Lois Lyles "Hawks of the Tower" at "Poets 11" 2016
Channel: San Francisco Public Library
Date: 05/10/2016

in the council tent the warriors gather quietly
to squat in a circle
upon the grooved, blood-red clay floor of the hut.
thirteen or fourteen men, some in desert camouflage pants and
shirts;
some in ragged, soiled white caftans.
the council tent sways
in the febrile, thirsty dust that
swirls and eddies
in the stale, meager wind.
On his feet in the center of the circle,
the commander pronounces the fate of the condemned man,
Their captive.
Then the leader watches carefully for reactions from his group.
The circle of common fighters seems to shrink down,
Way down, into their
Ragged, soiled garments. Some men grind their yellowed,
Carious teeth. Some cast back their heads, on
Stiffening, juiceless, scrawny
Stalks of necks. Some warriors take up the fringed tails of their
kaffiyehs,
Once proudly, cleanly checkered red and white,
Now, frayed and dingy…
They nurse the tails of the kaffiyehs between parched,
Cracked lips;
Stuff the dirty cloth deeply into blind mouths, cauterized
With fear. One man folds his hands together, as though in prayer,
Then unfolds them,
Time and time again.
Finally, one skinny, dark-skinned man begs permission to speak.
The leader nods.
The leader’s words to introduce this gathering
Remain etched
On the fighters’ brains.
The Jordanian does not deserve the blessing of your thoughts.
He is an apostate. Do not think of this enemy again.
View him as lower than dead.
The skinny militant mumbles his opinion.
The flyer is a man. We are men.
Does the toran certify this kind of punishment?
Even for our enemies? Is this shariyah law?
What wrong has this Jordanian pilot done?
The commander barks out,
Silence! No more words on this matter!
Caliph Al-Baghdadi has ruled on this execution! It is just!
This is Islamic law! No more questions!
Silence! Or you will join the Jordanian in his iron cage.
Two men can feed a fire better than one!
A black scarecrow rattles the bars of the cage.
Once this apparition bathed in the fjords of the blue sky.
Once he robed himself regally in fleecy cumulus clouds.
Now his singed skull drums frantically against iron bars .
Now screams flee from his cage,
(a black cage clumsily hoisted on a scaffold in the center
of the marketplace).
Now a voice unlike a natural man’s rides heavenwards,
To greet a few lonely hawks towering upon thermals,
While black-robed, gun-strapped men watching from the ground
Shout, Allahu Akbar!
The betel-nut-skinned man chained to red and yellow waves
Of light and heat
Thrusts from between thick, hot iron bars
Fingers like forks of fire
Which clutch at and try to shake the unyielding iron.
Like naked brown rabbits, his bare feet leap and scurry
Within pools of gasoline on the floor of his high prison.
Black- soaked with gasoline, his trousers cling to
His starved sticks of legs.
Manacled feet set up a clamor as his ankle-chains
Rock against the rusty iron floor.
The smell of roasting human meet seeps between the bars
And fills the nostrils of the hungry villagers on the ground,
It’s they watch from behind the black-clad lines of soldiers.
(...continued in the printed book version of "Poets 11" 2016.)