Nasir's Custom Cabinets ناصر خزائن حسب الطلب--- Muse's Advisory, June 5 – Nasir to Miriam:
Five years ago, I'd guess?
Gave him a dozen second chances,
then I sacked him.
Late, late, late, late, late.
I think he had a taste for drink
and trouble getting up.
Completely solid otherwise,
salt of the earth,
a real straight arrow—
but I couldn't run a business
without knowing
when and if my go-to guy
was going come in.
The last straw?
This big Russian guy
who lived in Migdal HaEmek
came in one day at 9 o'clock.
I don't know where
his money came from,
but a real big spender,
all cash, wanted built-in
bookshelves, cabinets.
Knew Yusuf's craftsmanship
and wanted only him.
Unfortunately, homey picks that day
to wander in at 10.
The rich alimai had just left.
Where does he live?
Dunno.
Bir el-Amir, back then—
near Taha's place?
Do you know him,
our beautiful poet?
The minute I see her, I'll know her,
and recognize the catastrophic rings
hanging from her tender neck.
I'll know her clear spring's glance,
the gazing dew
like the dream of a lake.
I'll know her soft velvet footfalls,
her paces measured
like the breaths of lettuce seedlings.
Yusuf had a gorgeous place there
but without a paycheck
would have had to move.
A pricey house is like a woman, no?
Without the shekels,
you can't keep her.
You're not his ex, by any chance?
Oh, what a torch he carried,
that poor man!
No other woman meant two agorot.
I'd say “Now there's a vision!”
but he wouldn't even look.
Sure, sure,
I pass him on the street sometimes.
I look the other way.
It's awkward since the firing.
But next time, sure, I'll tell him—
Miriam, you said?—
“The very lovely Miriam said hi
and left her forwarding address
with the Desk at the Margaret.”
Remission - Muse's Advisory, June 6 - Tom:
The rumor is
it's Zeus and Miriam
up at the shrine—
the first time in millennia
none of the nine
are up front
servicing the line.
It's really kind of nice,
the idea that we're staying put tonight.
The field is sprouting little fires,
and ghost tales bloom.
The stars creep lower,
thick and comforting as fleece.
I wonder how long we would sit
ambitionless
if all the muses stayed away?
Let's say Zeus talked them into
an extended family trip.
At 4 a.m., another rumor
sweeps the drowsy line
that snakes and doubles
around groves of cherry trees
and wreathes the hillsides
like a cursive script—
that Mother Memory
has come back too.
Fresh tinder crackles
inside hearts and minds;
attached leaves kindle,
chatter in the virgin heat;
white streaks crisscross
subconscious sky,
and fallow quarters wake;
lips flutter as the muses'
mother whispers by,
enspheres the shrine
and filters in the doors
where her nine daughters
with their father and his whore
sit sociably inside.
Oh, to be a fly on that wall!
But the caress of fresh recall
breathes so much witching on the field,
the soot-clothed embers hush
and settle till they're dead.
No muse
nor poet makes a sound.
At the Front Desk of the Margaret Hotel - Muse's Advisory, June 7 – Yusuf to St. Paul the White Cockatoo:
You're a handsome bird,
a little beaten up,
but I can tell that in your prime
you were a stunning buck.
Where is the concierge?
Do you expect
she'll be back soon?
Are you a talking cockatoo?—
not that I ever understood
what people think they get
from talking birds.
It would be great
if you could tell us what it's like
to be your kind,
or what you really think of us.
But all this
Polly-want-a-cracker—
“ Fuck!”
Did you say Fuck?
I must be hearing things.
Nobody at a hotel desk
is going to teach a bird
to talk like that!
Bonjour, madame.
Gut' Tag, mein Herr.
But fuck is more a kitchen bird
or out-above-the-dumpster fare.
I know.
I raised a son who couldn't
keep his mouth shut either,
and they crucified him for it.
Christ? Yeshua?
Ever heard of him?
No, likely not.
I don't think parrots
were a big concern of his,
and it was quite
a long way back.
A Straightforward Hail Mary - Muse's Advisory, June 8 – Yusuf to the Sudfa Barflies:
I left a note inviting her to meet me here for a drink at three.
Can I trust you morons not to ruin it for me if she shows up?
Most likely she won't but if she does
I want you all to be polite.
Just let us sit and talk.
Don't fawn on her or ask for intercessions.
