Schemas and schedules. The price
or the worth? Chant of recalcitrance

from solitary sandstone minaret
protruding from the promenade

patched with bikini girl billboards. This
modernity, fringed, at times punctured

by the intransigent "Real"-the hidden
conspiring to cause havoc? Strategies

and methodologies; scaffolding
and Content-Based Instruction: chains

to contain the "backward" menace
of veiled women and rosary-fiddling

unemployed, unshaven men. This
modernity-an intensive course designed

by squadrons of directors-shivers. Manuals
and handbooks; policies and procedures

can't abate the horror of the superstitious.
Regulations are no match for religion

in spite of the sheen of Ataturk's wellingtons
or the threat of Uncle Sam's bomb-

bearing promulgations. The fear of
an incipient blotch of black Islamic ink

creeping from the centre of the fabric
of the secularists' fantasy flag, can it be

* * *

assuaged by probation and invigilation;
supervision and castigation? Utterly exhausted

I forget why I'm paying for "progress"
with my freedom. Ah, how joyous

the howl of someone praising something
called Allah; this soothing, primitive growl.