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Can Serious Books Have Happy Endings?
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Honoring the booksellers killed in the 
bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street ,Iraq 2007                                                                                  

Essential oil contains the magic
Rubbing oil provides the balm
Cooking oil greases the pan
Painting oil colors the canvas
Burn
Fry
Soothe
Power
Saturate
Oils activate, secrete from our glands
Thicken our sweat
Lubricate our lives
Run our machinery, economy
Run our desires for freedom, speed and dominance

My favorite bookstall shuttered years ago
A kiosk spilling in stacks on the sidewalk
run by the Strand at the base of the tram to the island
where I lived with my two children

Dangerously convenient, the bookstall famously
sprawled over the Plaza
I stopped almost daily and rarely walked
away without a new treasure scored in the buzz
between work and home, in the roar of the traffic
regurgitating from the bridge at 59th and 2nd

Like pigeons, faithful readers flocked to this spot
especially glorious in the first days of spring
I would buy as many books as groceries
when the weight of your bookshelf
might be a measure of your mind, or appetites or attitudes
a presumed barometer of compatibility on first dates

To judge a man by his reading has sometimes lead to the wrong conclusions
other times to lambent lingering on the skin, foolish fluids, hardened ardors
Spines entwined in sleep or on my shelf
were a measure of cool, character or contempt
rival appreciations, one-up-man-ship of humbling variety

Book shelves in modern times have lost their status as mating display
replaced by the expansive trolling of Instagram
or flashes of palm held light screening us from each other
scrolling texts concise compressed new codes for old ideas
that  previously took massive libraries to say in so many ways
that the book stalls all over the world
were always spilling onto the sidewalks
with remainders of our best intentions
and yet unsaid conclusions
Can serious books have happy endings?

We all lost the street of books in a besieged city
bombed for oil
bombed for greed
bombed for stupidity
bombed for ignorance
Of course we lost, crush, burned, buried more than the street
We lost the booksellers, the beloved buildings, the browsers
and schmoozers going about their bartering, bantering days

Why do I revel in memories buying books in New York
in the honking roar of all those cars, trucks, taxis, limos, belching buses
speeding off the Queensborough bridge
consuming trillions of gallons
of highly refined gas
sucked up from wells under the sea, in the desert
choking, poisoning, gagging,  
as we read our books in private luxury

Imagine a sudden bomb in that spot
and there is suddenly no difference between Baghdad and New York
people buying books and dying in the wrong places for the wrong reasons
as we drive, eat, sleep, fuck, fear and go about our lives wondering how to stop the madness

Why do I revel in New York
when the real subject is the destruction of language
humanity and beauty
Because Baghdad booksellers is now only a reference
in a book of lost dreams
notations of incalculable travesty
that multiply beyond our comprehension

Still I have no place to put last night's Lyft driver  
his family still trapped in a place bombed daily
The Middle East was all he would say.
Syria or parts of Iraq. Pakistan. Yemen I guessed.
Who can really trust anyone? He was reluctant to say.

The number of countries at war was too staggering to parse
With the precision of an Oxford debater,
my driver, a handsome man summarized,
“All oil, all oil, all oil
which should stay in the ground anyway
Big bully oligarchs, profiteers and zealots.
Killing and starving.
Destroyed my University.
Destroyed hospitals.
Babies, women, elderly suffering.
The people must take back our countries, our world.”

I had tears in my eyes when he dropped me off
when he got my suitcase out of the trunk
we took each other's hands for more than a perfunctory shake
My porch light was burning, left on the weeks I was away

I felt responsible for my country's contribution
to the agony wrecked on his country
the volcanic eruption of lethal weapons
campaigns of righteous plunder.
His last words to me
“I am glad that at least one of the many people
I will chauffeur through a long San Francisco rainy night
has heard of my country.

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