Goddess Panacea at work

He spotted the goddess Panacea,

in the superstore shopping for popcorn.

Are you making healing popcorn? He asked.

"No, regular," she said. "Well, with sugar

and cinnamon." But why? He demanded

to know her secret. "I'm watching a film,"

she responded, looking vexed. Will you cure

someone after the movie? "No!" she raged,

"I have a life outside of work, you know?"

And so this is how it happened that she 

punched the annoying man and then had to

heal his bruised lips, which was, not, at all, tough

except this all happened on her day off.

The Human Stain

Par for the course: Hollywood creeps,
threadbare couches, filming silence, cops
that strip...strippers that police: What happens
in Hollywood...
Are we flirting
with disaster?  Madonna:
truth or dare?
The human stain.

To Kiarostami

Were you the one driving us sir,
alone, and one by one asking
earnestly...what...to bury you
right there—there!—by that barren sign?
Did you desire to heal, seeking
to find in our refusals lines
that lead to roots, curing you too?
Of what, tell me, your own despair?
Perhaps you were the passenger
who rode with us, the audience—
to whom cinema's for hiding
from self, who hope to find a friend
who'd stop a bit to throw a rope.
But what's the need for this pretense?
I too had seen me in your lens.
Abbas, confess though, was that you?
If not then what are you here for,
close-up or sound take only?  Hope
celestial winds would carry you
to roots at home—or at a friend's....

*Abbas Kiarostami, the world-renowned Iranian filmmaker, passed away exactly a year ago, on July 4, 2016.  He directed, among others, the Palme d'Or-winning "A Taste of Cherry" (referenced throughout my poem), a movie about a suicidal person driving around and asking others that should he go through with it, if they'd be willing to bury him.  I also make passing references to three of his other films, "Where Is the Friend's Home?", "Close-Up", and "The Wind Will Carry Us."

Dirty Eyes

I woke up covered all 
In fragments of a dream,
All sticky like the scent of skunks
That sprayed my storybook last night.
—Wash up!  the voices shrieked 
And pushed my head madly beneath
A pool of tears until I drowned 
Again inside another dream.

So tell me whose tears were that soaked 
The leaves I'd flipped through all last night 
With every flutter of lashes so moist.
So speak but make it soft and clean
And hold my hands and smile and joke
And only then describe my nightly scene 
The screens projected on my twitching lids 
The ghastly films my dirty eyes have seen....