A Meditation Outside the Fertile Grounds Cafe
Ayman just came back from his family
Home in the West Bank. How's the spirit there?
I asked. "Good. Nobody's giving up."
Ayman paused, wiping down the spotless glass top
Of the pastry case one more careful time
Without looking up. Thinking to himself.
"After all, all they want's a little justice."
On the map of the West Bank, that blank space
Just to the left of the town of Bhiddu
Is the village where Ayman's father, one
Of twenty children, was born and raised.
The name of the village means House of Stones
"Because there's a quarry there," but still
It's too small to rate a spot on the map in
The Economist, alongside this story
On the fresh welling up of blood and anger
In my friend's home land, that blank space
Filled with blood and stones. Ayman loves
His trade; in six years he's built from nothing
The coolest little coffee shop on the street;
People like him, he likes them; he makes
Great coffee, his sandwiches are famed, justly;
It's the old American Horatio
Alger Dream, and America's his country.
Every day he gets hundreds of calls
On his cell phone. "But know how many
Calls from people here I take when I'm back
Home?" he smiles. "None. I talk to people
There." And when he goes back home to Beit
Duqqu, America feels far away.
That's the way it feels to me too, but I have
No other home. The photo of the olive tree,
Its roots exposed from the bulldozer cut,
That was up on Ayman's wall last autumn--
Is that a photo of a broken home
Or is it that one's home's always intact
In one's mind as long as one's heart is
Full? I wouldn't begin to know. Tacked
On a phone pole out front of Fertile Grounds
In drifting night mist, a tattered poster
With a picture of a cat's face on it, lost
Near Delaware and Shattuck. It's Momo.
And what's become of poor Momo, now a week
Gone? Tonight, caning into the fog,
I hallucinated a Momo
Sighting downtown. No, just another feral.
Over ferals few sentimental
Tears are shed. A shelter's not a home.
A sanctuary's what everybody needs
These days--the ferals, the street and doorway
People, the drifters in the mist, the bums.
On my way back, as I passed, I saw that
A young Arab girl in headscarf sat weeping
At a table outside Fertile Grounds. Ayman
In his counterman's apron, spick and span,
And Mohamed stood huddled in conference,
Mo holding a cell phone. "She's just lost
Her family, everything," Mo said softly.
"She doesn't have people here. I am
Going to help her." Ayman was talking
To the girl in Arabic, serious, hushed.
Then too Mo, in Arabic, reassuring.
"Don't worry, it will be okay," said Mo--
Switching back to Shattuck Avenue English
For me, the infidel. God is great. May
God bring Momo home if it is His will,
And everybody else along with him,
Whomever that may include--we, living--
And we'll abide in that, and till then hope
That Momo too, pilfering out of the trash
Bins behind the Shattuck eateries,
Will abide likewise. He'll not lack competition.
.
24 comments:
Wow.
One of the very best pieces I've read here, and that's saying something.
Enough material for a movie script or a novel, masterfully condensed and cristallized. Halfway between a jab to the pit of the stomach and a warm cup of coffee when you come in from the cold.
One question about the form, though, (which you probably shouldn't pay attention to, since I don't know the first thing about potery and its mechanisms):
Would it be any less poetic if it was in prose form? I don't think so and I have a feeling it would flow more freely on the mind's tongue. But maybe that's just my was of reading.
Anyway, many thanks for a moment of genuine emotion and I'll leave you with a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWWYkYyyL_A
A ta santé, Gaza.
my "way" of reading. The less said about my way of typing, the better.
Oh, and the photo is not bad either.
Kind words indeed brother Offie, many thanks.
As to the form of the piece, and the (apparent only, one would hope) likeness to prose, this is perhaps intentional. Something about speed and pacing (slow!) here... at the time, poking along with a cane, a deliberate, measured gait seemed right. One gets to a point where retaining a bit of poise--and too, not falling on one's face--come to seem perhaps more important than trying to speed along. Then too, a little well-concealed trick or two...you know we Pseuds must always cherish our secrets. Really this is all just a matter of finding, or trying to find, some formal control to keep from being overwhelmed by the emotion the world seems to demand of us at every moment. Was it always thus?
