SOMETHING THERE IS THAT DRAWS ME YONDER

Something there is that draws me yonder
Beyond lunch and tea, dinner in the veranda
And the clamor of supper, the frying of eggs
With oil at midnight, and the bells of the morning
Ushering me yet again into another day in heaven.
What it is I can only wonder;
I shall comb for  answers and ponder
Their curves each against the other for years on end.
For, truth be told, mine here is a world of order
Straight, nifty, almost too spick and span
For the type of character I am, with nothing the matter,
Almost conformant to the world order.
From my promontory on the ivory tower
I have peeked many a time into the skyline
Beyond ramparts, halls, citadels, fences and walls.
My mind’s eye traverses the slabs of concrete
Bypasses bridges, quarters and blocks
Asphalted roads, overpasses,
And the finishings of sidewalks
Alleyways, highways, and the haze beyond
To fly and to land I know not where
Still nowhere.

****

Ali H. Raddaoui

12/03/2016 

THE EBB OF THE FLOW

This mass of water

On the west-side border

Has been our Godfather

Three, four, score years or more

So far back as we can remember

I do recall, it was only yesterday

Our granddad in his last hour

Motioning we never ever

As much as dare to start to picture

To break asunder

Our merger with the water

For he’s our protector

From the whims of the Vandals and the Visigoths

Across the water

Over our dominions

Here and yonder

His wings hover

He’s for sure

Our bread provider

Our raison d’être together

Our day-to-day oxygen

And our number one friend

In our hour of need.

And this is our hour of need

And now all Water does is to recede

His flow bathes no more

Our cliffs and shores

Nor has His ebb in His retreat

Taken leave of our dad

Out of protocol

Or merely in honor

Of our just gone by

Golden jubilee. 

Ali H. Raddaoui

THE LAST CALL

Listen to me brother

Lend me your ears

The hour of truth is drawing near

And protocol can go to hell

I got to share my fears,

Like they are with you

Here in my inner heart

I am using my last back channel

There may be many an eavesdropper

But I don’t care one iota

And it probably doesn’t matter to you

That I utter or do not utter what I utter

And you likely know before hand

The call I mean to deliver

Heart to heart, without interpreter

Listen to me, if you care

I am speaking to you

From behind closed doors

Maybe for the last time ever

I want to say in confidence

If I may

Like we have for scores of years

Please, please, por favor, señor

Though your response will likely be “No more”

I take a chance anyhow

For this maybe my last chance

The afternoon hours are behind us

And quite frankly,

Evening has overtaken me

You know we’re well-nigh brothers

We’ve shared bed and bread

As brother with brother would

We suckled the same udder

And the cord that fed us both

Digs deep into the womb of our mother

And I have shared my everything with you

So far as I remember

Gold, land, space, water, what have you

I want us bonded as brother to brother for good

For the good and the bad

But you’re leaving me

In my darkest hour

I thought we’d always walk together

Forever, hand in hand

I will wait for you

My elder brother

To change your mind

For after all is said and done

And is nearly gone, there is no one to turn to

Other than you

Only you, my brother.

FROM BEHIND THE WINDOW PANE

From behind the window pane

Is a TV screen

Beyond which

Are fish swimming

Almost linearly

Without each seemingly looking

At one another.

A man a little ways from me

Sipping coffee and spewing nicotine

Is hitting keys with one finger

On his mini screen.

I too take a drag from my hookah

And exhale a smoke screen.

Fog from the mountain

Is descending.

Humility settles on my lenses

Half thoughts behind my eyes

Are forming in the shade of the evening

And no one and nothing is looking.

Hold on. I think I have received an imaginary note

On the screen on my retina.

How nearly exciting

It’s all cool, calm and serene

For hours on end

With water bubbles from here or there

Or elsewhere not seen

Periodically rising.

Dawn is imminent

Seasonal clouds are approaching

And the mind’s eye, the screens, and the fish

Now vanish into nothing.

Ali H. Raddaoui

 Sept. 23, 2016

I KEEP THEM SIMPLE, MY PLEASURES

I keep them simple, my pleasures

Without pretense or endeavor

I untie my shoe laces

Get rid of my socks

Place my plates on the gravel

So the Salalah night breeze

Destresses my nerve ends.

My employer doesn’t know

I am drinking tea with thyme

And feeling a drizzle on my arms

And watching the low-lying clouds

As they wrap us from up there

Without fretting for a second or an hour

About the little things of the morning hours

The misgivings of the afternoon

And the impatient evening rush hour.

I feel free not to tip the waiter

To the tune of 18%

Our eyes meet and we smile.

