underneath the snob appreciator of
Beethoven Granados and Ellington
still making music from their mountain-holes above
as I lecture snide stoop to know-nothings
I look in the mirror and recognize I look like a beaten-up brigand
and suffering wrote a Persian novel on my face
about how Persians were subjected
to sorrow at the hands of brute know-nothings
I am of a horde nameless
an identity cobbled together
of the names of hordes
an identity of the exotic letter-sign names of brothels
existential traumas are uninteresting
compared to the condition of the Horde
every poem bubble out my mouth
is just some bourgeois confessional,
some old Jew’s vaudeville
in this universe one or two certainties abide
one is the sorrow of life,
two, that the Persians were screwed
less certain is whether my groans
are refined
or un-hewn?
you cannot know yourself,
said an Argentinean smart ass to Delphi,
exaggerating the resemblances
between his culture and the Greeks in 2013
On a more intelligent note,
a friend to David, a self-critical activist
human rights archivist
told me that I have been told
I talk to myself in my sleep
in Arabic,
I was arrested,
detained, then released all while still asnore
on a boat from Akko to Alexandria
and should see the mustache of blood
they carved onto me with knives
_
)
_
)
