For Shiraz, Hafiz and The Beloved

I wake up from a stupor
melting in Dali’s clock
pouring over cacti and syllables

a letter from a frayed tomorrow
flaps its wings to the beat
of a terrified scarecrow’s gasps

and in a room that had in secret turned
a window marked West frames a sunrise
sprouting shocked beards and bowties
 
and directly opposite 
a doorway without door or wall
frames a sky and sea 

elliptical screams yearning for cough syrup
make do with triangular antidotes 
to purge remedies for unnamed poisons

a light-footed bull waves a cape 
breaks a matador into neat keys of a piano
that reluctantly whistle Hotel California
 
a vendor selling pickles in a church
redefines unnecessary wars as retch-residue 
of an intoxicated periodic table 

deflowered desalination plants
scurry among rubbled marble to weigh options:
Eliot’s wasteland or Whitman’s grass

and a half-eaten cream cracker 
offers a rat and a slice of cheese, chuckling,
‘with heart and hope empty the emptiness of existence’