Deepness. Foam trips. Cairo. Notes from memory

Cairo airport lounge with big plastic plants and purple leather glow

Everything rounded — tables, lights, even the bathrooms

Perforated diner seats like a 1950s future

Massive stacks of receipts, subtle yawns diffusing like tea in hot water

You cannot buy real vibe

Energy passed through eye contact, slow and deliberate

Palm trees beyond two panes of glass, Air Cairo lifting off

Low ceiling like a tomb chamber

Rectangles and overlays, sharp geometry like hieroglyphs

Crawling through granite passages on hands and knees

Outer thigh burn from pyramids

Drawing a Santa Cruz wave in mummy dust

A UFO over a sarcophagus

Grave robbing with your eyes

Heart weighed against the feather

If it’s heavy, the crocodile eats it

If it’s light, you lift

Stay real or your heart gets heavy

Hustle and conscience in the same breath

Make your heart light as a feather

Arabic hieroglyphics as modern art before modern art

Smooth lines, bright colors, animals and dancers

A thousand dancers in one tomb

driver with a shrine of cash on the dash

Oh, it’s beautiful, he says, through dust and smog

Traffic flowing as one organism

Watermelon juice. Fresh bakeries. Golden coffee dispensers

Trash fires glowing sideways in the sun

Cats under plastic chairs with more dignity than people

Prayer rugs under palm trees while traffic roars

Motorbikes three deep with flowers and babies

Horse and carriage legal anywhere

The Nile carrying soil and trash and light

Mansions rising from irrigated fields

Streets widening from two lanes to five

Go when it’s time to go. Don’t stop. Just flow

Grilling corn brushed with feathers

Nicotine offered by a 16-year-old with braces

Arabic typewriter decoded under streetlights

Luxury is never seeing the waiter until you need him

The ultimate hustle: I don’t need anything

Coconut milk in shot glasses poured from a giant jug

Vodka on plastic tables under police with machine guns

Warm yogurt spice drink smoothing the tension

No-touch selfies under palm trees

Everybody has a table. Everybody works the place

Laughter is the real wealth

Hustle your way into the toilet

Warm water splashing from the flush mechanism

Hookah tips in the sink

Don’t go that way, they say

That’s exactly the way we’re going

Desert man under a TV, lion face calm

Non-city cool from elemental sand

A quiet hand gesture to the hookah

Yeah bro, its here

You are welcome