But it's a good point you raise, and one I've discussed a bit with our Muse Zeph, who as we know has written some sweet poems that read almost like short stories and some sweet short stories that read almost like poems. It could be the difference between the two is merely some intuitive thing, do you not reckon?
And Offie--Your Damien Saez clip says/sings a perfect accompaniment to "A Meditation"--
god bless blesse america inch allah inch alallalalalalalalal!--
merveilleux, mon vieux. For sure, it's getting harder and harder to tell the wounds from the blessings.
Ah, what is a poem, that's the question:)
I think you're right, Offie, that if this was in prose form it would be no less poetic, a 'poem in prose' in fact. On the other hand I've seen contributions every week on the GU poetry blog where I've thought, well, that's just a bit of prose chopped up into short lines.
Of course how it's laid out on the page dictates to some extent how it's read, and you can perhaps make people stop and think or linger over the words. Then you can condense and distil what you have to say. But it's also about rhythms and choice of words. I'm learning about all this by writing more poems but BTP knows a lot more than me.
I guess that if poetry is cheese and prose is milk, there are soft cheeses and buttermilks in between.
This is indeed a very fine piece, one of the best we've had from you, BTP.
And perhaps we should mention that Ayman took the photo.
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=RQB3o0k6B5Q
i don't want to take side here Milk or Cheese all I can say, "c'est la crême de la crême"
Gaza sous Blocus
Malades qui meurent
Enfants angoissés
Etudiants bloqués
Mères en colère
Population exsangue
Dégats sociaux
Pénurie totale
Orangeries pales
Gaza sous blocus
this poem was written in the dark , using a candlelight by Ziad Medoukh
Cheese, milk, cream... next you'll have me believe that a pome can feed the starving masses.
But since this one has already summoned Damien Saez and Adamo on the same thread, I'm ready to believe almost anything.
Nourishment for the soul, Offie:)
Zeph,
Madame B, who is a discerning judge, thinks soft cheese would be an excellent description of BTP... er that is of BTP's poetry.
Guitou,
What a beautiful poem. And coincidentally those same images have been haunting my nights, what with Gaza now filling our dream- and waking-dream-life whether we like it or no. In that regard, I've greatly appreciated your comments over on the other Pseuds channel about the Kanoute shirtshow and its implications. (You've helped give me courage to attempt to consider those implications in a sequel that hopefully will appear over there soon.)
most interesting piece BtP and emotive too in the current climate, agree that you may want to consider the flow a little but whatever the dairy product (!) it's very definitely probiotic :)
not sure about the insistence on comparative criticism that's following your posts tho, perhaps it's a case of 'out with the old...'
as you say "Will abide likewise" tho I'm not much interested in competition myself
I haven't commented on this yet, but I've come back to re-read it several times over the last few days. At a time when life (on personal and global levels) seems ugly, I find it oddly heartening. Adamo similarly comforting, listening now.
bon courage munni
Yes, hang in there, Munni.
Filo, re comp crit, not too much insistence I trust, but a thread will go where its comments lead it, no?
Munni dear your words are quite moving to me. There seems so much pain these days in both our inner and "outer" worlds--"everything is everything" as Donnie Hathaway once sang on this subject of the inextricability of all sensitive and sensible things, before jumping out that window--that I find myself driven to seek out (fellow) humans (to quote another prematurely lost favorite singer, M. Gaye, "we're all sensitive people") , learn from them, take what consolation I can and try to spread a bit of that to others if possible-- while we're here, before it's too late...
Last night on the street of my habitual wanderings I met a 65 year old Mexican man who in the face of all that's wrong right now, said that he believes Obama will bring a return of hope, and of the spirit of helping others, to the hearts of the people.
