Bedouin Woman Takes The Leftovers

He said goodbye to the barber, nodded to the man with silver hair in his chair getting a trim, reconnected with wisdom and daily affirmations passing an old man smoking his Cuban cigar in a shaft of sunlight.

Well heeled fashionable Cadiz women with and without their children in wheeled prams shoveling sweets into their mouths paraded past going to the Iglesia de San Juan de Dios with it’s splendid wide inlaid stones, lined with palms, flanked by cafes with ‘Novelty’ metal chairs holding tired tourists and relaxed natives smoking, drinking coffee, talking in multiple tongues, eating soft hot pastries, studying creased paper maps filled with diagrams of historical reference with their foreign furrowed brows watching humanity find their way in the world.

White shirted waiters scurried from table to table. They placed their orders with women behind counters wearing white laboratory technician coats. The lone plaza resident, a tall black bearded madman with untied tennis shoes roamed the perimeter looking for someone to hustle, looking for Charity’s leftovers.

A crude hand painted sign around his neck read, "I am a gypsy. Our people came here in the 9th century and we're not going away."

He remembered the Bedouin woman covered in black who hovered near him in Marrakech when he had chicken, rice, bread and water on a side street. He sat away from chickens turning on gas fired circles. He was always living on the edge of somewhere else in the world and understood her motivation. Hunger.

She approached him with her hand out. “May you have blessings.”
He answered in Arabic. “May you be well with a long life. I’ll leave food for you.”

She waited across the street trapped between parked cars watching through slits in fabric. Her eyes were the world. He watched her watch people eating. She was calm and silent. Wild cats roamed their malnourished skeletons around eaters’ feet staying away from a waiter’s swift shoe. She watched and waited.

He fed abstract scraps to cats. They fought over bones in the dust hissing and dragging bones to shelter. The Red City was full of dust as caravans full of salt, gold and slaves moved north across the Sahara.

Feeding cats became a ritual in Morocco for him. A passion for the hungry animals. They were all in the same fix, roaming, lost, looking, trying to survive in desperate circumstances. They were everywhere.

He didn’t eat everything. He left the table to pay and she closed in. Her blackness swooped like a dream across the pavement. They were a team. His going off to pay meant the waiter couldn’t clear the table because he had to figure the charges. She was free to collect everything.

Like magic she produced a plastic bag from under her black robe, picked up the plate and dumped everything inside; bones, meat, rice, tomatoes. The works.

She was fast and efficient. She glided away and took up her position across the street in shadows.

He paid and walked past her. They locked eyes. He was naked, she was covered in her belief. Her invisible clear eyes flashed a brief recognition and he nodded. She smiled under her veil. Their relationship of mutual respect ignored verbal language.

Push My Green Button Honey

-Push my green button to verify your selection, he laughed.
-You mean the green tree on your forehead?
-Yes, that’s the one. Go ahead. No fear. Push it.

She reached up touching the green evergreen tree with her right index finger. It was the symbol of the letter “A” in the middle of the word Grazalema on his black knit cap.
He felt her finger but her touch was too light to do any good to take her anywhere.
-No, go ahead and push it.

Her olive eyes were scared.
-I don’t know if I want to do this.
-You’ll never know unless you try. Be brave. Give the tree a solid shift.
-Ok here goes, pressing with renewed energy. Magic from the tree entered her and she disappeared.
He knew where she was, raised his finger, touched the woven tree thread and vanished.
Marsha was standing on cobblestones in the Plaza de Espana staring up at the Grand Penon dolomite mountains when I arrived. Her smile encompassed blue sky and she hugged me.

-What a great hug he said. -Welcome to Graz. He breathed clear air.

-Wow, she said, dancing in a circle. -Look at this place!

It felt sublime being back in Sierra de la Grazalema. The old Roman village hadn’t changed. Penon trees were decorated with streaming white icicle lights, dull pink and white edges of the municipal government buildings below the white round clock face looked fresh, metal cafe chairs were stacked next to a faded white chef billboard sign, heavy Moorish wooden Catholic church doors with hand shaped Arabic brass knockers were locked, battered brown maple leaves floated along the street, children played soccer in the open plaza between bolted green benches, widows in perpetual black scurried from shops to their white homes pausing to chat with friends, groups of unemployed Andalusian men mumbling in low tones stood near stone potable water faucets spitting water in weak winter sunlight, sparrows flitted to balconies for crumbs and eagle vultures drifted in high thermals.

-Shall we have a look around? he said.
-Sure, why not.
-Where would you like to go?