Think of her as my ex, not a world-famous saint.
Do you fawn on me? No. Exactly.
But if her Greek comes too, here's what I need you to do.
Muhammad, you hustle him out of here—
I know you'll think of a dodge.
Keep him away for twenty minutes.
I'm planning to plead my case directly to madonna
and without any hemming or hawing.
If she says yes, good. If she says no, I'll accept that.
When you return with the Greek god
I will wave to you with my right hand if she said yes.
That means there might be trouble, so be ready.
All of you, be ready.
If it's no, I won't wave at all.
Then ask her for whatever you want.
Who's Who - Muse's Advisory, June 9 – Miriam to Zeus:
I would like you to meet him, dear,
but not today. So many years,
I'll barely recognize his face myself.
Don't pout. I'm not about
to run away with him. One drink—
and if he's not obnoxious or too sad,
I'll ask him here
for lunch one day this week.
What did I see in him?
I saw a man whose love was stronger
than his pride, who married me despite—
no, not despite,
he said that fatherhood appealed to him—
that little jam you left me in.
You didn't cuckold him:
he took your egg, your woman
and your place,
and all because you couldn't face
your own responsibility.
Yes,
eventually he left.
Do I regret it that he did? I do.
It's not because I love him more than you,
but in my mind it's possible
Yeshua might have turned his life around
if Yusuf and his steady hand
had stayed in town.
A few days after he walked out,
Yeshua and I went to Cana
for a wedding. That was when
the worst shenanigans began.
I told him, You're too young to drink,
but he devised this cockamamie plan—
one of the servers filled his goblet
from the water jug, but it was wine.
That wouldn't have happened
when Yusuf was there.
They were good for each other,
although it wasn't always clear.
They fought. They both thought
they were wiser than they were.
They huffed and blew like gales.
But counterbalance, even competition,
is so critical for males.
So yes, I wish that he had stayed.
I wish Yeshua had grown up
just one or two years more
before he struck out on his own.
Over- protective?
When she's watched her child
writhing on a crucifix,
yeah, I suppose
a mother tends to think that way.
Drink #1, Sudfa Bar - Muse's Advisory, June 10 – Miriam to Yusuf:
You look the same—
a more significantly bloated nose
and slightly rheumy eyes,
skinnier arms, skinnier thighs,
big liver splotches on your skin,
and 95% less hair—
I'd recognize you anywhere,
the essential you unaged—
straightforwardness of gaze,
simplicity of overall demeanor,
wry and kindly creases
twinkling on your cheeks.
Don't tell me how I look—
I'm still too vain
to drink one droplet of the truth!
I'm pleasantly surprised
how pleased I am you left that note.
That cockatoo, is he a trip, or what?
I hope he didn't shock you with—
do Muslims curse?—his Fuck.
Oh, listen. Here I'm rattling on.
Yes, please, Miss,
just a glass of wine,
whatever Yusuf has is fine.
It's just like in the old days, no?
Me jabbering, you holding your peace.
I like this place.
They seem to know you well.
How long have you been back?
I hear you still make cabinets.
You always had such talent,
such a knack for making each drawer fit.
But I'm beating around the bush.
You heard what happened to Yeshua, yes?
Oh God, Yusuf!
I'm sorry I made such a mess
of things for us!
Ah, thank you, Miss.
Do you know this old coot's my ex?
We used to live in Nazareth,
back there where all the churches are today.
He cut a dashing figure in his youth!
Well, not quite youth,
let's say his middle manliness.
Where have they taken Zeus?
A bakery? Perfect.
Everyone from Crete
has such a sweet-tooth!
I feel young, here, with you again.
So much has happened, bad and good.
I'll try to bring you up to speed.
But you said you had something
that you wanted to bring up with me?
Drink #2, Sudfa Bar - Muse's Advisory, June 11 – Yusuf to Miriam:
I have to laugh.
You haven't changed a bit:
delightful chatterbox.
You've charmed the barmaid so,
she wants to take you home.
You know me,
straight to the point, so here I go:
I want to re-unite.
I love you,
and I never stopped.
I dream about your touch.
I want you as my wife.
Your guy from Crete seems nice.
It's not my style to run him down.
I'm sure he has his charms.
But it's impossible for me to buy
that any other man can find
the joy that I have in your arms.
I wrote down several lines
our famous poet wrote.
Don't laugh.
You know I don't have eloquence.
