curry and smoke

food lost its lustre sometime last year
after ebola victims  paraded across
the internet news zones, zombies facing
their own apocalypse, shades of times

like virgas, melting into ours. you steal
everything they want to say, you take
assimilate, force me into your holidays
like a catholic bishop in machu pichu.

spoils often go to the intrepid, there's nothing
pc about survival and nothing survival without
eating. i've lost my appetite for bounty, picked
over the grist and got gothammed for free.

but what about the zombies, coming across
the mountains right about now, those who flee
the drones all set on  seedbombing
  with flowers of concrete,
busted steel and children's flesh.

do you see anything else when you turn on the news?

well i watch fb and
i saw some goats in trees and a lovely retreat
inspirational aphorisms, this kitten is sweet,
the elephant cuddles up with an ostrich,
a jaguar releases her prey though she's not rich
halloween's coming, then christmas, then may
we  gotta stuff down every goddamn holiday and i
in my fatsuit and you in your ladder, eat pie
with whipped cream and get fatter and fater
 though i heard him exclaim
 as he climbed on the roof,
 just don't look at me eating
 and those calories go poof.




(((!!!((```~~~~

i see the short distance between, say,
the whites of your eyes and your gun.


i don't know why you'd keep telling me
how you used to be. that life was over
when you survived the march through
 four years of desert, pillaged by your comrades,
 your buddies and allies.
don't tell me how it was
when you put on the hajib
  went into the village to be captured
.if it's  jihad there's more
 where that came from.  the land of achy
 strategy mingles with  the taste of garlic on my lips.
so you go, so we flee, so  bombs keep coming till
all you can hear in your dreams
 is the whine before explosion
the wail of mothers cradling gassed children. some of them
were you, though most of them were not.
you could not let them in. it was as though
 a veil were drawn, a history fulfilled
that was not part of your world. until you met them
at the fence topped with razor wire, climbing
into your country, antlike, one atop another, pulling each other
over the second fence, hundreds dropping and running
 into your backyard  and there you are with your riot
gear and your billy club and maybe even a gun but the ammo
runs out then the clubs comrades are wrested
from your  hands and turned on you and you run and you run and you run
but all your keys are for doors that no longer exist
no one answers the banging,  the fishmonger
 at the market doesn't know you, though
you bought his wares once a week
for that last five years, the clerk in the cafe
you eat lunch at daily
won't give you a glass of water
 and the woman you called your wife
looks past you as if you
 were a ghost she not only doesn't see
but never met, once.
 how do you pick up a life from that?
get a job, get a tent, get
 a bowl of rice a day. carry
the  shells of your city   in a knapsack at your hip.


















(*(**(*








one day you come to america
to live in your cousin's trailor. he shares it
with seven other men from your country.
they all work at his business,  a car wash/fruit stand
located under a canopy at a texaco station
 about a mile and half from the trailer park.
he says you must work there
 to pay him room and board.you
do not get to deal with the customers.
 your job is to pick through
 the fruit and vegetables, saving as many
as you can from the pile he sells to the pig farmers.
 turn the wrinkled pepper, the soft tomato
 to the bottom of the quart
peel the mold from the onions. one day he says
you will graduate to vacuuming
cars. you were a doctor in your country.
a country that blooms red rubble
  detonation supplied by the country in which
you are now a refugee.
  but the water is hot when your turn comes.
you   save the few dollars left every month.
some of the men here,
those here longest, drive cars.
 you  wonder if this is how they did it.
 you don't remember
 the name of the girl
they said you'd marry, only the smell of curry
drifitng from the corner store as she
 pulled the door open and walked
inside , lost in  a moment ,time
 bleeding from there to here-where you stand
outside an indian restaurant consumed
by the scent of  silence before
 the whine begins again.