The Girl On The Train

The Moroccan girl with wild brown hair tied back is not on the train as it leaves a white station.

She sits on her haunches. Her bare feet dig soil, grip small earth pebbles as exposed root structures dance with her toes.

Her toes are her extended connection where her shadow lies forgotten. It spreads upon vegetables. They wait below her. They prowl toward late winter light.

She is not on the red and brown train that zooms past green fields where her sheep in long woolen coats eat their way through pastures after a two year drought.

She is inside green the girl with her wild brown hair pulled tight. She is not on the train hearing music, eating dates, reading a book, talking with friends or strangers, sleeping along her passage or dreaming of a lover.

She does not scan faces of tired, trapped people in their orange seats impatiently waiting for time to deliver them to a Red City in the desert. Her history’s desert is full of potentates sharpening their swords, inventing icon free art, alphabets, practicing equality, creating five pillars of Islam and navigation star map tools, breaking wild stallions, building tiled adobe fortresses, selling spices and writing language.

She is not on the train drinking fresh mint tea or consulting a pocket sized edition of the Qur'an. She does not kneel on her Berber carpet five times a day facing Mecca in the east.

She does not wear stereo earphones or listen to music imported from another world, a world where people treasure their watches. Where controlling time is their passion for being prompt and responsible citizens to give their lives meaning.

She is not on the train and not in this language the girl with her wild brown hair tied back with straw or leather or stems of wild flowers surrounding her with fragrances.

She is surrounded by orange blossom perfume beyond rolling hills, cut by wet canyons along yellow and green fields, where her black eyes penetrate white clouds in her blue sky. In her open heart she hears her breath explore her long shadow, causing it to ripple with her shift. Her toes caress soil and she is lighter than air, lighter than a feather of a wild eagle in the High Atlas mountains far away.

She smells the Berber tribal fire heating tea for the festival where someone wears a goatskin cape and skull below the stars.

It is cold outside. Flames leap from branches like shooting stars into her eyes and someone plays music. It is the music of her ancestors, her nomadic people and she sways inside the gradual hypnotic rhythm of her ancestral memory.

She is not on the train. She is inside a goat skull moving her hoofs through soil.
She moves through fields where she danced as a child seeing red and yellow fire calling all the stars to her dance and she is not on the train.

Writers On Steroids

“Ok,” I said to the Senate Committee investigating Writers On Steroids in Room 2143 of the grand facade off Bluejay Way. They stared at me with jaundiced eyes. They shuffled paper. An old tottering fool of a Grand Inquisitor pounded his gavel. I remembered him from the McCarthy Era and feared the worst.

“You are accused of taking steroids to enhance your writing performance. We have evidence from editors, hacks and wan-ta-na-bees that you and perhaps thousands of your ilk slaving away like drones in the dungeons of mediocrity, dreams, illusions and journalistic heaven on word machines have boosted your word output through the use of banned, I repeat, banned substances. Say it isn’t so, say it’s all a lie, a misconception, hearsay. What say you?”

I took a drink of pure spring water from mysterious unfiltered Alaskan lakes. A naked trout started dancing on the table in front of me and I laughed. “Ha, you're joking aren't you?” I stuttered, spitting water all over the microphone. It shorted out and I was forced to use my voice minus amplification.

“Of course I sue steroids, why, in fact, in truth of fact and fiction I sear the meat on your grill with my defamatory remarks. The pills are beautiful and come in a variety of colors, like rainbows. They open doors of perception with wonder, shock and awe. I have irrefutable evidence that your committee grooved the approval of these pharmaceutical delights thanks to the huge financial contribution by multinational drug companies to keep you in office. It's well known this country, let alone sports “heroes” have been programmed to ingest chemicals.”

I jumped on the table with the naked trout and started yelling. “We are ALL filled with chemicals you idiots. It's the American way of life. It's the new mantra, Run, Read, Write with Greater Efficiency and Prose the Poem with diligence and fortitude using Elements of Style. It’s the style baby, the demolition charge under your hat, Jack.”

“Order, order,” yelled a bailiff approaching me with caution, mace and industrial strength handcuffs. “Down boy!”

They shackled me. The Grand Inquisitor handed down my sentence. It had a noun, verb and object.
“Take the prisoner to Cuba and give him an orange jump suit. Interrogate him and deprive him of his writes.”

I screamed in anguish as they dragged me past a pharmacy filled with promise, hope and salvation. “You haven’t heard the last word from me. Where’s my trout?”