Burlesque Blood
for Mohammed and Bahaar
for Mohammed and Bahaar
I’m gonna write for you what you can’t yet
the blood
and you’ll write for me the kabob
I never cared
I love seeing it in your mouth
I’ll write a topless violet
scrubbing the tile
in the airbnb
I’ll write it so funny you can
cut measured lengths from spools
I’ll stand for the photo of
glossy blood
unstamped
on the bathroom floor
I won’t make a clown of you
I’ll laugh with you
at the blood of healing
I’ll write Khartoum so you
can say Gaza w/o saying Khartoum
I’ll direct my remarks to
the Rem Temple and you pay attention
to the Third Temple
we’re gonna do what’s never been done
we’re gonna be each other’s clothes
so Dave can thank you through me
and Brenda thank me through you.
I’ll write of people who can write me into
mine
so let me write your obligatory camp
you can be a language poet
you write your mirror in
Rapid Defense Force
so I can write the bayonet
and be self-hating
I’ll write the spear tattooed
on your arm
and send it up
send it through
I will write that I
love you more
than the sisterhood of the
traveling pants
I’m still waiting for your bemused line
about chips
for when you disappear
and when you disappear
The waste nets sag in the
clay
all tangled beneath
the eyes
tugging the nights of Tel
Aviv + New York +
Jakarta
entangle yourself—
without tough words
time contracts to center-
gag
privilege to center
haunts the camp
and fills words
running late from rain
with libel
calling our love dirty
in a dirty sky
We rapid age every day
Palestine is there where it’s not there
Violence isn’t real;
dies then greets; collapses then
studs; marries you with knitted brow; it dies
then it greets you with; oh god the power of a
sphere that scales from fingertip to skyline;
cities flooded by mirror
I want to look at you all over I want to feel
every part as you; and can’t speak of
but only point
Esfandyar why do we
dream so blond?
a green cloth
is draped over the
cloud
I've hedged
volunteering
for the present
4 the present
and foreseeable future
blonds fix the cables
of our feeling
the halakhic of the
unsaid
whose cuts stilt in
drumskin buzzer
ancient Phrygian eyes
annihilated eyes
ruptures in such
brinkmanship as
composite foreignness
noncardinal negations
the Second Thomas
Shoal on pegs that
looked like this