Tomas

Water breaks
The subject pours from
Open portals into
A rainbow wilderness
The cable to forever is severed
An artificial one is installed
Soon the subject is
Dropped into a cage
Where walls are painted
To resemble a barren beach
The playpen is reassembled into an F-16
He is served biohazards at mealtime
Heart rate sped up by sonar pulses
His form unadorned by a mother’s touch
Holograms of pentagrams are
Projected from satellites
To the back of his eye
A joystick is plugged into his spine
The flick of his own thumb
Wipes out his hard drive
Paralysis of the tongue
Deadening synapses
With fluorescent light of
Severed digital limbs and
Holes blown through lungs
Six hours daily
He is stuffed in a box
With dyslexic overseers to
Define his inferiority complex
In a complex designed
To farm bi-pedal cattle
His rattle replaced with
Cellular grenades
He is taught to be afraid of his name
Daily injections of fructose
Give him the shakes
He copes with crude jokes
Though the joke is on him
When they relocate his frame
To a colder cage
Where he serves as cheap labor
Pressing steel plates
Pulling triggers
Protecting his master’s estate
The concepts beyond him
Until it blows out his brains
On the front lines
Harvesting callow graves
Another corpse piles up
Like presidents in suit pockets
My man never complains
Because he has fast food shakes
And the latest kicks
He can get his kicks
Kicking virtual punks
On the new game console fix
Nobody consoles him
When the buzz wears off
The ring of lights dims
To reveal the landfill in the mirror
Tendinitis sets in on his
Wrists and shoulders from
Pushing uranium boulders
Up infinite concrete hills
No rest is given
No time to take in the landscape
No escape to a new angle
He is caught on an angler’s
Fish hook
Squirming
Baited by pictures of
Pretty girls and
Sleek cars
He flaps helplessly on the pier
Coughing and wheezing
Pondering how his misguided
Pursuit of a fly life
Left him legless
Headless
Aimless
Involuntarily waiting as
The tinder ignites for
The fire to fry him

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Yollie's Rice

There is no amount of salt that can save the bowl of rice sitting in front of me.
Two weeks ago this same meal would have been adequate, tasty even,

But that was before I had my mother-in-laws Moro,
An immaculate blend of frijoles negro y arroz blanco

So perfectly sweet there is nearly no need for desert.
From now on no one else's rice can possibly be taken seriously.

When I begin to praise her edible work of art,
She shyly smiles and the 8 year old Yolanda

Peeks out from underneath her 68 year old face
(This smile is hereditary, I recognize it hanging

On her daughter's visage when Chicago House pulses from a radio).
She replies, "The rice is too dry," always quick to deflate a compliment,

Another trait inherited by her daughter.
In her immense modesty she is horribly wrong.

Somewhere in the world there are rice grains in a field growing,
And they are all praying to end up in the grace of Yollie's cupboard.

As her daughter has ruined me for all other women,
Yolanda has ruined me for all other rice.

One City. Two Continents.

Argue with a woman in the covered bazaar
Shooing the precious stone dealers
Find a café and sip cay
Play chess with the grandfathers of the city
Sundown
Meet an old friend in a yali along the Bosphorus
Venture to a 300 year old hamam
Euphoria is brought by cold water then hot water
Then cold water on tense shoulders
Skin is scrubbed and abandoned on marble floor
Along with wet towels soaking up the workday
A child with hair like nettles leaves
Peddles T-Shirts
Passes on us when it is revealed
That our money is not American
Under a quarter moon
Cheeks press against a windowpane
Catching the peep show where
Thick women roll manti on mosaic tables
While cosmopolitans pose like mannequins and
Wait to be served
Hagia Sofya swallows an old notebook
Shelters green kittens from roughneck trolleys
Damp winter hails a taxi
Whose driver insists on driving to the bay
Eat the freshest fish in the Mediterranean
Gaze at the water buses carting tourists and workhorses
Purchase a pool stick in the Egyptian Market
Numb sore legs with a bottle of Raki in a covert basement
Owned by a French immigrant and his sister
Crawl over the bridge to Taksim Square
Baklava and Coffee offer recompense
Morning drapes gold sky over Topkapi Palace
Nodding to the wail of a Russian oil tanker
Like embellished memories of a leftover Pasha
Those awake are consumed by a most delectable

Huzun