A note on the “Apple Anyone ”Series”: the key words in these texts are all English words derived from
Arabic, or words suspected of being of such derivation. At a certain point these words felt as if they were
becoming segregated or ghettoized by the compositional process– which is where Shakespeare texts 
came in as their basic structure, as the conservative core and pride of the English language.

The “list” of words at the end of each poem thus becomes a sounding of the music of interdependency.
 

      Apple Anyone 1

Shall I portray you as a blazing afternoon?
The freaking almanac didn’t forecast amber rain.
Wind whipped to shreds ballyhooed Doppler readings
As your typhoon tongue lashed my latest wants.
So the sun’s golden boasts are bested by bullying clouds,
each of our arsenals costing us our alchemy.
Yet no cloud shall dim my love’s manic barbs.
Neither will my eyes become gauze, or ghouls;
no Nothingness shall brag of drowning me in Styx.
A single whiff from the carafe of years suggests there is more
to speech, a crocus thrusts at the barbarian of description.
As long as its a carob for a carob, a copt for a copt, bedouins
lead us far into an arch-alcohol we’re the ones to ferment.

    almanac    typhoon    arsenal    alchemy    gauze    ghoul 
carafe 
     crocus    barbarian    carob    Copt     Bedouin    alcohol 
 

Apple Anyone 2

You are more orange than oranges, more red than blood orange.
Coffee masks enervation, I’m still awake, checkmated by night;
life packs in too much racket to know calm’s truest state and form.
And during the day its way too hot, thanks to the pushy sun.
Thus the safari is unshackled from its safety net.
So rice is checked, guitars jar, spinach is lacquered in a can.
In the constant flux of things all good from goods must fail.
But you do not mask from sight those gifts you possess,
alchemy on a wavy mattress among lightly waving fronds.
In words to you groves will always glow, the purpose
of so many night presences suddenly made lilac.
So long as poets pick fruit, these hands pick you.
 

   orange    coffee    checkmate   safari    rice  guitar    jar   spinach 
    lacquer   mask   alchemy    mattress    lilac 
 

Apple Anyone 3

As big waves flip out onto rocky coast so our days finish abruptly.
The ocean’s tributaries show their dhows: appearance is a cipher.
As childhood, that deep alembic, in floods of light
crawls to maturity, where which to crouch, calling itself a King.
And as we change positions with what was finishing at our birth
hope builds its harem in serif, like rice collecting saffron.
A guitar-shaped bench trembles to its own rhythm!
Light wants to fix in place the flourish it dabs on things -
this great esplanade of sesame, magazines wide,
something wished for, made of marabout and lime.
As names of fruit nourish unusual bits of unconscious truth.
Nothing is born but for the sword to assassinate
and still, in their hiddenness, from red shift to red shift
I praise your alcoves, and the oceans wildest dilations. 

    dhow   cipher   alembic   harem   serif   saffron   guitar   sesame 
     magazine    marabout    lime   assassinat    alcove
 

Apple Anyone 4
 

I’m not going to dignify the proposition
that this our hazardous union of minds

has flaws - a kiss is not a kiss
which scuffs if it finds some scuffing.

I’m talking about a tattoo in thought,
something that can’t be erased by monsoon’s anger.

When you garb yourself for love, think sequined sash,
damasked but garbled minaret:

Something that will appear a star for all those sailors
of unknown worth, like us, fleeing the latest massacre.

Constancy is no clock’s fool; like kohl to lid
ear clings to lip until the drop-off point of doom.

If you can cinch it that I’m wrong, I’ll shut up, 
drop all my claims concerning the human carat.

hazard    tattoo   monsoon    garb   sash 
damask 
minaret   massacre   kohl     carat
 

Apple Anyone 5

Why is it my words always touch this particular?
I stay afloat on language I’ve plucked from Sufi summer,
my trysts with words the same one wooed, mascared, talced.
Though the lute of a genii is as outdated as last year’s atlas,
though a belated troubadour sings of checkmate move by move,
yet no monumental rock shall outlast these our silly constructs:
that which glints brightly in such tariffed compositions 
is a gazelle among orange groves, a mecca in the mouth.
Here comes a tabby whose scratch will leave a lasting mark,
or else a taffeta from a quarter of town recently hit by bombs,
or all the cotton ever picked, the laborious wizard enslaved inside you.
Why is it my words always touch this one particular?
As the sun is daily both bouncy and flat so we transact
only what we can minaret, darting among damasked ruins.
 

Sufi    mascara    talc   genii   atlas   troubadour   checkmate    tariff   gazelle 
orange   mecca    tabby   taffeta   cotton   wizard    minaret    damask 
 

Apple Anyone 6

To go on in an ideology that is patrolled by admirals
all praised to the hilt, each awarded triple scoops of sherbet, 
sugars gushing in banana and lime, or to grab up pails against 
a whole Mediterranean of pain, and by opposing, drain it?
The road to Baghdad: it is an orgasm religiously sought.
To slow my brain and by night to say we stopped all that:
a saffroned vulture scuffs the dirt it lands in until every man
looks inward, acknowledging his own mulatto ground
and the thousand gauzy masks our bodies are mom to.
To slow my brain - to slow my brain!
And during that slowing to succumb to a new fantasy,
a woman with corneas like coffee beans, a coiled mortality
uncoiling, amalgam, not amalgam, that is not a jackal -
a  vocabulary, a calamity, and at last, a casualty list.

admiral    sherbet   sugar   banana   lime    Baghdad 
saffron 
mulatto    gauze   cornea    coffee     amalgam
 

Apple Anyone 7

I lost contact with you for just one morning and all the music 
turned to arsenic, in my mind I barely maintained your image.
Now, while you dream of ponies, petals gush from your eyes:
apricot o’clock, orange o’clock, after which comes lime.
So I am partly blind and partly sighted, like those blue shrubs 
reputed to be filled with elixir of bird when all they really do 
is interlock with whatever happens to pass, in pure contingency, 
and its mostly birds, and grains of sugar, and amulet candy.
Over these shifting truths the mind has no hold, our hands
liming mascara into the tabbied skin of twilight, talismanic hour.
Mountain top and salt spray gush, all part of your massage.
Don’t be naïve: they can send assassins by guitar too.
Yet quietude fills the carafe of hours, orange fills that quietude, 
there is nothing yet to mourn: you are here, it is all still here.

guitar    arsenic    apricot    orange    lime   shrub   elixir   sugar  amulet    candy    mascara    tabby   talisman   gush    massage