How do you capture
the scent of her robe
woven with onions,
lavender,
and long days;
days you spent
complaining about the scent of
onion
on a spoon;
while sipping berries:
Mercurochrome red,
mixed with roses
and pines;
while brushing off fingers,
darkened with juices,
staining the sides of your cheeks?
When you spot the fingers:
skin migrating, flesh bare.
Same cheeks tighten,
eyes recoil,
“filth”.
Yet, on the table,
after the third
serving,
“Is that an onion?”
“Bah”.
Till one day,
the lavender gone,
and a plate next to a spoon
where an onion sits
unhinged.
Convoluted Ego (Redeux)
Buried behind the masked myth of erudition lay I—
a broken marionette yearning for a bosom.
From tongue to tongue, from age to age, I
sought a friend.
I scampered around, swinging my
naked
stub. But for the fear of
frivolity and the scythe of judgement, I
unfurled not my letters upon the canvas of man.
But when I do, I
convolute my letters. I
raise high my quill. I
swing, supplicating, spraying:
Thus scribe I, with a foreign tongue, the lulls and yarns of yore—
a forlorn epitaph to a cursed populace:
thou for whom the bell I tolled, thee shall I forsake.
So wrote I
when I
left home.
Let Me Tell You
Show,
do not
tell,
they say.
Should I show you how she is—
bent
with sodden shoulders,
eerie knees,
bulging neck?
Bent into a ball,
like a festering kastania
oozing
after it had been stepped on,
its shell pressing hard in.
Look at her!
Shaking
bare feet,
black with muck,
six toes:
two lost to frost,
the others
to a pellet
from a shell.
Look at her!
Shaking
with a breath—
half white,
half red—
unable to contain
the life in.
Look at her!
Lean figure,
bone lean,
sagging leather pockets
for breasts,
and teeth removed
to relieve the pain.
Here she lives,
next to the pile
of filth,
the buoyant filth,
swimming
between homes
when it rains.
Why show you the pain?
Why do you need to see,
to understand?
Circumlocution is just a game.
So let me tell you
the truth
about the war.
It ends with
death!
Rosae damascena
I am the generation of mediocrity_
born in transition,
after the cold,
before the spring.
Unaccomplished. Unseen.
Skilled in disdain
equipped with a yoke,
we caressed the analog,
touched the digital,
turned blind to the AI.
From grenades
to self-driving drones,
we felt it all
falling
on our homes.
Dont get me wrong_
We lived in awe.
We tasted wealth,
paved the roads for better men.
Never seen an empire rise or fall.
Never been native
to anything
but disdain.
Embers
A cigarette lit.
An amber flared.
A mind at ease.
The sky, a friend,
with calm sublime,
but broke the blue
with a whip.
A rupture
red,
Inside
he
felt,
spreading across
the land.
Just before
the end
drew close,
a thousand
tongues
struck the song
of war.
All that’s left
when he closed
his eyes-
the ambrs
burned by
War.
The Dove
It nested there,
as they all do_
because this is what they do:
one layer of dried sticks
laid over the old,
held fast by secretions,
generations of that.
It cooed against grey walls,
bouncing off prayers
for a thousand years.
Now from a sheikh,
once from a priest,
a warlord,
an augur
that read the signs
in the dove’s entrails
searching for hope.
Old
I saw
a wretch
with missing limbs,
and creaking joints,
a tilted head,
a back bent,
and a hoarse
whine.
Come!
Look!
The devil waits!
Strain your eyes,
focus your light.
Aim at the dark
corners of the world—
in the alleys
behind the dumps,
next to the destitutes
that shat themselves
yesterday,
and the day before.
That’s her.
A purple scar,
another in white
on her side.
On her chest,
a stab—
rotten black with circles red,
whirling around
a heart
made of old,
just old,
and stone
erected for
Haddad,
then Jupiter,
then Christ,
and finally a Mosque.
Its people,
forgotten,
ill-gotten,
crawl like moss:
brown,
white,
and yellow,
churning,
oozing,
in endless strife.
Whisper—
else she hopes.
Let her be:
a goliath doomed.
Damascus.
Lucky Thirteen
Thirteen
years, it takes
to become
a man.
…
Thirteen
were the men
whom lastly
dined in.
…
Even in myth,
thirteen
were the knights
of Avalon.
…
In Babylon,
thirteen constellations
they saw.
…
Even the augurs,
the magi, and the holi rest,
thirteen,
they prophesied
as eternal law.
…
Thirteen is now,
when tyranny has fallen,
and all of us,
the dejected,
can go back
home.
The Syrian March
Awaken!
One numb vestige at a time.
Shake the veil off
Off your ancient bosom.
…
Amin,
Allahu akbar,
En deus vult!
Awaken!
…
Shake them off.
Dishevel the seeds,
Buried deep
to waken.
The seeds of
The martyrs, your children.
…
Limbo,
Where they lived
In.
Lives uncounted for.
Seen unseen. Lived unliven.
…
Judder now! Awaken!
And call us home.
The Immigrant
Poetry assignment at the OU
March
with assured backs over the meadows.
March,
following the seasons, avoiding the willows.
When asked:
how could you
leave behind your mother?
Or, it is but a sham,
it must be a cover. then
shout with uncontested virility,
with a roar that shakes that vicinity:
“Brothers!
the wildebeest
treads from fathom to fathom,
never caring
of a language or a septum.
Brothers!
Ignore the lions and hyenas.
For, they with territories
of excretion,
rely on your march and the lies of cohesion.
Do not bow to their rules of husbandry,
for yours is the mission of life.”
The Book Of Life 