North Africa Erotic Currents

Luxor Temple — After SunsetI am in the Luxor temple remember the erotic currents, I felt in North AfricaBeatniks Bumtrips Egypt This is where it all happens.This is where you throw a partyand everyone vanishes at once —a soft popping sound in the dark.This is walking through the temple at Luxor.This is reaching the nipples —the divine conduit, everlasting life,mouth at the mother’s bowl.This is power.This is the fat steeple.This is the sunray turned to granite,floated up the Nile,lifted by hands,taken north,sister obelisk in Paris.Ali Ali Akbar —a call,a prayer,a yoga of the throat.Sunset in Luxor.Lights coming on along the Nile.Where do you store the most sacred objectswhen they are not in use?Dig a hole?Bury ten thousand sphinxes?Hide it in the elbow?There is a rumor —a map in the elbow of the Great Sphinx of Giza.Blueprints in stone.I am on a slab of granite,line of sphinxes running south,session to session, temple to temple.Two weeks in North Africa.When I stepped off the planemy feet tingled into the knees.Africa rose through bone.I forgot where I landed.Madagascar?Minnesota?Memphis?Memory sliding.Body exhausted.East to West.Market to canyon.Spring water rising through sand.Donkey tied with competence.A woman stronger than my fantasy.Fez corridors.Kittens everywhere.Ancient tannery air.Mall fluorescent hum.Desert women at a hidden lake.Drum circle sparks in Marrakesh.Heat in the body,stored,not spent.Arrival in Egypt.Pink halls of the old museum.Typewriter labels.Mummified crocodiles.Herons painted like early cubism.University girls by a carved slab.Black nails against gold earrings.Hand touching hieroglyph.A buzz.Energy carried forward —into artists,into a film set in a carpet shop,into the tight crawl of pyramidswhere breath thickensand strangers meet in narrow passage.Downtown Cairo —motorcycles, dust, palm shadows.Arabic typewriter on a plastic table.Coconut milk.A girl with red lips smilingthrough rules and introductions.Encounters like leaving temples —brief, luminous, unfinished.Last offering at the feet of Hatshepsut —pine resin from California,sap crystal on stone.Her terrace looks over green Nile,open sky instead of descending tomb.You rise toward her.I have not spilled the charge.I have carried it.Alertness in the eyes.Now I sit in Luxor Temple.An hour and a half on warm stone.Meditation.Stretching.Listening for the rituals layered in pillars.The body as corridor.Spirit moving through flesh.Granite as metaphor.Sunset yoga on rocks.Lights flicker on.I am part of it.Sensuality becomes awareness.Awareness becomes poetry.North Africa taught me this:be cool.Feel everything.Do not clutch.Let it rise.Let it pause.Let it go forward.Let it stop.Maybe there will be more.That is the current.