Perhaps it was too long a dwelling in this lately so benighted land that made me at first skeptical about his well meant words, but then later in the night--after once again passing by rows of bundled homeless bodies in the street as I hobbled my way back home, happy finally to have a home to stumble back to--it occurred to me that nothing was/is to be lost by letting those hopeful words sink in.
File, thanks for your good words also. At its ending the poem is forced to admit, probably not inaccurately yet also hopefully not too cynically, that a cold competition is the public climate of the day (many dogs, few bones), but it also tries to project a world where mercy lives in the heart and perhaps respectful deeds may also follow. That's a world in which I'd like to live with you all, my friend(s).
I too have always hated competition, perhaps because it's always felt natural to me to identify with (perhaps feeling myself one of?) the losers.
And finally, as to your useful
craft comment about "considering the flow"(following the equally gentle admonitions of friends Offie and Zeph in this regard--and of course you know such heartfelt sharing of perceptions, as vs. "comp-crit", as you put it, is to be greatly valued and attended to in every case)--it felt a bit precious, or shall one say a bit coy, to be addressing by vague navel-staring one's own darling creations in that earlier response to Offside. (Still what writer would not die for such a reader?) But your comment now encourages the risking of just a few more words thereunto (said he, neck aching as navel again rises into view).
"A Meditation" is one of a series of night-wandering "street poems" written over the course of a year of loss (private/public--remembering Munni's wisdom above). The verse mode was adapted from the meetings that would come each night; that is, what seemed needed by way of form was something conversational yet not sloppy, to register somehow the woolgathering meanderings of the mind punctuated by the epiphanies of words that can and did come to one out of such chance meetings in the night. The ultimate stylistic template it seems was the "conversation-poem" style given birth in the poems of Coleridge and Wordsworth out of the intimate/familiar social gestation of their close-company association with Charles Lamb, Dorothy Wordsworth, and others. A little circle of friends then--as found on the chance streets, or at Otherstuff, or wherever such a consoling locale might be found--with whom one might speak familiarly.
But, dare one admit it, the fear of one's feelings spilling over uncontrollably seemed to require a certain measure of impulse-control; and, just as those freely-flowing ("O Friend!) poems of WW and STC actually concealed a certain amount of serious if seeming-ease-enabling formal work (the "talking" blank verse line in English owes much to that happy little group), one actually (horrid confession) was all along counting syllables, half-consciously but habitually and strictly, all the while.
And finally, re. "considering the flow"--Ayman the cafe proprietor once remarked, apropos some imaginary crush-of-events deadline or other that BTP was worrying on about, that his own philosophy was/is to "stay fluid." That stuck in BTP's ancient cranium for weeks, as is perhaps the way in everyone's woolly dotage. On a later occasion then BTP quoted Ayman's words back to him. "Who said that?" Ayman semi-innocently asked. "You!" A quiet shy laugh, and then--"Maybe I was just quoting Joe Frazier".
Beyond,
This is my first ever comment on a poetic work here (or anywhere). Publicly, I say that I disdain 'modern poetry' (whatever that is), remarking, "Well, that's just a bit of prose chopped up into short lines." (Sorry, Zeph.)
Publicly, I say, "Look at Herodotus. His 'Histories' is a prose work, but it's remarkably close to epic hexameter. As it stands, it's beautifully poetic prose; but if he'd written it as an epic, I'd have thought it was rather prosaic poetry."
And people reply, "What on earth are you talking about? Who's Herodotus?"
Publicly, I say those things. Privately, I am, perhaps, intimidated by that which I do not fully understand.
So I'll try and come here more often, and learn. Especially if I get more anecdotes of the Ayman-Frazier (what a fight that would have been) type. It made me smile.
Also, re counting syllables...aren't you *supposed* to? I'm currently writing a comic poem for my kids, and I've got to keep those lines bouncing, or they'll lose interest quicker than a failing bank.
