What's the point of bikinis and Jack Daniels in my closet?
Rave parties for teenagers and Miriam Klink for the tired?
What's the point of bars and clubs and champagne at the pool
before noon? Secret lovemaking and certain types of cigarettes
that burn like the inner thighs of the earth? What's the point of clapping
in airplanes and getting along during turbulence?
Festivals and music halls and dim bars in Hamra where the bartender
is my cousin. What's the point of eighteen religions, let's just stop calling them
sects shall we, and five different languages tap dancing
along a toddler's tongue? Gorgeous mothers swinging
high heels and men who never age. Switzerland or Paris twin sisters
to a few streets. Only a few streets. An old chapel rubbing shoulders
with an ancient mosque. Elderly balconies of stone houses as grey as wars
and peace treaties. What's the point of a nation conceived
along a Mediterranean coast where the blue glitters
like the eyes of young fishermen? Apple trees or orange blossoms
silver green olive leaves or almond flowers
blushing like newborn brides? And rows and rows and rows
of oleander trees? Have you seen the oleander trees? I bet you never noticed
like me. I bet you never noticed.
Like me. Busy keeping my head down, my blistered feet skipping the broken bits
in the streets, I'm watching out for the holes, like bullet scars
in the body of a war torn building, like open wounds in a body that never heals,
but instead invites more disease. More and more and more disease.
How else will it know it is still alive?
