ravens chase hawks hawks chase ravens mockingbirds chase ravens hummingbirds chase mockingbirds mockingbirds chase hawks ravens chase ravens hummingbirds chase ravens and hawks and mockingbirds chase roadrunners who only turn and run   but to be a hooded crow, magpie or Eurasian kestrel playing pursuit in Tehran these days is risky   there’s a fat black bird that’s been dive bombing the city every day for weeks, playing no game except obliterate and kill   so birds have stopp

the morning slips under a milk spill on blue carpet sky a sun-cloud cocktail of strange taste and feeling   a dim world where shadows brighten, this dusk-daylight when the nocturnal open an eye and the diurnal let an eyelid slip   stuck in this muted interface the world is gray, quiet and I’m grounded as the hours pass inside a blanket-covered mirror   ooooh   but then the sun bursts forth   some things run and hide others look up at the sky   I am suddenly cleared for takeof

it should be someone not so enamored with her fat yellow smile because in person, they’d be crushed by her looks   a dusty colorless face, so pock-marked with boulders rocks and sharp bony ridges  even a facelift wouldn’t help   I do know exactly where I’d sit to write – where the scalding heat and bitter cold meet at the edge of a moon’s new day   with the universe of stars held by one eye, the peak of the sun captured by the other   and the message would have to be well bey