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Tinfou, Here I come!
Dripping, spoon by spoon
The rain, wishful and hardly disillusioned,
Strains on the sandy tracks,
Where camels once stood,
Vanished in high speed,
And left all of us behind

Julie was hotter than Oubliette,
Yet no one cared or noticed,
They were old veiled nuns
With visible varicose veins
Forever weary if I'd ever say grace
Or if I'd eat with five fingers
And say Bismillah with a fork and a serviette

Sister, pass the vinegar please!
And if all the blessings from heaven were true,
It would be a sand storm free day.

Steam, rising, evaporating,
And colossal chests
Followed where a scent was once buried
They shoveled mountains into dust clouds,
For the old French Francs
Coal, coal, they chanted!
The lords praised their lords.

It stormed for five days,
And the nuns were buried under a ton of sand,
I watched foam rise above the cup
That used to be my tea with mint
And its aroma became
A succulent joy below my palate
Where their knees used to be lodged
I could still sip tea through the sand
And it tasted real

July was hotter than June
And I noticed,
I could tell the difference
Between culture and religion.

I took a sip from this culture,
Became imprisoned momentarily,
And empoisoned for eternity

Almost full and always empty
Awaiting a cool breeze
To douse my Jellaba with reality,
And make my senses come together
With every weave I try to cherish

At midnight, years later
I laughed hysterically, on top of her
With the other self professing naturalist
Watching every move I made.

I was still wired up, doused up
From Vacuum cleaners,
Jehovah's witnesses,
Sara Lees, Sarsaparillas,
Cream sodas, cappuccinos
Midnight snacks,
Movie previews,
Sensational faux news
And cool menthols at the end
For every successful red carpet
Blood and gore movies,
Carbo and turbo hydrates
Hyper and hypo concentrates
And happy dementia for all

Downward from the heavens
Spirals a serene galaxy of pleas
And I was still stuffed,
Yet startled on Thanksgiving
And drunk on New-Year's eve
Reminiscing on raw shrimp
And Newman?s salad sauce

I recognized she must be sad,
Her lantern almost scorched me,
And her reason blinded me,
She was searching for my sanity,
And she found my rancor

A bubble in a forgotten world
A mama bear bound to her zoo,
Those who ponder if she were real
Or if she were faux pearl

She stuffed my cheek with her torch,
Bound me to a chair,
And let me drip, drip, and drip
Till I became part of my element
Blue again, and she resurrected me into a sand dune

I was thankful to Tinfou,
Gently tossed 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 crib,
And no desires to mimic
The sanctity of her love,
From a mile high sand dune
Where I once grew up,
She knows 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.


Said Leghlid, 2004.

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