all I want

I was blinded—she

was the last thing I remember

before I picked up this pen—

the moon waxing anew

sneaks past the horizon late tonight,

and the night chill hurries me home. 

(pack these words with warmth)

I know it comes

when it comes;

goes when it goes:

I retrace my steps,

look back and she's the first,

the first I see in this sea 

of anchors, gold made looks my way

when I don't know what I want to say

but know I want to it to be said—

she was the one,

she knew just the right word

yet had let me be the one, her poet—

and audience was everything just as fair,

attentive to her every movement and look—

"a woman's heart 

should be so lost in God,

that a man has to seek him 

to find her"–by I always forget who

except that it was written on her profile

and it's truth on my heart—

and so now I sing or write 

my heart out in whys and hows

everywhere and anywhere,

over every honest face—

though I was raised to lower my gaze

by my mother, and my father said:

"the first look is ok", the second

is the devil's I thought then

and think now to make sure

the first one really counts

but there was no giving into

her eyes, I was taken
I was born where I saw,

I saw my self a glow,

I saw a miracle and a blessing walking

I saw home honest to god—

there's a famous song 

from Egypt in the 60's,

Umm Kalthoum's enta 'omri (you are my life),

and I remember hearing the song one day;

"what I saw before my eyes saw you, 
my life at loss—

they'll count that against me—how!"

and I remember it,

the moment, driving, turnpike,

southbound sun in my eyes;

"you are my life whose morning

with your light began",

and I understood how language was,

why it works so much better

than we could ever know

and why she deserved the most of me

and even if I never saw her again deserves

postmodernity would never

have it any other way,

but she wouldn't at all,

us poets, leading the way,

or having something less

poetic to say, or more—

and how could I blame her

when she always got what she said wanted

but it wasn't birth

or a rebirth or worship or worse,

it was the crash of two 

star-crossed ideologies,

but before we ever knew of the names

that tear us apart;

we were made for each other

apart from each other, each our own,

for a purpose I told her vainly;

captured my moon in her track—

in Arabic we say ash-shamsu

wal-qamar (the sun and the moon)

and there's no marker for gender here, but

modern majorities regard them in

what becomes opposite to the Spanish:

el sol y la luna; masculine, then feminine,

default mode of description, then,

essentially inadequate description—

but I was hers and she was mine

and, so unfathomably there

"to not grab at water"

she would teach me,
it doesn't work, and

I remember it, and 

everything I can to help me—

she would remind me

to pray, but didn't, I guess

until she wished it all back

I think I would remember things

too much and she would forget them,

trained to cheat off each other—

or maybe heaven was a memory

and we love to forget 

to each remind the other,

with each touch and breath

I could do anything 

in those moments;

time didn't slow around her

I did it, I wanted it all—

in her eyes and in my mind's

each time I witnessed a world

explode into time and space:

a heart beat true

the sun rising

the moon circling

the tides ebbing

stars everywhere,

everything beating its beat—

until only all of me 

is worth it, worth the wait;

trusting in what must come,

not knowing how at all but certain

to the hollow of your bones,

no matter what else may—

the pale dawn's light 

looks like rain now, maybe not;

and there are green buds of a tree

I want to know the name of

and maybe I do, maybe I can remember 

remember everything

but it won't matter,

it won't matter what I know—

it's what we say, today—

I can stare into the sun still