Mac,
Something tells me Herodotus would have felt right at home on this site--though of course he'd have had to have come up with a pseudonym (perhaps "Find Out For Yourself" would do the trick?).
Once upon a time I heard a radio interview with Bob Dylan, and he said that people always thought the words in his songs were so important but what really counted was the rhythm and the dynamics.
He was not talking about :"beyond the horizon"
was he?
'Beyond the Horizon' the well-known adaptation of 'Red Sails in the Sunset'?:)
I can't even remember what songs he was doing at the time, it wasn't all that long ago. I thought it was a really interesting comment, so I've probably quoted it before, apologies if so:)
When you're bored of endless repitive rubbish from politicos and journos on the radio and telly, then the place for creative writing and interesting debate is Zeph's place.
Vibrant picture and deeply moving prose poem here, and challenging, interesting, rivetting comments.
BtP, appreciate the time you take to elucidate, I can only pop in to the celestial barber shop that is OS these days but it does warm me cockles to see it in such fine fettle
'what writer would not die for such a reader [as dear Offie]' indeed!
re: flow, your generous clarification is compelling! Who am I to argue with a lineage that stretches back to WW and STC? And how honoured are we Others to be compared to the gaggle of Lake Poets of yore, if only we could climb such peaks together!
Zeph, Mimi, File, fellow poets all--am greatly moved by the generosity of your comments which I've only now come back to discover. File, perhaps we may not quite be the Lake Poets--I see from Zeph's Where I Am that our home waters are less Derwent than Bow Canal--but then I'd settle for being one of the Canal Poets any day. And on this of all days! Inauguration Day here where I am.
My attempt at an Other Stuff Election Day poem struck dear wise Zeph at the time as needing a bit more work, and doubtless she was right--still, as it's the place where this meandering night-wandering poetics began to click into place for BTP, perhaps it would not be too far out of order to share it with you now, imperfect though it may be. (And the poem has a certain amount of typographical nuance--italics, specifically--that will get lost in this comments box, but... can't be helped, and hopefully that won't matter too much.)
The New World
Eruptions of starlight, joy and gladness
As, at 10:30 p.m. on Shattuck, the New
World dawns with shouts of "Yes we can!"
From young persons thronging the clogged street.
The street people, however, are just trying
To get some sleep. I infer this from the body-
Bundles I see huddled in every alcove. But why,
In the rapture of intoxicated victory
I glimpse around me, do I insist on this
Dissonant note? "A complete curmudgeon,"
Gentle Dorothy once called me, in
Exasperation, accurately,
I cannot deny. Aye, O Friend! I fear there are
What are lately called Depression Issues
At work here. How tiresome, really.
By Depression do I mean the mental kind
And am I signalling I "need help"? Some,
I'm told, might well secretly think so.
"And maybe they're right, William," tenders
Gentle Dorothy from across the hearthside.
The nights are growing sharp, November
In the Cumberlands, ancient aching joints,
Getting up in the dark and seeing your breath,
Bad patches of thatch to fix before frost
Closes in and fingers, too numb for labors,
Withdrawn into religious half-mittens.
There were street people in William's village
Too. But in knowable communities
That which is often seen soon becomes known,
Thus accepted and not stepped over
As if inhuman, insignificant
Or nonexistent. Naturally William,
Who saw the poetry in everything,
Perceived the poetic aspect of this--
Particularly after coming back from
London, where the bewildering urban
Alienation and estrangement
Had already long since taken hold.
Awed have I been by strolling Bedlamites,
He writes in Book XII of The Prelude,
Referring to the road-wandering not-
Quite-normals of that not-so-remote epoch,
From many other uncouth Vagrants pass'd
In fear, have walk'd with quicker step; but why
Take note of this? When I began to inquire,
To watch and question those I met, and held
Familiar talk with them, the lonely roads
Were school to me in which I daily read
With most delight the passions of mankind,
There saw into the depth of human souls,
Souls that appear to have no depth at all
To vulgar eyes. I like that. To me it feels
More considerate toward the Bedlamites
Than the shrieking street partygoers
To the street people trying to sleep this night
Of victory through, unnoticing. It's
Their right, one might almost say, acknowledging
In the same breath that they have no rights.