I holler like crazy

In the din of the youth throwing dice

And ordering chicken masala,

Cream with saffron and mango juice

The city lights flicker in the misty evening

And the evening lingers

And dabbles with the drizzle

And the drizzle dabbles with my tea

And thyme grows in my backyard

And baby mangoes sprout all around

And their roots curl up

To drink straight from the skies.

Ali H. Raddaoui

On Imran of Aleppo

Call me a fool

I most likely fit the bill

Though I will not call off

My search among the rubble

For a doll whose face and apparel

Are overly smeared

By dust settling only to rise

From the cloud and maddening din

Of orbiting debris in outer space,

Out of sheer human senselessness

All over, all around, and whichever ways the dust blows…

Son of my Mom

Wherever you care to tread is smithereens

And in the fashion of a weary trooper

You seek an angle, a corner

Of a floundering spandrel

And you lay your head

On a cracked keyboard or a pillow-like piece of brick

To take a break from the clamor of things

And in the midst of your snooze

Something itching inside your mind’s eye

Awakens you

Your instincts speak to you

“Go inspect the fresh fragments which just populated your corner

And comb the litter for your doll”

-Some pursuit with which to kill pain -

To fool yourself into thinking this nonsense will stop and that you can actually breathe into the womb of your doll so she starts strolling with you amid the shrapnel miraculously metastasizing into petals, pollen-carrying bees, and hum-drum green streets with kids walking back home from school and street vendors singing the praises of their shawarmas and Kamaruddin drinks and sundry other formerly uncelebrated little happenings and the little tender life in your palm waving her hand to another across the street amid the honking of cars by folks honoring the hustle and bustle of their lives,

And if you’re lucky

You’ll wake up for the fifth year in a row

With a slab on your chest

Dust in your nostrils

And blood gushing out of a vein under your knee

And a piece of smoldering concrete

Laying squarely on your camera

And your little baby doll

In her eternal sleep

And in the havoc being wreaked, they manage to stitch your limb, press your shirt around the bloody thing, and dust off your eyes so you can continue, against all odds, to inspect the wreckage for your living baby doll.

PIECING OUT THE PUZZLE...

And then, at times, you find yourself

Placing the time pieces

And you smile for a while

But oftentimes you find pieces right there

Staring at you

Daring you to do or undo

What’s been done with you

And the days dash to their ends

And the nights mutate into dawns 

And before you could gasp

To gasp for breath

You hit a ditch

Out of which you labor to pull your weight

Off the grime of the evening

And strain to walk

Against flat land

Using ropes and pegs

Placed by ancient and fresh climbers

On the canvas of time

And on the brink of space

All you do is sweat  

To avert small rock and avalanche

Gosh, is this what's it's all about?

In my tender years I was told

You'll clear the plots 

And place only furnishings 

Of your own choice

And you'll walk straight

To the no-man's land

Where your mind

Draws the maps

Designs the universe

Sets it in order 

And hoists an orderly fence

And you will lead a full life

With no closure or anguish in sight…

On third thoughts though

It will be wise to surmise

That the final draft

The author plots

Will prevail at all costs.

Crescendo

A long pent-up Mount Etna
Suffuses the dark Catanian sky
With charcoal red,
Numbs the alabaster
Curvy hills with flame
That slowly flows a mile
Curls, then rests,
Scintillating just a while;
Drops of dew,
Hanging on to leaves of grass
Meaning to twitch the seed
Before mutating into vapor.

Etna, you might say,
Is a local upheaval,
A curse, an earmark of hellish wrath.
But no!
It's rather a healing move,
Rectification, not cacophony,
Not self-incrimination.
Sicily's in love with Etna,
And Etna with Sicily.

Ali H. Raddaoui

LANGUAGE IMMERSION IN A TECHNOLOGY-RICH ENVIRONMENT: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

NOCTURNAL WANDERINGS

In the evening of tomorrow,

The sun will set on my canoe

And my eyes.

I don’t know where the waters will take me.

During the day, 

The river meanders

Its bed knows where it goes.

My eyes befriend its path

Salute its banks

Touch its foliage

And the fauna drinks in plain sight.

My eyes shake hands with its alligators

Greet its tadpoles

Beckon its birds…

In the dead of the night,

The river’s the river;

But is the river

The river?

Ahead of me

May be my day

But only maybe.

What turns and slopes?

How steep are the slopes?

Are there pills to dispel my fears?

And systems firmly in place to steer clear of swirls

Any hard shoulders?

How about tributaries, 

Currents running upstream,

And other natural safe exits?

No, no, no!

I shall not now

Go back home

I shall continue my stroll.