Ameriscopia

Moroccan Highway

69 Moroccan Highway We have apologized for stepping on your beetle Marrakech, for swatting your tiny flies stuck to our walls impersonating cracks of plaster. We are Lions of destiny across an open desert, with hundreds of miles ahead of us, two lanes all the way. From the heat of Marrakech to the breeze of Essaouira, the Atlantic coast waits. One truck turns off, we wait to pass the next. Navigating highways on foreign soil is a mirage, of course we’re foreign not the soil. We’ve left the jesters of light and magic, the watersellers who will sell you the rain for a fair price. At the market, birthplace of hustlers and survivors, rival orange juice stands dot the border to compete for business—20 cents a cup for fresh juice—19 cents my friend—18 cents my friend. Snake charmers hypnotize cobras with sensory overload. Snake’s skin is porous-reticulated-chain, lets every sound in—skin is sensory magnet for snake’s body coiled on marketplace ground. They must feel-hear-see a million miles magnetized by light—if my every sense was heightened beyond recognition I’d be hypnotized into feats of superfluous fantasy too. Pan-flutes and reed blowers penetrate steady rhythm of hand slappers. Arrythmitized mythics breathing ancient snores into smoked air. Swirled fabrics, vortexed heads, wrinkled facings, furrowed smiles—side by side with storytellers and griots. Multicharactered one-man ’cyclopedias gifted with recollection, sharing a spot on history’s time-patch, holding circles of listeners in tight attention who follow each movement with focused eyes. Birth of Spoken Word has no TV, word is TV. Watch as hands move eyes, string-taut-tight to fingers. To rune reality, to teller’s parablia, to outcome of moral . . . to window of burn, to smoked outdoor barbecue of dead baby lambs, to goat heads complete goat heads, to a feast of eyes and baby tongues, to ring bearers’ come-ons, to whispers of pointed demons, to palms-up circumfery, to passers of light and dusk and outsider status, to maintaining different phases of full moon regalia—water savior on dry land, an oasis of profiles in a land of burnt skin. To the sellers of teeth on tables made of umbrellas, conical-headed priest against an outline of smoke, rising from infamous night stench. Gutted mime bats a million lashes, circling a crowd of seers. Insider says to be outsider is to be. Yet Be’er says to be inside is. We pass fear of unknown on our Super Highway. Pass electric trees, shade that beckons. Desert is beauty to insular eyes of smoked 70 city—better the smoke of sayers, smoke of magic outlined from night’s carpet. Other taxis pass us, daring nonexistent speed laws. Existing the nonexistent resisting of sized existers. Reflection slays our distant vase, highway heat lines refract desert chops. Atlas Mountains by periphery—along road, women walk with balanced bundles on heads, postures and backs strong. Sense of straight is bred from ground up. Camels and donkeys grazing, acres of land around each, stone fence keeps the sheep in there is no gate, will keep the wolf out there is no wolf. Cows plod the road never stops. We’ve crossed pinkies and have sworn to live outcome as it sways. To swim flow of life as each planned path is changed. As obstacles continue their insistence, as mounds appear in front, as each road absorbs the one ahead, as the open highway throws down its gauntlet. We cross pinkies as we travel the never-changing horizon, and swear to the journey ahead. ...