Bubbles fight for air at the neck of my base,
pushing each other down to get ahead,
pleading for help through the blue and gold glass,
coals stabbing the shisha with heat,
two brother hoses passed around like cheap prostitutes,
pimped out by my silver rotating stand,
one leaking smoke from a wound inflicted by a kamikaze coal.
One of the smokemongers has an anger in his jaws.
Tarnished silver pots crack their heads on the floor
and bleed fine coffee grinds as his magma rumbles him to a stand.
A twitch crawls over his cheekbone as two strands of black hair
fall to frame his boiling eyes. Keeping his gaze,
one shaking finger punctures the air between his guests and the door.
Purses and coats hugged to their chests, the couples evacuate.
The last guest gently shuts the door behind him.
For a few seconds they steep in roaring silence
before she swallows, breaks their staring, and laughs.
‘You know that’s not what I meant,’ she tries to calm him,
and turns with false casualty to start picking up glasses,
leaving the shattered ones behind as if they weren’t there.
He starts slowly for her. With tunneled vision, he walks through me,
I hear my bones crack as I hit the floor,
coals dying with a hissing goodbye in my sweet, brown water.
She keeps her focus, determined to act her way out,
and through the fear, tries to console herself with the memories
of his past angers and the passionate nights that followed.
He barely looked down when he yanked my wounded hose out.
His vacant eyes now blind to her, his lava blood quivering his body,
he steadily pulled it tighter below her chin.
Her last surge of adrenaline clawed, clenched at the blue leather,
the wire coiling underneath stretched and unwound around her brown skin.
As her muscles slacked, his calmed, sated.
He let her body drop limp to my perfumed puddle.
His rage fed, he fell into a cracked red chair,
head hanging, palms red with imprints of the weapon.
I am the peace pipe of the Middle East.
I am as peaceful as the Middle East.
9/11/09
