A Verse from Cavafy

I searched in vain to find a verse,
From Cavafy, to speed his journey.
I imagine his back,
No doubt sweating underneath his shirt
Against the vinyl covered seat of a
Cairo taxi.

On the way to his dance class,
Unbroken almost fearful silence.

Here his echo still remains,
Tatty cushions tossed around like flotsam
Litter the living room floor,
The scene of our last love-making.

Tender kisses that I still feel on my fingertips,
his sad good bye.

The Old Photograph

What am I?
And
Where is that boy,
standing on the beach,
shyly looking away from the camera
with a cuttlefish skeleton in his small hands.
Eight years old, hair bleached white and
skin as brown as an Egyptian!

He, I, remember the moment,
the wind in his hair, surly grey sea.
Stood on another beach now,
thousands of miles away.
The same, yet transformed;
Hair darker, hands bigger,
He's not changed,
But I'm not the same.

We Leave Together

We leave together,
the boy from Alexandria and I.
Bodies still tingling from common knowledge,
Appetites appeased from the same meal.

I confess that I was slightly drunk
in the old lift on the way down,
I hope that you were too...

You brush against me softly as we leave the building
and go into the busy morning street.
The passion that we shared the night before still glowing.

Our forbidden secret somehow not visible
In the morning light.
Our hope for a love that was not to last
more than a few days.

Questions I Have

This feeling I have,
upon meeting you
speaking with you for a mere three minutes

Feels like the most powerful expression of love
that I will ever feel.

After that mossy foliage begins to form upon
my love.

It is at its most colourful,
can feel its most
in the initial contact.

Can love last more than a few weeks?

---

These people here in this trendy establishment
come from all around.

They form groups, the ones with the loudest voices
feel most satisfaction with themselves.

Each trying to impress everybody,
But it's not as simple as in Java
where the Bird of Paradise's display is visible to everyone.

Here the ways of impressing vary,
those from Italy dress to impress,
those from England act oh so perfectly,
those from Australia dress in potato sacks,
and those from the Gulf wear jewelery and look bored.

Nobody impresses anybody,
so why bother living?

On the Metro

You kissed me on the metro,
on the mouth, lingeringly.
"So sad," you said.
At 6:30 in the morning
In front of the fat man.
Luis, the boy from Columbia,
You kissed me on the metro.

How Could I?

The room was cheap and sordid,
a one bedroom, rented apartment
above a busy, noisy and dusty street.

A five minute conversation with the doorman,
about the prices of rent,
Then I entered that nest that was dedicated solely to love making.

There, on that humble bed,
I possessed love's body,
(or rather it possessed me)

for a time...

But he required pain, tearing and ripping of his own flesh.
How could I
open things that are not supposed to be exposed
in the body of such a young God?

I did not know that you had sacrificed yourself so entirely,
That the blood that you made emerge from my nipples
was just a request for me to ravage your
own delicious orifice?

We Took a Flat Together

We took a flat together,
just back from the sea.
You and your friend spent all day
and night searching for it.

You lay in my arms and I told you
I didn't want anything else in all the world.
You laughed, said "ya walad."

A mirror in the bathroom
Showed us both our images.
I caressed us both in it with my eyes
26 and 27 years.

We took a flat together,
But it ended in disaster!