Guest Poet from Morocco at the Subud House Sunday

El Habib Louai

El Habib Louai

Please remember this Sunday, August 11, please stay after latihan and hear El Habib Louai speak about the Beats from a Moroccan perspective and read some of his work, including translations of Allen Ginsberg into Arabic. SICA (the Subud International Cultural Association) and The City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs are sponsors.

El Habib Louai is a Beat Scholar from Agadir, Morocco, and is working on translating the poems of Allen Ginsberg and other U.S. poets into Arabic.

Saturday, August 10th Habib will perform a poem as part of the annual concert by the (Subud Brother) Jim O’Halloran Quintet at Bradner Gardens at 1730 Bradner Pl S,  Seattle. 6:30PM.

Sunday, August 11th, he’ll discuss the Beat poets from a Moroccan perspective at Spring Street Center, 1101 15th Avenue, Seattle. 12:30PM.

Monday, August 12th he’ll be the featured

reader at the North End Forum at the Wedgwood Ale House, 8515 35th NE, Seattle. 8:30PM.

Thursday, August 15th, he’ll discuss the Beat poets from a Moroccan perspective at the North Cascades Institute’s Environmental Learning Center near Sedro Wooley, WA. 7PM.

 

It seems that the inception of sentimental states is unchangeably similar

Dear clients, I shall seize the opportunity to canalize these feelings!

Especially to those sitting somewhere on bus station benches

Unexpectedly, waiting for trains or buses bound to nowhere

I would love to desperately inform you:

I reckon I have never visited Finland.

Actually, I probably never should visit Finland,

Since it is a place I love so much on paperbacks

I bought from Powell’s Books with my working class dimes

It turned out I am visiting 21st century American dream

 

Now that I am sitting in this greyhound bus station

Not because I am expecting a girlfriend’s heart to revisit

Not because I am picking up my grandmother’s leather suitcases

Not because I am bound to meet a Rockefeller businessman

Not because I am solitarily taking 8.30 train to Eugene

It is because I whimsically remembered Jack in his French Beret

It is because 50s style Cadillac car smoke gets into my myopic eyes

It is because my ears picked “Born to Be Wild” on the entrance to Portland Central Station

It is because I imagined again Jack’s mother weeping in front of Madonna icons

It is because I ventured into the epiphanies of the varieties of religious experience

 

It is In Portland where everybody leisurely rode their fanciful organic bikes,

In Portland where the deer leap and traipse through when you plant roses,

In Portland where blond girls walk in their vegan underwear late in the evening,

In Portland where Gays and Lesbians read their battered copies of “Gender Trouble”,

In Portland where Columbia and Willamette rivers erotically confluence,

In Portland where nouveau riche American couples have two types of tap waters,

I walked in distress when I saw old and young homeless pass out on hard floors

 

What would Kerouac say in this postmodern greyhound bus station?

Shall he say again “the floors of bus stations are the same all over the country, “

Shall he say again “they are always covered with butts and spit”

Shall he say again “they give a feeling of sadness that only bus stations have.”

Shall he say again the trip “was an ordinary bus trip with crying babies and hot sun”

 

I shall not dwell in memoriam of anything celebrating funhouse mirror reflection of Portlandia

I shall not join Portlandia’s cage-free, organic and fresh satires on Mississippi Avenue

I shall let the Road unfold in a series of joyful epiphanies, in truck stops, Greyhound bus station

I shall stare through the early evening windows of jazz bars

This shall be my love letter to the great American landscapes I left in Iowa, Ohio and Indiana

I shall be too busy for failing love relationship scruples

I shall just allow my muscles a space to twitch, to live the ragged joy and go

I shall just sit in the greyhound bus station and think everything over.