anam cara

i have the land of green plums
in my knapsack, baby names for wild heather

growing in a telescopic city
like bethlehem where water

& fire are sister wives
vestal twins

& the house i arson(ed)
sits with its ashtray mouthed

duende here
i will meet you

unstaunched
hypnotic

our bodies paradigm(ed)
to decussate

in the mother of all bomb
squad déja vu, the last

page of my diary
versant to the chant

– fear but the heart

maghrib

is a qawwal knotted into the sphinx of a question
at the pebbled marble of an old mosque

whose carpet is salamandrine
whose country sleeps in a glass jar of pistachios

whose winter lingers, is deaf as a ghost,
is the ash blond map of a railway station

is dead from seeing, is the skull of
a museum dilated to a rice bowl

the first of all leaving
is from the song of self

the first of all leaving
is a prayer opening like a door

when he touches the oyster of an earlobe
pinked by breath incensed to phlogiston

that rises as smoke over salt mines
as pilgrims drink wolfbane &  malt liquor

then he will rise again as light
jettisons from the watchtowers

as the child soldiers saw their shotguns
amid the radio babel of missing boats

he will keep the stillness of this grief –
a muslin-bordered holy book

whose pages are never turned
because no one here is born

with hands
anymore