But I recognize it when I hear it.
You asked me once,
on our way back
from the midmorning
trip to the spring:
'What do you hate,
and who do you love?'
Is that a lovely start, or what?
He has another one I know by heart:
After all these years,
long as the graveyard
wall is long, I still
ask the grass of the field
about you, and dirt paths.
Why should a plain man try
to gild his throat
when there's a guy like Taha
he can quote?
You know exactly what I love:
you,
straight-grained board,
sometimes a glass of wine
or two.
I'm not the complicated kind.
And hate? The very thought
that you'll walk out of here
with that infernal Greek
and I will never feel again
the way I feel right now.
I hate what happened to our son,
feel rotten that I left you both
when things got tough.
I know I don't deserve you back.
That's not the basis of my plea at all.
The only grounds I have to ask
for your forgiveness is how sad I am.
And I hate what's happening
to Nazareth, to Palestine.
I'm something of a patriot, I guess.
Israel has really made a mess:
another cage within a cage
those right-wing settlements—
Yes, honey, please,
two more—
that bullshit at the Western Wall
has gotten so far up our ass,
our farts make more sense
than our manifestos and our protests.
How does it seem to you?—
you always have your finger to the breeze.
Are you inspired to stick around
and lend a helping hand at all?
At Mahmood's Sweet Shop Down the Street from the Sudfa Bar - Muse's Advisory, June 12 – Yusuf's Buddy to Zeus:
One more mamoul, friend?
Yusuf told me half an hour—
thinks himself a man of frugal speech
but probably has yet to reach
the far end of his first parenthesis!
Are these things great?
Reminds you of the what on Crete?
Koo-rob-yay-theez?
That's a mouthful!
Ha! Ho, ho!
Great pastries still are sweet
regardless
of how dumb their name is!
No, I don't mean to offend!
Here, have another cup
of this metel-nut tea.
Koo-rob-yay-thee
is just the name I'd want
if I was reborn as a cookie
on that godforsaken rockpile
you call Crete.
Hey! Hey!
Don't get so heated up!
Just ribbing you!
Your country
can't be any stonier than this!
It's not an insult,
just an observation, yes?
Just like we both have
veins awash
with wild North African blood.
Whoa, Zeussy!
Sit down! Put that ax
back in your pussy!
This is not that rat's-nest
pirate's lair Heraklion!
Mahmood, quick,
call the mishteret!
Let's see how Cretan bigshots
like the famous Israeli
anti-riot treatment.
“Will Swap Gossip for Pinenuts” - Muse's Advisory, June 13 – St. Paul the Parrot to the Margaret Concierge:
You should have seen him.
He was shaking like a leaf.
This skinny, timid alcoholic
in a workbelt with a hammer
you could kill a horse with,
and this pathetic stammer.
Then when Zeus and Miriam
came back and read his note, fuck!
—sorry, I mean, whoa!—
oh, what a fight!
Pak Zeus said, “I won't let you go
and drink with him,”
but she just stared him down
and said, “I didn't ask.”
He turned red as a Moluccan lory,
stormed upstairs in such a fury
that the hotel shuddered
with the boom of hooves
on well-kept wood. Oh no!
He isn't gentle when he's mad!
That's why I think my having been
abandoned here is not that bad.
You're sweeter and you take my care
and maintenance more seriously.
You kiss; he gives a painful swat.
You change my water every day;
he, once a week.
I'm not complaining—
owe that god my life and more.
But once you reach a certain age
the creature comforts
take on more allure.
God, I would kill to be a gecko
on the ceiling of the bar!
That skinny little carpenter
has no clue what he's in for!
If he has any sense at all
he'll skitter underneath his ex's skirt
and tremble like a mousedeer fawn
until the coast is clear.
Drink #3, Sudfa Bar - Muse's Advisory, June 14 – Miriam to Yusuf:
I'm blown away.
I don't know what to say.
How do a fallen limb like me
and sapwood like Yeshua
wind up more illustrious
than polished heartwood
like yourself?
The greatest actors aren't even
in the audience on Oscars night
and sages say we never find
the apple of our eye in limelight.
The sad sight here:
you barking up a crab-tree
to make pie
as if desire turned a starling
to a wife.
I wish it could.
I wish I could say yes.
I wish the simple sweetness
of a man like you
could sweat
in through my knotty crust.
But I say no. I must .
