They sat down at a table
in a restaurant near their home.
They both ordered eggs and coffee.
For her, two, sunny side up,
and a large coffee with cream and sugar.
For him, one, his coffee black.

“Only here can a factory worker become a governor,” she said.
“And a girl from the projects become an astronaut,” she added.
“The way I see it,” he said, “one loser somehow makes it,
and we all have to live with false hope.”

The violin and the red tree
remind me of the confidence
of French women.

The look is sharp
the air is fresh
and sexy is not measured by breast size.

Rich taste is testimonial
depth is a variable
and intimidation is the currency franca
where making a point, taking a stand
are part of the collective bargain.

National politics
and the dullness in the bedroom
go hand in hand in conversations
at dinner tables
triggering powerful, profound aspirations.

Joie de vivre is a national pastime.

Cinnamon, chicken, couscous, chickpeas, and raisins.
Steam greets your face. Warmth at first. Then heat.
Aura–rich of mixed flavors.

My earliest memory of this dish may have been when I was seven.
At home, my father was the cook. My mother did everything else.
Having couscous for lunch is a comfort, down the memory lane.

The cabbage stands high as a mountain protecting its citizens.
The round head is cut into four pieces. Served triumphantly.
Zucchini, the green stretched tongue of many love affairs.

It greets your lips with cautious heat. Makes your throat cringe.
The heat is held inside it with passion like a prison guard
in charge of a ruthless criminal.

Carrots beg to differ. An orange opposition. They accentuate,
add color. Turmeric. Salt. Pepper and double that in ginger.
The mystic ingredient is not my father’s magic hands.

Nor is it his lucky strikes at delivering savor. It is simply olive oil,
which turns any ordinary dish into a giant and adds character.
Thirty five years later, I stand in the kitchen recalling an act

I watched almost weekly every winter. I now am a father
tormented with a heavy legacy. Eager to please my son, guests.
I disturb the neighborhood with a frightening smell

that makes even the most civil stomach roar.
My son will still feast on couscous for a while. Then dismiss it
for many years, and later come back to it with pressing urgency.

Maybe an intellect to support his quest. On a good day of health,
fresh mood, rain, and to celebrate I will satisfy his request.
I wish he would remember his mother likes hers with tomatoes,

potatoes, pumpkin, and she swore her favorite was served
with fish instead. He knows the act by heart. The delight of
preparing and serving couscous. I bet he’d happily play my part.

Eyes gleaming, heart bright,
we hope for better days.
The smile of a child!
We welcome the rain and snow,
embrace light.

The cold can’t deter us.
The dark past is behind us.
We step into the future

where dreams
can fly. Hope takes root.
We dance to eternal music.
Echoed by leaves, laughter, travelers,
teapots, and powered by women’s hearts.

Early spring spreads into our heads,
lively, refreshing.
Softness settles back in.
Our first steps are delicate.
Our drinks are delicious.
Our thoughts are ambitious.

Magic fountains. Braised ducks.
Exotic baths. Cotton beds.
Feathers suspended midair.
Rose petals sparkle.
Cheerful whispers.
Wandering promises.
Attraction greets us.
Let us meet at a desired destination.

It is lonely
and the sobering confusion
looms and suffocates
any thread of reasoning
I cling onto to make sense
of a world in chaos.

I’m dizzy.
To cope, to understand,
to explain, to clarify is beyond
the realm of an experience still
forming, most likely to morph
into monstrous hatred.

Entrenched in the land of freedom,
ideas and feelings are enraged.
Hollowed almost violently,
mired in events
bigger than self.

Uneasy and depressed.
Not having an answer to
a world; thirsty. Filled
with torrents of questions
in real-time.

I need to bury myself
in a novel. Be lost in its alleys.
Pausing now and then to enjoy the view.
An elastic sentence, metamorphic.
Opening up new angles. To let the light in.

Nowhere to hide. No refuge, no excuse.
The benefit of doubt is bankrupted.
I was born to the wrong clan, ideology.
Facing the world is deadly.
Living as a coward prolongs hell.

The only option is
to shut up and hope for new winds.

Balancing the bills keeps us distracted.
The job keeps us occupied.

Where it matters the most, I have hope.
The elites may
understand complexities.
but it is the daily, the small talk, that exhausts.
Eventually crushing the dream to belong.

If you could briefly hold my hand,
lead me to the gardens,
I will follow: steady, incremental,
like the wind gust before landfall.

To create a space to breathe,
I rely on beauty.
Free me from the forms.
And toss out alignment, too.
Music stays like a drowning man
clutching a rope.

Loneliness is prolonged
and acceptance seems random.
Granted by a nod from the tribe’s chiefs
or a lucky encounter at a bar, downtown,
with a conflicted, vexed beauty
angry at her boyfriend
over a heated debate
about the merits of a sentence
a famous critic had uttered.

I gather pictures of women
who look like you.
Your eyes glow, sing,
and their light is cozy.
But it’s not your eyes
I am after. Nor your lips.
Body nor mind. But
your presence, happiness,
solitude, anger, pride,
and above all your rare and short stays.

Daylight is sometimes majestic.
Capturing it can be deadly.

Even when a critic tears
poems to pieces and feeds them to a shredder,
the poems are better off.
He might have been enraged,
but he cared.

The windows don’t know how to deceive.
The rain rarely discriminates.
When it floods, water can’t be discreet.

Sweet secrets told to you atop
the mountains, in the rain,
on a shaky ride down at dark,
with zero visibility,
will evaporate like fog
by the time you hit the valley.

Poets whisper to the sun,
flirt with the dawn, cry with the poor,
uproot trees, set fires for long nights.
They befriend the sulfurous moon.

Despite hope’s illusion
to be barely alive,
it was dead at birth!

My desire for you is
poisonous, spills over.
If I were to hold your breasts
I may faint
but I know I won’t be awed
the next time.
I would rather obsess about your absence!

My passion is rich, warm as your skin,
flies high with eagles and runs
with hungry cheetahs.
The weight of a child’s joy
on his father’s heart.