AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA

Welcome back to the home front Will Hewitt. Thanks for all the good work. Please come and grace our humble home whenever you make it back to this coastline.

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TO THE GRAPEVINE NEWS SERVICE
*anticopyright*

A continuing e-mail list
of free poetry and prose illustrating the humanity of the situation and
news of the world direct from the eyes and ears of a wandering bard who
has been there, or whatever.

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AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA

Ahkmed and I are sitting on the bed with the fuzzy synthetic fiber
blankets that maybe have big pictures of teddy bears on them, that or big
kitsch roses and curvilinear decorative designs with curlicues and
what-have-you. He is telling me a story from an Egyptian film; it goes
something like this:

Two brothers want to go to America-- Amreeka in Arabic-- but they can't
get the visas and papers so the government won't let them in. So they go
to Mexico and try to sneak across the border. But they are arrested by the
border cops. As the cops take them away, they start to sing:

AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA!!!

I ask him, what does 'Sheeka Beeka' mean?

He says it doesn't mean anything. Just made-up nothing words. . . but sung
to the right tune, by two Arab brothers being arrested while illegally
crossing the U.S./ Mexican border, it means-- impossible faraway dream
reflected in the glitz of a shopping mall window display, denied.

Why were they going to America? They had a cousin working on a master's
degree in engineering at a university in Minnesota. . . They had an uncle
who owned a barber shop in New York City. . . They wanted good jobs, they
wanted to study, the watched too many Hollywood movies. . .

AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA!!!

And the border cops close in with their guns and cuffs and vans with the
blue lights on top and doors that lock from the outside, and the land of
easy money and cinema glitz and freedom of marriage fades into a Texas
sunset. . . denied.


* * *

ANGELS, BABY, SUGAR, HONEY, DEAR,
I tell you there be angels here.

They ride a visionary wind
from a place beyond all suffering
and glide through sunset skies painted brilliant shades
of orange, violet, red, pink, gold!

They drift on glittering wings,
their eyes like soft rain;
they are immune to cold, bullets, and human cruelty,
need not show ID to surly teenage soldiers at checkpoints
or submit to body searches at the cloth-gloved hands
of hired guards at Erez Crossing
or fledgling cops consigned to the lower echelons
of Ben Gurion airport security--

Angels, my dear
I tell you there be angels here
they hold no nationality or political affiliation
and fly free above religious partisans of all denominations
and if you close your eyes and call
they will lend you beams of moonlight and evening sun
to guide your way, even now
when everything you thought was good
has been crushed beneath an army boot
or torn apart in a fight between friends.

* * *

TRAVEL-WEARY RODEO CLOWN

sits with his face in a bucket of cheap beer
in plain clothes lust like anyone
his clown suit packed away in a duffel bag
gazing afar
contemplating what has come to pass
and what is yet to be. . .

and as he rolls into another town
he sings this song off-key:

What goes on, what goes down, what's up,
where I been, where I be going, and what to do?

New Orleans, New Orleans,
what do you have for a wandering child?
Hurricane came, wrecked your homes
levies broke, flooded your streets
most of your people still gone away
I blew down on the wandering wind
and

here I come looking for food
here I come looking for work
here I come looking for love
here I come looking for a home
and so

New Orleans, New Orleans,
what do you have for a wandering child?

* * *

YOU SHALL NOT BE JUDGED
by your accomplishments
by how you improved yourself
by how hard you worked
by what you got done
by how far you went
down that road to enlightenment.

YOU SHALL NOT BE JUDGED
by how popular you were
by how many people loved you
by your position in society
by how little you sinned
by how good you are
or how good you been.

YOU SHALL NOT BE JUDGED
by your skill
by your smarts
by your health
by your beauty
by your success
by your knowledge
by your money
by your wisdom
by your mama
or by how many gold stars
you got in kindergarten.

YOU SHALL NOT BE JUDGED
and found lacking
or punished
or given awards or medals--
not in the end,
not by GOD,
not by me,
nor by anyone who matters.


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That's it.