I took a sip from this new culture,
drowned in a pool of grape juice,
became imprisoned momentarily,
and empoisoned for eternity.
On my journey,
after twenty blue moons,
I was wired up, doused up
from vacuum cleaners,
Jehovah’s witnesses,
terror warnings,
Sara Lees, sarsaparillas,
cream sodas, cappuccinos
midnight hot dog snacks,
TV commercials,
sensational HBO, and Faux news
blood and gore movies,
carbs and turbo diets.
Suddenly, I found my body surrounded
by screaming silence,
and jealous of that agonizing moment,
I embraced it, allowed it to take me away,
into the void of my saturated soul,
so it can hear its echo reverberate
across the barren desert dunes.
Tinfou, I screamed, here I come!
dripping sweat, spoon by spoon,
this sand, wishful and hardly disillusioned,
rebelled against the most renegade
clumsy clouds that pass over this desecrated land
year after year, and hardly ever shed a tear.
Four wheel strains on the sandy tracks,
coming from as far as Shangri-la
to see the beauty of nothingness,
where camels once stood,
and vanished at high speed,
leaving all of us behind,
absent in our own minds,
and begrudging the elements
that made us fly away.
Ms. Julie was hot,
and Tinfou was hotter than Ms.Oubliette,
yet no one cared or noticed,
they were bathing on this old veiled sand dune,
with visible varicose veins,
forever weary if I’d say grace
or if I’d say bismillah,
and eat with five fingers.
Madame, pass the red vinegar please!
and if all the blessings from heaven were true,
it would be a savory spirit to celebrate,
and I will drink to this thirsty sand
as I feared I would someday.
Steam, rising, evaporating,
for millenniums
beneath this majestic dune,
like a cultural hegemony,
where savvy brains, and colossal chests,
departed in search of a loaf of money,
where opportunity spread like raw dough,
leaving their nostalgic barren walls behind,
and every chance at connecting with an estranged past.
It stormed sand and rocks for five days,
and the palm trees were buried under tons of sand,
I watched foam rise above the cup of merlot
that used to be my tea with mint,
and its aroma became
a succulent joy far beyond my palate
where my knees used to be lodged,
I could still smell tea through the sand,
and the mirage was so real, and so Moroccan.
July was hotter than June
and I noticed,
for the sake of fall and spring,
that I could somehow tell the difference
between culture and religion.
Almost full and always empty
this glass of life awaiting a cool breeze
to douse my djellaba with reality,
and make my senses come together
with every weave I try to cherish,
and every loom I must relinquish.
At midnight, years later,
I laughed hysterically,
on top of this dune,
with my ego,
and the other self professing naturalist
watching every move we made,
I realized, we were inches away,
from where we thought we started.
Downward from the heavens,
spiraled galaxies with pleas
and I was still stuffed,
yet empty on Thanksgiving,
startled on Halloween,
and frightened on Christmas,
drunk on New-Year’s eve,
and awkward on chimaera's day,
reminiscing on raw shrimp
and Paul Newman’s couscous sauce.
I recognized, the dune must be sad,
her lantern almost scorched me,
and her desolate reason blinded me,
she was searching for my sanity,
and she found my rancor,
a bubble in a forgotten world
a wild bear bound to her zoo,
and she shined like a shimmering pearl.
In the heat of that night,
she stuffed my cheek with her torch,
bound me to a flying carpet,
and let me soar high into the past,
till I became part of my element,
a blue man again,
she answered my will,
and resurrected me into her image.
I was thankful to Tinfou,
gently extinguished her torch where
once existed a small flame,
barely visible to the stars above,
and she became the companion
of extinct flames below.
No tears, and no sparks,
no smiles crawling from this pedestal,
and no desires to mimic
the sanctity of her love,
from a mile high sand dune
where I once grew up,
she knew me well.
Tinfou sits there,
sober and defiant,
weary and vagabond,
she can never quench my thirst
and when I lay on top of her,
she makes me sweat,
and never regret I visited her again.
Said Leghlid (Published in Tingis Magazine 2004)
Copyright © 2003 Tinfou.com All rights reserved.
|