The Bolt Zeus Cast - Muse's Advisory, June 15 – Urania:
The bolt Zeus cast at the flashing lights
on the roof of the van of the mishteret
went way awry, this being his first clash
with new Israeli anti-terrorist technology.
Mahmood said it shot into the heavens, west,
and looked like it was bound for Crete—
and the radar at the Polemikí Aerodrómio
picked something up, a streak
over the island and still gaining altitude.
But none of the NATO dishes tracked it,
and that would have been that
except for the elderly gentleman walking along
Saratoga Creek with his surviving sister Lawanna
after their youngest sister Ethel Mae's
funeral repast at the Noel Baptist Church
in southwest Missouri, who near tripped over
the three and a half foot long iron shaft
with its jagged forked end.
“John Cantell,”
Lawanna said, “the day you witnessed that oak
tree split in half by a hoop snake, I said
My brother is anointed for some grand
purpose—and this, doggonit, proves it.”
The very next day he drove it down to
his old friend Bryon Warren in Gravette,
Arkansas, who was a substitute teacher
as well as the firehouse chief and a pretty
fair barbecue pitmaster, and asked him
if he'd ever seen anything like it. Byron
said “No I hain't,” and they both walked it
over to Dodie Evans at the News Herald.
Dodie front-paged it the very next week
and ran a quote from Professor Pappas
at the state university down Fayetteville
who had driven up to John's to examine
the bolt and said, “The discovery of any
Zeusian artifact in the New World would
be of utmost interest. Is John Cantell's
forked shaft of iron actually a projectile
hurled by the supreme god of Antiquity?
“I would have to characterize that question
as one whose entertainment value must
considerably exceed the archeological.”
Pandemonium - Muse's Advisory, June 16 – Thalia:
They hear the shouts—
Greek, Hebrew, Arabic—
and then an Uzi burst.
Two barmaids tumble
out into the street
in time to glimpse
two cops charge past.
Yusuf and Miriam leap
to their feet as a siren
adds a dizzying soprano
to the wild cacophony.
Had the intifada
broken out again?
the absentees been chased again
by gunmen on the pine paths
of the abbey of al-Mujaydil,
where figs and pomegranates
sprout and wither on the roof
of the abandoned chapel?
“No, no! It was a Greek!
He tried to kill an Arab man
in Mahmood's Sweet Shop—
over nothing, just like that!
So Mahmood called the cops! “
“It was a Cretan, not a Greek!
I myself heard Mahmood
very definitely say Crete!”
“Crete is Greece, moron! Shit!”
“Now you're an anthropologist?”
The green-grocer swore
she heard hooves clattering—
or was it just the rat-tat-tat
of small-arms fire
making the stucco
and cobblestones chatter?
A cabbie swore he saw
the fleeing Cretan, Greek, whatever,
leap a dozen cars and vespas!
A pensioner snapped
a picture on his cell
that showed beyond
a shadow's doubt
lips flecked with spittle
and the widely flared
and foam-frothed nostrils
of a Jedran stallion
in a fury, or aroused.
Pandemonium II - Muse's Advisory, June 17 – Thalia, cont.:
Miriam shoots Yusuf a terrified look
and dashes out
into the swelling crowd herself.
He tries to stop her
but the raucous mob's too thick.
Up runs Muhammad
with a crudely bandaged
hand and head,
a broad grin fattening his beard.
“I did it, man!”
he cries and slaps his buddy's back.
“This drink's on me, yes? Yes!”
Crestfallen, Yusuf trails him
back into the bar.
The owner nods from the back room:
the barmaid bypasses
the usual Gold Star,
pours Tabor to the brim
for them to toast:
"Another victory! To Palestinians!"
The jubilation's so contagious,
Yusuf half forgets
he's been rejected;
then shrugs and thinks,
"Let liquor do its job."
No one goes back to work.
The bar fills up, high spirits multiplying.
Every couple minutes
some new messenger bursts in and cries,
"They shot him dead up by the Margaret!"
"He's gotten clean away! The mishteret
have given up!"
"The cops were just about to nab the Greek,
when this half-naked henchman
sprang right out of nowhere with a club
and knocked the Jew swine off their feet!"
Back to the Gold Star, unfortunately.
Then no more wine at all,
as Yusuf and Muhammad's pockets
both grow bare of sheqalim.
The euphoria tatters,
and night, so ignorant of victories,
undresses just as quietly as ever.
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