Who needs a loud victory party
When all you want to do is lay your body
Down in a shop doorway, wrap your thin fleece sack
Around you, and chase a few winks. Morning
Wake-up on the street comes at five--with the light,
Now that Standard Time's back, and the clatter
And roar of garbage trucks and street cleaners.
"I have to get out of my negative
Comfort zone," Angelica's wise cousin
Peter Heinegg, Ph. D., joked
Ahead of the election, anticipating
A liberal landslide that would leave
Him little content for further volumes
Of social criticism. His That Does It:
Desperate Reflections on American
Culture comes with the dedication
"For Angelica--I had to dash off a
Few more jeremiads before Obama
Comes and drags me out of my negative
Comfort zone." This reminded me of a work
Whose title has always strangely intrigued
Me: Granville Hicks' I Like America.
My tattered paperback copy cost
Fifty cents in 1938. "A native
Sees his country as it is and as
It might be," the subtitle goes. And it's not
Just a rose-colored-spectacle gloss
Of a book: Nobody Starves--Much--perhaps
The chapter most pertinent to the scenes
I see on the streets as each night I pass
By--discusses such uncomfortable
Subjects as that phenomenon thought
Of, as recently as the Eighties,
As pure anachronism: the American
Street beggar. Enough for Everybody
Is another chapter. And The Freeing
Of America. And Can We Work
Together? But even with bread lines still fresh
And vivid in his mind, Hicks remains
Able to build his vision upon an America
Of known and knowable communities
That no longer exists in the world of lies
The no less honest or idealistic
Peter Heinegg must needs begin from.
Her other cousin Paul sent us a picture of
His wife Rita, a black woman, and himself,
Embracing Barack Obama, smiles all
Around. Paul had signed up fifteen hundred
Voters for the cause. Gentle line of second
Generation Americans, the Heineggs.
Paul like Peter with his brood of bright kids: So
That now, as another cousin puts it, this clan
Of transplanted Austrians has a new branch:
The Black Heineggs, citizens of the New
World that this morning has its dawn. What
I mean, O Friend! is, please don't take my lines
To mean I'm tempted to sell the New World short.
On campus the night is again cool, dark, and
Almost empty under the dripping canopy of tall
Eucalypti by the Genetics labs. Junior,
In which a character portrayed by
The present governor of California
Is seen to become "with child", somewhat
Like Mary toward Bethlehem to wend--
Only it's not immaculate conception
But expert science by brainy Emma
Thompson that works the supra-natural
Magic--had these labs as its fictional
Location. Well do I recall the ten long
Widebody movie production trucks
Lined up like supersized camels of
Hollywood Magi, as far as the parking
Kiosk. Not even UCLA Boosters,
When Bears host Bruins, boast that big
A bus fleet. A world is going on and constantly
Changing, changing. The Election Night
Sea of celebrants has ebbed. Away
From the crowds of tooting screaming white
People on Shattuck, five young blacks loiter
In the shadow of the labs. Four males and a
Girl. Smoking and quietly larking.
The biggest dude--athletic, in a STRIKE
FORCE windbreaker--talks quietly on cell.
The girl reels between them, singing softly
"He loves you," and "he loves you," and "he loves
You" as she goes. Each of her friends accepts
This news in turn, without any expression
I can detect. As I skulk past, not wishing
To spoil what appears the lowest-key
And best victory party of the night,
The girl, whirling, floats up to ancient me.
"And he loves you," she sings with eyes and smile
That say, I guess, You may be surprised by
What's coming. And I go on my way.
btp, this is quite simply astonishing, love it to bits
Better without the italics maybe?:)
Dunno, it is v v good, I had a problem with the first section but anyway it's here now!
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