Fear

Fear is the bleeding yarn
Fear is the fleeting dawn
Fear is the grave of sleep
Fear is the fiery yawn

Fear is the naked plain
Fear is the shield and chain
Fear is the spider's creep
Fear is the lion's mane

Fear is the godless leer
Fear is the throaty croon
Fear is the missing sheep
Fear is the icy moon

Fear is the crack of bone
Fear is the dark unknown
Fear is the drowning deep
Fear is the dying moan

Fear is the perfect line
Fear is the senseless sign
Fear is the patterned beep
Fear is the curving spine

Fear is inside this yarn
Fear has knit my rhyme
Fear oh you fool...
My will's as sharp as knife!

Sitting and Standing

My spine falters again.
Whose orders I obey?
Must I of all people
hold up here, these heavens?
My lungs against them too,
Struggling, swell, then fall.
My breath's chased down a maze
Where flesh contorts and aches,
Where echoed sighs are felt,
Escaping bony caves.

If sitting drains me so,
Perhaps I need to stand.
Should standing feel the same,
Might help this man to know
One day the struggle may,
Despite incessant doubts,
In time with grit and faith
That spring from love within,
Sustained by that without,
Let true acceptance in.

Wish

I wish for peace and happiness,
For safety's hug and hope's caress.
I wish for fast and full relief
From aches, abuse, and suffering.
I wish for strength and well-being,
To live in kindness that endures.
For grit and grace in times of grief,
Freedom that heals and love that cures.

Dressings

This is the only absolute bible....
And so the voices worked out the title:
Revolutionary.  Latest.  Breakthrough.
Complete and up-to-date.  Revised.  All new.
Basics.  Fundamentals.  Bare essentials—
Written by a grave face with credentials.
The ultimate authoritative guide.
The best-seller, recommended worldwide.
Art and science of.... Step-by-step how-to.
From the only expert...doctor...guru.
For dummies.  Idiots.  Morons.  Brainless.
Solutions.  Tips and tricks.  Hidden secrets.
A powerful book—good too for your health.
Gives you better sex, success, freedom, wealth.
As usual I've happened to digress:
The subject?  Salad dressings that impress.

Doors

In hospitals here are countless doors
that lead nowhere.  Nowhere!  I know the ones
with numbers on them maybe make you think
behind must lie some truth or certainty.
Like the ones down the hall with names on them
or doors beneath the glowing exit signs.
Do not be fooled by such decorations.
They close and open but they lead nowhere.
These doors here now I've gone through more than once,
they told me these ones here, the swinging type,
ones colored baby blue—I don't recall.
But once inside, I'm sure, I've never left.
Some say our minds and hearts they too have doors,
and long corridors made of nerves and veins.
It's far too easy getting lost in there,
when things out there, a touch or sound, a light,
become a sense, a feeling, form a thought,
become a part of you, and loop inside,
and set off countless other loops of pain....
Once you're in here, you're never ever out.

That Shark

Between the feverish shiver
of sharks, and the approaching spout
greedily slurping ocean's waves;
with green and orange colored canes
(as though the sailboat's veins; or snakes
that crawled from dark of reachless depth);
with stranger of a schooner there
nestled on distant foamy crests,
with every kind of beast and bird,
a sight from future, maybe past?

You hold your head up with such grace.
Please tell me this:  Are you content,
sitting, reflecting on your life,
on goals of lawless motion, sense
in ages, hours, in this moment?
But leaning back you look composed.
How soft your feet and loose your toes!
In chaos all about have you
at last secured yourself a home?
Oh tell me how, please tell me how!

You look dignified, look so sure.
Am I wrong though, are you in pain?
Did you give up, believe you'd failed,
to now be looking back, away
from kismet's open drooling mouth,
your will in pieces like your mast,
your soul is torn as now's your sail?
Don't stop the fight, don't give up hope.
In awe of you for now, it's I
that shark who's looking up to you!

Inspired by:
"The Gulf Stream" by Winslow Homer, oil on canvas,1899.
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11122

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Winslow_Homer_-_The_Gulf_Stream_-_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art.jpg (wikimedia public domain)

The Only One

A mount of rice, many peaks of saffron,
the myriad skewers of ground lamb kebab
with basil and sumac—wrapped in sangak—
and barbequed tomatoes.  For dessert
black mulberries in sugar, in golab,
and then ruby seeds, freed of skin and pulp,
garnished with lemon and Persian hogweed.
Then comes sholezard, sohan, and halva.
A child's hand reaches for tahdig.
It's painted red.  She's almost six.
Her searching eyes see things blurry.
She's the only one there, the young
lady stands in silence and waits.
Outside the home in the heavy rain
an old argument has broken out,
someone's been shamed, another
disrespected, a young woman blames
her own kind heart, a heavyset man mumbles
something to God, looking at the moon,
a boy shouts something that seems to have wounded
his own nephew's pride.
An old woman groans, and there
A quiet man with a thick mustache
bends over and cries; and then blubbers.
Inside a lady is reaching
for tahdig, for food, for something.

Good Old Days

Like rice one throws at weddings, fists of ice
Were flung against my own bedroom windows.
I rose in fright, my face drenched in mirrors.
Although I looked the selfsame as before,
That gusty dawn when I woke, I felt old;
As though a crucial threshold had been crossed,
As though was wed to Chronos now, shackled
To pounds of sagging flesh and porous bones.
Back in the good old days my body formed
The (veiled) foundation of my strength, freedom.
The worthless box that held the priceless stone;
The papers of my love letters; scaffolds
To build my dreams, they'd now become gallows.
Back in the good old days I didn't know.