds from wandering to that place: it was night, one filled with heavy droplets of rain, but neither one of us could distinguish our tears from the storm. He was holding me in his strong, sun weathered arms, and I could not fathom ever letting go. We both knew the inevitable was nearing like a train inching toward its destination. He gently wiped away my tears, kissed my cherry lips and said goodbye— walking toward that infinite light, its glow forming a diaphanous halo atop his head.

Clichés

He wanted to describe her beauty except that all virginal, untouched words eluded him—he had to make do with those that had already traveled within the bitter mouths of street sweepers, their eyes sunken, the somber shadows underneath recounting a night devoid of sleep. Or the words that have journeyed though the acid ravaged esophagus of a single mother, one toiling through the night as would a nocturnal beast so as to feed her emaciated children.

He yearned to describe her azure blue eyes, chestnut brown hair and nose ridden with sun spots using the words of the most circumloquacious of writers, yet they failed him and all that remained were the following clichéd adjectives, verbs, and adverbs:

Her hair was reminiscent of a fine thread woven together by a translucent substance.
Her eyes glittered like stars in the sky.
Her skin was sun kissed and her cheeks rosy.
Her laugh reminded him of children at play.
Her lips recalled the color of a flowering red rose.

The sole words available to him were as used and battered as a worthless prostitute and had he uttered them, permitted them to materialize and traverse the space composed of particles and organic matter, to reach her delicate ears, she would have recoiled—her lack of uniqueness reverberating within the shallow depths of such clichés.

Every woman yearns to be defined as unique, as an anomaly, and the clichés that have often voyaged from one cavity filled mouth to another, disintegrate the illusion of the special nature of these beings composed of hair, fluttering eyelashes and double X-chromosomes.

Urban Angel

Urban Angel

Her pale, bony hands touch the tarnished doorknob. Her feet shuffle hesitantly and then with a long sinuous sigh, she turns the knob and opens the red door. The portal’s paint chips fall to the ground akin to blood trickling down her vein-marked limbs, coagulating upon exposure to the polluted city air. All of her gestures are marked with uncertainty-- the way she incessantly tugs at the earring in her left ear; the erratic flailing of her arms as insipid thoughts stream through her consciousness; or even the manner in which she scratches at the bridge of her nose each time a stranger glances at her, though according to her calculations, a quantitatively measured assessment: Not many.

And yet, despite the abundance of awkward, treading over the very precarious precipice of neurotic behavior she exudes, as he observes her from his lion’s den, from the four-walled room he sequesters himself to, this self-inflicted solitary confinement, he cannot quell these insurmountable sentiments. He cannot disregard the invisible filament that ties him to this ashen skinned beauty, his urban angel. He first spotted her though his dirt crusted window one seemingly unremarkable Saturday morning. He had just awakened from a night filled with screaming whispers of excruciating pain, the previous day’s barrage of foreign white blood cells bombarding his frail body composed of flesh, bone and jade unseeing eyes. He had placed his palms against the cold glass hoping for a reprieve, a momentary interim before another languorous day began. And at the very instant his index finger formed a sort of fog-ridden calligraphy, an amalgam of evaporated sweat and heinously cold New York air, he saw the troubled nymph’s face, her red lips down turned, her black eyebrows raised in bafflement; she a walking, perpetual contradiction

And thus his addiction began, where his daily fix was a mere glimpse or continual fantasies filled with contorted bodies, expansive words of adoration; love paraphernalia. And yet these fleeting glances were all that he possessed of her, was the sole form of sustenance that nourished his disintegrating corpse.

She was the sour bread he placed upon his cauliflower tongue and slowly savored; that which he garnered strength from.
She was the organic, carbon matter that synthesized his pepper but mostly salted hair.
She was the murmurs that reverberated in his ears and caught like dust particles in his trachea; ever present.
She was the pristinely white petals of snow that fell onto his infection-ridden cornea.
She was the morphine trickling through his arteries, infused through a small incision to his left arm, soothing all terrestrial pain.
She was his urban angel, her soiled wings hidden underneath her black, weighty overcoat, concealing her plumage that was thinning daily—each feather placidly cascading toward the barren earth.

She was all.
She was nothing.