Poetry

1.

From our
safe windows,
we crane our necks,
rubbernecking
past the slow
motion wreckage
unfolding in Homs.
 
We remain 
perfectly
perched 
to marvel at
the elegant arc of
a mortar shell
framing tomorrows
deep horizon,
whistling through
the twilight to
find its fruitful
mark.

In the now 
we keep 
complicit time,
to the arrest
of beating hearts,
snapping fingers
to the pop
of rifle cracks,
swooning to
the delicious
intoxication of
curling smoke
lofting ever
upward; 
yet
thankfully
remain
distanced
enough to
recuse any
possibility
of an
intimate
nexus 
with the
besieged.

2.

From our
safe windows,
we behold the
urgent arrivals of
The Friends of Syria
demanding
clean sheets
and 4 Star
room service at a
Tunisian Palace
recently cleaned
and under new
management
promising a
much needed
refurbishment.

The gathered,
a clique of 
this epochs 
movers and shakers,
a veritable 
rouges gallery of 
ambassadorial
prelates, Emirs and
state department
bureaucrats
summoned
with portfolio
from the
darkest corners
of the globe.

They are
eager to
sanctify
the misery
of Homs,
deflect and
lay blame
with realpolitik
rationalizations,
commencing
official commissions
of inquiry,
deliberating
grave considerations,
issuing indictments
of formal charges for 
Crimes Against
Humanity
while
remaining
urgently 
engrossed
in the fascination
of interviewing 
potential
process servers
to deliver the bad news
to Bashar al-Assad
and his soulless
Baathist 
confederates
if papers
are to be
served.

Yes, the diplomats
are busy meeting
in closed rooms.

In hushed circles
they whisper
into aroused ears,
railing against
Russia’s
gun running
intransigence
and China’s
geopolitical
chess moves.

They boast of the
intrepid justice
of tipping points
and the moving poetry
of self serving tales,
weighing
the stern sanctions
amidst the historical
confusion of the
asymmetrical
symmetries
of civil war.

Caravans
of Arab League
envoys arrive
in silver Bentleys,
crossing deserts
of contradictory
obfuscations,
navigating the
endless dunes
with a handheld
sextant of
hidden agendas.

The heroic
Bedouins are
eager to offload
their baggage
and share
on the ground
intelligence from
their recent soirees
across Syria.

They beg
a quick fix,
the triage of
critical catharsis
to bleed their
brains dry
of heinous
recollections,
pleading
release from a
troubled conscience
victimized by
the unnerving paradox of
reconciling the discoveries
of perverse voyeurism
with sacnctioned
explanations
of their respective
ruling elites.

The bellies
of these
scopophiliacs
are distended;
grown queasy
from a steady diet
of malfeasance
an ulcerated
world parades
in continuous loop;
spewing the raw feeds
of real time misery;
forcibly fed
the grim
visions of
frantic
fathers
rushing
the mangled
carcases
of mortally
wounded
children
to crumpled
piles of smashed
concrete that were
once hospitals.

We despondently
ask how
much longer
must we
look into
the eyes
of starving
children
emaciated from
the wanton
indifference
of the world?


3.

From our
safe windows
we wonder
how much
longer can
the urgent
burning
ambivalence
continue
before it
consumes
our common
humanity in
a final
conflagration?

My hair already
singed by the
endless firestorms
sweeping the prairies
of the world.

How can we survive
the trampling hoards,
the marauding
plagues of acrimony
fed by a voracious
blood lust aspiring to
victimize the people
of Homs and a
thousand cities
like it?


4.

From my safe
window I stand in witness
to the state execution of
refugees fleeing the
living nightmare
they are forced
to inhabit.

The murder of innocents,
today's newly minted martyrs,
women and children
cornered, trapped
on the road,
mercilessly
slaughtered and
defiled in death
to mark the lesson
of a ruthless master
enthralled with the
power of his
sadistic fascist
lordship.

I cannot avert my eyes
of pleading women
begging for the
lives of their children
in exchange for
the gratification
of a torturers
lust.

My heart
is impaled
on the sharp
spear of
outrage
as I watch
careening
children mowed
down with the
serrated blades
protruding
from marauding
jeeps of laughing
Syrian soldiers.

I drop
to my knees
in lakes of
tears
reflecting
a grotesque
horror stricken
image of myself.

My eyes have
murdered my soul.

The ghastly images
of Homs have chased
away my Holy Ghost
to the safety of a child's
sandbox hidden away
in a long forgotten
revered memory.


5. 

From my safe window
I seethe with anger
demanding vengeance
debating how to rise
to meet the obscenity of
the Butcher of Damascus.

The sword of Damocles
dangles so tantalizing close
to this tyrants throat.  

The covered women of Homs
scream prayers 
“may Allah bring Bashar to ruin”

Dare I pray
that Allah trip the
horsehair trigger
that holds the
sword at bay?

