Breakfast... I like the buffet breakfast, at the table in front of the window, at the Howard Johnson's on the hillside in Seoul, South Korea and at the Sheraton in Buenos Aires on the upper floors where I can look down at all the funny old buses as they scream around the corner And at the A&W in Singapore where we had waffles and root beer floats I love to watch the sun come up and burn through the morning haze and feel the energy and excitment a new day promises I like breakfast best of all. Cecil Williams 10/13/91 **************************** 25 hours in a plane... such barbaric torture can drive a man insane. Please open a door and let me step out, for a breathe of fresh aire. I'm sure those cloudy tops will catch me softly, like a fluffy feather mattress. I'll stretch out aching legs, arms, back, and oh my weary butt will issue such a flatulent sigh of relief! Cecil Williams Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - 10/16/92 ******************************** 9000 miles from home I lie sleeping futilely, when in my mind a hand flys forth, and slaps a vulgar blow across the face of my young son! In anger's vision red I fail to see; was it him who sleeps beside my wife now, or was it me? I'd quickly tear him life from limb for such a deed as this; But what if it was my own hand that delivered anger's fist? In tearful wretchedness I rise and take up midnight's pen, to write a poem such as this then try to sleep again... Cecil Williams Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - 10/17/92 ********************************* Silk machines, spinning threads from the cocoon of the worm, weaving it to glorious silk colors, patterns, textures, sewing objects of beauty Cecil Williams 9-23-91 ******************************* Magic Carpet In July in Dubai I did buy a magic carpet that can fly way up high in the sky for this rug my kids hug me each day as they play and pretend that they fly far away Cecil Williams 9-24-91 ******************************* Faces Two faces carved of wood dark forboding hard features tribal king and queen bought from a wizened old vendor in an alley in hong kong. Now you hang on my mantle; do you intensely watch the progression of my life? Cecil Williams 9-24-91 ******************************* I dreamed of missiles launched from russia, south, they went, to the land of the big red fear dasveednya, waved the Captain as they disappeared how strange to dream a dream in a tongue i do not know! Cecil Williams 9-24-91 ******************************* Alone On the spanish Costa Brava on the beach of Waikiki on the shore of Singapore I walked, alone In Times Square and Trafalgar Square and Tiannamen Square I walked, alone I did Dubai I jeeped in Jakarta I tripped to Taipei I traipsed through Tokyo I saw the sights in Seoul and still always I walked, alone Life is a journey but must always I walk, alone? Cecil Williams 9-24-91 ******************************* Arab boys, teenagers, often hold hands in public innocently, without stigma or shame, just friends. Arab men, flowing white robes bristly with beards, embrace and kiss cheek and cheek. A friendly greeting, elegant and beautiful. Normal practices in some cultures. We American men cannot do this. We are much the poorer. Cecil Williams Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - 10/21/92 ********************************* Arabic Bread Arabic bread... round like a frisbee, starts flat as melted ice-cream, but then contours like frying bacon. It's good hot off the stone, wrapped around a bite of fowl or cloven hoofed critter; but I also like it cooled off and dry. It changes from bread to cracker. The recipe for Arabic bread is thousands of years old, passed down through generations. Many of you solemnly nibble this bread as "the body of Christ" in your Sunday rituals... Cecil Williams Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - 10/20/92 ********************************* Down Town Bogota So being a father is one of life's joys? I wonder if you would believe me; You, skinny man, standing there on a street corner in the middle of the night in downtown Bogota. Small child asleep on the sidewalk at your feet, baby in your arm, as we drive by, fat from dinner, you reach out a beggar's hand, one father to another, and tug monstrously on my heart. If I feed you tonight, who will feed your ten thousand brothers and sisters beside you? Cecil Williams 11/08/91 ************************** COPS Warm night, peaceful night, all is calm, all is right... Go out for dinner at KFC walk the stores window shop during evening public prayer time all stores close for half the hour. Grab a cab home "to the Marriot, please". Almost there, traffic slows, lights flash Saudi police checking cars and people ahead, our lane. He's here. He wants to see papers. I don't have mine. Stomach grabs heart in a frenzied choke hold... "Out of the car!" In arabic, but I can tell. Freedom flashes past eyes and flys away. "Over there!" We join a forlorn group on the roadside. My passport is there, in the Marriot, just a block away, just a night in jail away, just a "He disappeared without a trace" away... "and was never seen again..." Friend and Cabbie free in minutes, they have the magic papers to prove existence legal. They flee into the night. I stand silently. Three other undocumented entitys are placed in the back seat of the police car. The dark old man looks like a poor peasant. He's afraid of being swallowed by the car, and is nearly crying. Suddenly friend reappears, waving my passport, like an important telegram, like freedom's flag waving in the wind. The Man looks at it, and waves me go. His car drives off with only three. A friend in time, saves nine...hours in jail? Warm night, peaceful night, all is calm, all is right... Cecil Williams Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - 10/18/92 ********************************* Turtles In the Ganges Eat Our Flesh To die in Varanasi and be burned along the Ganges is the dream of every Hindu. But 