Desert Snow

 

“Egyptian Revolution” by Hani Zurob

 

 

it’s been a hot century
mummies have melted
their binding dry
gauze catching fire
igniting rebellion
informed by dead
dynasties burning in
scalded sand agony
waiting for signal
that cruel Amun-Ra
has been vanquished
the curse of the sun
lifted giving to cool
cosmopolitan minds
a new future of
ambient liberty

 

 

(originally posted December 2013)

Axis Munde

Djed Pillar of Egyptian Myth

seaborne casket
Osiris deceived
come to rest
upon far foreign shores
in a tamarisk womb
god and man become one
with the trunk of the wood
tree of life
sacred roots
deep in mortal terrain
fed by netherworld waters
mysterious fluid containing
the secretmost nourishing
words of the gods
branches touching the stars
holding orbs to their motion
conducting the soul of the flesh
to its afterlife
making of death an eternity
here was the Djed
as decreed by the axe
of a heretic king
fragrant pillar
upholding the roof of the world
the great spine of existence
till Isis retrieved her beloved
and made of his pieces
a father of pharaohs

Sahara

 

“Golden Scarab Beetle” by Angela Ooghe 

 

 

scarabs dig under dunes
bellies burned by the sand
too hot to die today

 

 

(originally posted January 2014)

Pharaoh’s Dam

“The Nile Near Aswan”
Painting by Max Slevogt
From commons.wikimedia.org

contorting the Nile

to man’s purpose

precarious power

erasing all mystical

Nubian presence

submerging great

relics of ancient

accomplishment deep

beneath secular waters

of modern dictatorship

history languid for

four thousand years

in its shifting sand graves

briefly freed by the

curious shovels of

minds wanting wisdom

abruptly returned to

oblivion drowned by

an exigent politics

pressing for progress

unfazed by its own

dormant intellect

Arab Spring

Rub al Khali – Empty Quarter Desert
In Abu Dhabi
Photo from travel.nationalgeographic.com

three years of promise
autocratic brute force
renders liberty stillborn
never to reach the sweet
season of democracy
all the passionate bones
reinterred in hot sands
a mute scalded existence
that more generations
forlorn must endure
inhospitable deserts
deter growth of gardens
easily fending off transplant
of green western notions
especially those rooted
feebly in lip-service soil of
reluctant compassion

Baskets

“Ancient Baskets”
Photo by skelter
From flickr.com

ancient craft of the hearth
weightless vessels of reeds
heavy laid with comestible time
hunter gatherer provender
stored against inhospitable
seasons of winter and drought
humble finger weaved heirlooms
served cave and encampment
arranging prehistory neatly
by light of domestic red fire
asylum for civilized impulses
nurtured by small worlds of
family and clan within still
savage spheres of existence
where pharaohs drowned babies
but missed one new basket-borne
son in the bulrushes he of the Levite
cloth grown to be shepherd for
one humble nation of men become
lawgiver unto all nations all men
for the rest of all God-given time

Cleopatra’s Needles

Paris
Photo from Wikipedia.org

London
Photo from Wikipedia.org

New York
Photo from Wikipedia.org

expatriated obelisks

ancient stone spines

standing pagan theocracy

phallic designs

battle-graved with solemnity

pulled down by lines

run from three western capitals

trophies of kinds

emblematic of how power

always declines

**********************

could the vertical holes
our arrogant plunder
left in her sacred antiquity
be consequentially
chimneys that draught
hot internecine fires
now consuming
Egyptian tranquility

Aegyptus

Photo from dailytravelphotos.com

(ye olde foole’s blog http://yeoldefoole.wordpress.com/ got me thinking…)

where does your credo derive
from the bowels of pyramids
or under recumbent paws
stretched from an age no one knows
is it Coptic or mystical
swirled up by djinns of the desert
which kin of the prophet
might have chanted his secrets
of caliphate into your prostrated ears
or do you hear secular parliaments
pressing their prose upon headlines
what guns arm convictions
you wear into battle
whose blood floods the sands
that swaddle the pharaohs

with too many versions of liberty
scrabbling for footholds on
not enough versions of freedom
which one do you choose
because all that with certainty
stands in the god-glare of sun
is that all of the choices are yours

Daydreams at Giza

Modern Model of Osiris
Photo from 3drivers.com

heavens who cut
the Palermo basalt
I beseech you to
seed me with strength
to wrest from Osiris
the atef and crook
rebuffing his escort
beneath dead hot sands
I would eat my own wheat
let it sprout from my flesh
without need of the Nile
or collusion with Set

I have heart and beard
finer than gods standing
pharaoh’s chief pantheon
given strong muscle and bone
I would shadow the sphinx
direct maat with high honor
fly farther than Horus
to organize omens of sky
so that future reveals
Amun-Ra in the form
of my incarnate mind