Do I pick up
the sword
a wield it
as an
avenging
angel?

Am I the
John Brown
of our time?

Do I organize
a Lincoln Brigade
and join the growing
leagues of jihadists
amassing at the
Gates of Damascus?

Will my righteous
indignation fit well
in a confederacy
with Hamas and
al-Qaeda as 
comrades in arms?

Do I succumb to
the passion of hate
and become just
another murderous
partisan, or do I
commend the soul
and live into the
power of satyagraha?

I lift a fervent prayer
to claim the justice
of Allah’s ear,
“may the knowing one
lift the veil of foolishness
that covers my heart in
cloaks of resent, cure
my blindness that ignores
my raging disease of
plausible deniability
ravaging the body politic
of humanity.”

Indeed,
physician heal thyself.

I run to embrace my
illness. 

I pine to understand it.

I undertake the
difficult regimen
of a cure to eradicate
the terrible affliction.

This
pernicious
plague,
subverting
the notion
of a shared
humanness
is a cunning
sedition that
undermines
the unity of
the holy spirit.  

The bell from
the toppled steeples
still tolls, echoing
across the space of
continents and eons
of temporal time.

The faithful chimes
gently chides us
to remove the wedge
of perception that
separates, divides
and undermines.

Time has come
to liberally
apply the balm
that salves the
open wounds
so common to
our common
human condition.

The power of prayer
is the joining of hands
with others racked
with the common
affliction of humanness. 

Allah,  
My eyes are wide open,
my sacred heart revealed,
my sleeves are rolled up,
my memory is stocked
my soul filled with resolve,
my hand is lifted
extended to all
brothers and sisters.
Lift us,
gather us
into one
loving embrace.


6.

From the safe
windows of
our palaces
we live within
earshot of
the trilling
zaghroutas
of exasperation
flowing from
the besieged
city of Homs
smouldering
under Bashar’s
symphony of terror.

Our nostrils
fill with the
acrid plumes
of unrequited
lamentations
lifting from the
the burning
destruction
of shelled
buildings.

Our eyes spark
from the night
tracers
of sleeking
snipers
flitting along
the city’s
rooftops;
the deathly jinn
indiscriminately
injecting the
paralysis of
random fear
into the veins
of the city
with each
skillful
head shot.

These
ghoulish
assassins
lavish in their
macabre work;
like vultures
they eagerly
feast on the
corpses of their kill,
the stench of bloated
bodies drying in the
sun is the perfume
that fills their nostrils.


7.

From our
safe window
we discern the
silhouettes of militants
still boldly standing
amidst the
mounting rubble of an
unbowed Homs
shouting;

Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!

raising pumped fists,
singing songs
of resistance,
dancing to
the revelation of
freedom,
refusing to
be coward by
the slashing
whips of a
butchers
terrible
sword.


8.

From my
safe window
my tongue laps
the pap
of infants
suckling from
the exhausted
teats of mothers
who cannot cry
for their dying
children;
tears fail
to well from
the exhaustion
of dehydrated
pools.

9.

From my
safe window
my heart stirs
to the muezzin
calling the
desperate faithful
from the toppled
rubble of dashed
minarets.

We can
no longer
shut our ears
to the Adham
of screams
the silent
voices that echos
the blatant injustice
of a city under siege.


10. 

From my
safe window,
I pay
Homage to Homs
and call brothers
and sisters to rise
with vigilant
insistence
that hostilities
cease and
humanity be
upheld,
respected and
protected.


11.

From my safe
window
I perceive
the zagroutas
of sorrow
manifest as a
whiling hum
of a sweeping
blue mist,
levitating
the coffins
from the rubble
of the ravaged city.

A swirling
chorus
of wails
join my
desperate
prayers;
rising in
concert
with
black billows
of smoke
dancing
away
from the
flaming
embers
of scorched
neighborhoods.


12. 

From my
safe window
I hear
the fluttering
wings
of avenging
angels
furiously
batting
as they
climb
within
the black
plumes,
leading from
the streets
of the
desecrated
city. 

It is the
Jacob’s
Ladder
for our
time;
marking
a new
consecrated
place
where
a New Adam
is destined
to be formed
from the
pulverized
dust of
desolate
city.


13.

From our
safe windows
as we peer into
resplendent
mirrors
beholding
the perfect image of
ourselves
we notice
our falling tears
dripping blood,
coloring death
onto the
blanched sheets
of our imperial
palaces.


14.

From our
safe windows
our voices are silenced,
words mock urgency
thoughts betray comprehension
senses fail to illicit empathy
action is the only worthy prayer


15.

From my
safe window
I hear the
mortar shells
walking toward
my palace,
the crack
of a sniper
shot
precedes
the wiz
of a bullet
whispering
its presence
into my
waxen
ear.

Music selection:
John Coltrane
A Love Supreme
Acknowledgement

Oakland
2/28/12
jbm