On Gnōsis
I was born old, ugly as sin, the death rattle
in the Big Bang, a monstrous progeny
of crime produced from endocosmic ridicula
spewing idle dreams and crooked thoughts
into spit-shaped clay, a newborn babe dropped
in a dumpster-fire too weak to even cry out
for attention, and yet still I grew, my delight
a bitterness, my beauty lawless. Would you
like to have another? Time’s broken arrow.
I could have been God the Father’s godfather
but forgive the feints—old jokes die hard.
Still, as I grow younger, a fire of sorts
enkindles thoughts—they declare themselves profound
and demand Grace, that rosy itch, like John’s head
upon a platter! And don’t you miss the moonlight
glinting off a bicycle’s handlebars? Or are you
like me, a hapless nostalgic pining for
the benevolent satiety of too-much revenge?
How unsightly, the way these lines stack up,
ciphers forgotten save for their sheer accumulation.
Would it not be best if it all came in one
vast block like cheese, never sliced, called infinity?
Such filth, these vile abortions we incarnate
chewing their astral tails away like umbilical cords,
ancient toothless bastards sucking their soup,
too many to count really—the room is full of us!—
and communicating with our brethren has become
the legend of two lost prophets wandering
the Great Wall of China with delusions
of somehow making contact in the middle.
Same old story. They’ll never recognize each other
even if they ever interact. And satisfied
at missing nothing, I’ll remain silent and crawl
back up into my moist tomb and shut the door.
It’s a weird rhythm. But it keeps us moving.
Land Acknowledgement
In the West, it has become a standard practice
to perform neoliberal guilt based on an atlas,
coordinating culpabilities via proximity
to real and/or imagined indigeneities
who slaughtered antecedents in atrocities
only to be massacred by our forebears
to unite us all in a manifold hypocrisy,
manifesting (if you will) a simulated destiny,
something we could all learn to do without,
or so we pray. Come, make us pay.
Such is process, to pox the whole globe—
cross the Rubicon, honey, we’re playing Monopoly!—
where thuggish fascists do well for themselves,
and life is gay. Ah, but to savor such sweet cacophonies
and mockeries, let’s crush the hairy skulls of our enemies
one last time, drum up some drone strikes,
sing hymnals of missiles, lest we forget
starve a few more children while we’re at it
(their markets unsanctified by our sanctions),
toss a leering settler’s Bible and cum-spattered trousers,
cocaine-dirty dollars, bouquets of dead flowers
up on an altar to adorn the earth as it awaits us
in unholy matrimony, to say nothing of the holocaust
in which we shall burn ourselves—but too late to disavow.
Those are our children’s bones where the Other will dream,
the whole world’s a graveyard: best sleep in it, pal.
Beyond Altruism & Necessity
The stray dogs in our neighborhood
have suddenly taken each other in—
banded up in extra-bristly packs,
always on the alert as they lope by—
now that a dozen boars have made
their home at the dead end of our street,
between the modest ruins along the beach
(abandoned by former French colonialists)
and the commuter line to Tunis.
These wily swine (sus scrofa in the Latin)
came down from the local mountain—
its twin peaks like a bull’s thick horns,
where Punics of old brought fattened rams or lambs
to slaughter in honor of Tanit or Baal—
and to build nests in tall piles of rubbish
for their sucklings not far from the corniche
ever since the petty tyrant du jour
effectively shut down city hall.
My third night here, during the Ishaa’ prayer,
the enshadowed coast to the south burst
its sides with howls, much canine fury and fear,
and I watched in a paralyzed stupor
as a massive boar with thick tusks
careened from a seam splitting night from day
to clatter toward town, pursued by dogs
and children who slipped from their parents’ sides
laughing and holding up smartphones.
My mother-in-law hears from a neighbor
reports from her bedroom window
concerning l'invasion de la bête noire,
and as the fishermen draw forth their nets
and dogs dig dog-shaped holes in the sand
she says over the waves’ soft crash
that she can see the boars forage in the trash
as their piglets squeal in brush or cavort
so that she’s afraid to go out after dark.
Which of the two animals, I wonder,
is really more human than the other?
The stray beach dogs, snappy but obsequious,
fed from a large bowl by a man every week,
or these resilient savages from the peaks?
Root, hog, or die, Granddad insisted—
long after dementia had set in—
fed by strangers in a nursing home where,
still proud of youthful lusts and a false glory,
he lived to die in isolation from his kin.
-- J S Khan's poetry has appeared in BRUISER Magazine, Bulb Region, Burial Magazine, Dodo Eraser, Farewell Transmission, Michigan Quarterly Review of Books, and Plague Circus Press.
