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Fingers open the pea pods on my grandparents back porch
a mudra repeated year after year when combines pull up vines
and pour the peas into the tractors for baby food.

Now shelling peas at work for dinner I look at my nails.
Long. Dirty.
An hour later they are clean short and unchanged.
The shadowed hall way echoes the full silence of absent youth.

I look for the peas in the shells
they stay thick even empty
peas dried from too long in the shell

Trauma

Crying everyday and trying not to burst out laughing.
The insane mind claws at my throat in knots laughing.

Half dark, brown theatre with a brightly lit screen.
I sat near a man who could not stop laughing.

Sadness has stripped them of their sanity and their explanations.
They hear a blank joke, without humor, just caught laughing.

I try to think of family, love, bright sun and rain’s pure air.
Pinned now between grief and tears in the space without thought, laughing.

Oh God, tell this poor poet Hamidah how to write to inspire joy.
Show the path to honeyed humor, good tears, and an only child laughing.

An unfaithful moment

The day covers the chasing night although I cry.
My record of how I remember my sins will show I cry.

The beauty of nature surrounds me at times, the cherry blossoms bloom.
As my sadness overwhelms me and I shiver as they blow, I cry.

The cold rooms where I work fill with music.
While people make tracing lines and patterns of shadow, I cry.

The cala lilies bloom with their arching blossoms.
The daffodils come out again, yellow. I cry.

What mistakes I work out their inevitable conclusions.
The peace I once felt left nothing but an echo. I cry.

Forgive me my sadness and my misery in life.
“Death Thou art with me. My cup overflows, “ I cry.

The words a flock of birds that taunt and fall.
I watch my heart as it drops beneath each blow. I cry.

Oh LORD, Pardon another bitter Hamidah in this regrettable mood.
You are my only love. Tell no one how you know I cry.

Leaveing work I curse your girlfriend again.
Her sex life with you a constant trouble nagging
and pulling my energy off, a distraction, a drain.
She is in my mind laughing at me and bragging.

Your exwife is her friend and the child support
was an unnecessary effort at some point. Now,
something I will never be given any credit for.
I know she did not worry about it when she was in tow.

I am losing my mind by the time I make my way
through the freezing night, and sitting next
to me on the BART is a woman crying trying to say
to another woman,"He's mine!" What did she expect?

Adultery doesn't seem like a big issue any more,
a loyal wife and partner is just another score.