Abu Dhabi City Planning

To work is to live
to die
a motto plastered
or might as well be
on road signs

To move is to earn
to lose
your children
the youth in
your wife’s hair silver
coin flowing in
out
fatal contract

Abu Dhabi
city built on the backs of movement
sidewalks, vacuum tubes
tightrope your way to work

don’t hesitate
seek refuge under palms
karak: burning 
fuel for 45 
degree summer days

Abu Dhabi 
city built to constrict
government commands:
worship only in white 
buildings under the sun

But time thirsts for the 
minutes of men 
so construct a mosque.
in the alleyway, 
worship after work
street music your call
to prayer,
Way to God

You and fifty workers
gather cardboard, hinging 
on memory adhered to walls
of worship with:
family photographs
kurtas
phone screens

To form the sacred 
barricade, sacrifice your skin, peeling like
hide, as you do
within your body
belongs to God 
(see corporation)

But one day, fifty
men cower in
the Street Mosque,
struggling to resist

Whose right is it 
to build a place
of worship, black
and drowning in
the shade of skyscrapers,
glistening megalith?

Photograph courtesy of the author