SCENES FROM JIDDAH

the deep dark daguerreotype
tatterdemalions will be
sleek angels

they approach cars stopped
at a traffic light
wandering nigras swathed in
black nylon abayas
carrying bundled cardboard
scavenged from dumpsters
in a baby stroller
at the corner of a walled residence
in Jeddah
they've come on a Haj visa
and overstayed it
they came from Nigeria or Niger
(they wear those same bright pagnes in Cote d'Ivoire)
Nelson Mandella freed them
for this, the plutonomy
planet-wide, kabalization of money

"[...] modern science [...] has excluded things that,
by its own pseudo-standards, have as much right to come in as have
the chosen"

the detritus is neatly arranged
in piles blown by a breeze
emulating a ready-made
the frame it dwells in

O, do not change it by sweeping
it away and putting it in a bin
Hindi musulman in blue dungarees

let it go to another ready-made
framed space in another small
universe of particulate matter
to gather in a particular quoin

estoy un axolotle hoy

"[...] [the] good in our experience is continuous with,
or is only another aspect of evil"

"[...] demons and angels and inertias and reactions are all
mythological characters"

a plate of oily fries gleaming
in the neon light placed
at the feet of tatterdemalions
at the entrance of a 24-hour
supermarket, while cars
swoosh by on the macadam

Indians stare at me with
taciturn faces in the aisles

"Like purgatory," I think.

"'existence', is a flow, or a current,
or an attempt [at what--as in radio-amino assay?]
from negativeness to positiveness,
and is intermediate to both"

the pre-dawn call-to-prayer
is like aerolites hurled at me

"Arya crackin'?" Or,
"Does that crack you up?"

A Micky Dee's beef sausage!

I wound up here
where I'm wound up
like a top or wind-up toy

unstuck in time like Billy Pilgrim

I'm an old cowhand
from the Rio Grand
wipe my ass with my hand
like a musulman

guano riddled cars
abandoned alongside the road

"What shade of black African
polluted by devil whiteman are you?"

Shuffling old black harris
greets me with good morning

"Space is an anesthetic...miles of space
numb you, put memory asleep"

"I'm going to lay a vine under
the Jew's balls for a dime"

"I don't want to die a virgin,
I want to come and die"

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
I simply remember

White Russians, West Africans
as black as jet, Chinese
with skin translucent as pearls,
whores for the taking in Al Ain