530 Lbs of wood it takes to cremate one whole person. Often the poor cannot afford this, it's $12, that's two weeks wages and the dead don't pay their way. Sometimes partial burns, then. And the corpora(sic) floating down the Ganges partly toasted foul the view; and wouldn't you know some enterprising turtle farmer would come to solve the problem. Snapping turtles! Bred to eat the dead! They won't bite your toe when you're swimming in the current, but if your funeral pyre fire flickers early and your pieces are made flotsam, then it's turtles you'll be feeding as down the river Ganges you float. Cecil Williams - 11/02/92 *************************** I'm a Gringo in Mexico City wandering along Avenida Reforma, or is it a Boulevard? I don't know where I belong, or where I'm going. I stand here quietly watching local life proceedings, time consuming itself. And us. Three thousand pesos; that'll buy a buck or a short ride in a cab. Make sure it has a working meter or it will cost you twenty thousand pesos and an argument. Mexico City is crawling with beetles of the Volkswagen taxi variety. New beetles are green, and use unleaded gas; "Magna Sin" as they say. Air pollution is a problem but here the new beetle mania will help. There are many mustangs in Mexico City, the early ford mach boss varietys. Someone said they were built here. I don't know. Why are there beetles and mustangs in Mexico, and 1965ish ford falcons in Buenos Aires? They still make those, it seems. I wonder which countries got the gremlin, and pacer, and the Rambler American... Cecil Williams 8/15/92 *********************** -Pb (Lead) Magna Sin the green bugs next time you wake up and find yourself standing on Reforma in Mexico City, save the world, and take the green bugs, Magna Sin... *********************VW********************** Cecil Williams 8/14/92 ************************** ("magna sin" means unleaded) Khomeni's to the left, Hussein's to the right, and 7 miles high, we took a little flight. In the black of the night, down the border we went, between Iran and Iraq, and suffered not a dent. Camels sleeping peacefully in the desert far below, each six seconds another mile would pass, that's as fast as we could go. By night the land looks peaceful, Electric cities scattered 'bout, But if by land we traveled, our survival then we'd doubt. For an american in Paris, he may live to journey back, but only the very stealthy survive a trip through Iran or Iraq... Cecil Williams 3/09/92 ************************ (Class Dinosauria) writes: > > She at play... > > Sweet taste of jasmine > Sweat from her heated brow > Dripping daintily > From ruffled hairs > Dots the floor from here to there. Cecil replies: Me at work... I drank jasmine tea in China by the cup such sweet fragrance but a weak and bitter taste... Cecil Williams ************** A green monkey walks alone in the sky, along a contrail of ice dreams steamed from the tail of the aluminium sleds that push the barrier of sound along as they whisk the grey suited, choke-chained droids of the body corporate to far away plays, on crystaline stages. Cecil Williams ************** In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia all women must wear black robes in public. They are requested to cover their heads and faces with black veils though not all comply. God, speaking though voices of wise old men who've lived in extreme desert heat for a long time, has decreed this rule and more, for Riyadh women. God forbids women to drive cars or work outside the home except in rare token cases as nurses or teachers. Perhaps most suprising to this heathen non-believer; God forbids women to enter restaurants and God politely requests women not to enter the main door at Baskin Robbins. God has provided a smaller side door, entering a seperate walled off room, with a small window, for women to order ice cream to go. Only God and men are allowed to eat ice cream at the sit-down tables in Baskin Robbins. This is for the protection and well-being of women, just ask any man here... God also forbids the drinking of alcoholic beverages for everyone. It's bad for health. But God does allow men to smoke tobacco. I guess God hasn't read the Surgeon General's report on the hazards of smoking. Or maybe She hasn't yet kicked the habit Herself... Cecil Williams - Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - 10/18/92 **************************************************** Sahara Desert float an arc across the Sahara seas tangential zeal of desert dogs a wedding of two biospheres living air and breathing sand we are only specks of one immersed within the other how many grains of sand there are in one mountainous dune, how many replicates there are in the vast Sahara. Cecil Williams 11/01/92 ************************* Sail Away All rivers flow to their mother the sea and you can't stop the flow, even dams only slow it a while. I feel a yearning, a tug within my heart; Go to sea, sail across the face of the mother. I feel an urge to return to primordial brine, plasma of our primogenitors; to sail beyond the sunset, become one with the sunrise. I want to sail far away to exotic island places. I hear marimbas in the breeze; and feel a nervous resonance within that says to go, follow the wind, sail away. Cecil Williams - 10/30/92 *************************** Trojans The "600 Trojan Circular". Inspiring name, heavy duty product. A cast iron manhole cover, Seen on the streets of Dubai. Not available in any pharmacy. Cecil Williams - 10/22/92 - Dubai, U.A.E. ********************************************* ma@cs.utk.edu wrote... > >Subway from Queens to Manhatten > People getting on > People getting off > People stand > People set > How I long to be part of the Humanity >--Norm Cecil Replies: Ferry from Staten Island arrives Gates open, and people flood out like a fresh broken dam people running scurrying racing to what? If I were the Captain of the boat... I wonder is there fuel enough to make Tahiti? Cezil del Mar *********** 6/1/96