Poetry Platform - the largest database of poetry, save it to read later!

Poems

After Read Poem

Over treasure and land some texts will say it had
Little to do with slavery or the newly
Discovered yellow planet

Few men watched the glaciers recede
From shuttles they had built
During the hemorrhage years
When they’d gathered all the genes down from the ledges

I’ll be a fig or a sycamore tree
Or without hands

By then doctors and poets
Would have found a cure for prayer


•
•


Or have you shoved the door shut
In the face of the dark?

Have you body and light the trap
Of retribution doing unto you

What it does to others?

You protest
In the streets and papers and I leave

For a faraway land
Where with pill and scalpel

And a distant reckoning
If he should lick his lips

Or clench his fist I shall find his second left toe
Infected puffy

From a bump
I’ll lance it and squeeze

Out the pus and offer
Him an antibiotic

I can’t refuse therefore I am

•
•

The first time I saw you it was hot I was fed up
The second time your wife gave birth to a macerated boy

I had nothing to tell you
About letting go of the dying
In the morning you were gone

Had carried your father back to your house
His cracked skull
I didn’t know that was your wife
When I raised my voice

To those who were praying
From behind the wall to keep it down

I was trying to listen to your baby’s heartbeat
With a gadget a century old

•
•


Anemic
From so much loss giving birth

If you give blood in the desert you won’t
Get it back not your iron pills or magic hat
I put your thin
Hemoglobin up to the light and called out

To the donors Donors
If you want to know your blood type
And it’s a match
You must donate

Few came some indifferent to my condition
Not having heard of it
And willing anyhow

•
•


And the world is south
The night a bandit with gasoline

And I’m your dancing lizard mirth
I put my one arm up
And bring my one foot down on a hot zinc top
The nearest hospital was the dawn

She didn’t know her daughter on her back was
The entry wound and she the exit

She ran a brothel so
The officer said

Where the rebels came and went
And ran into the government boys

Her girl’s femur the size of the bullet

•
•


He was from the other side rumors
Had a bullet through his left arm
Or had it bitten off by a camel

A camel elephant of the desert never forgets what you are
If you aren’t kind to it

When I met him his bladder was the size
Of a watermelon his prostate a cantaloupe
You cannot catheterize
A man forever

Every hour on the hour his left arm stump
Hanging his good arm holding
His penis his buttocks in deep squeeze
A charge from the rear without spillage

This poor murderous thief desperately single-
Handedly began slapping his own ass
As if he were dashing a stallion in a raid
On some unarmed village

•
•


The mind in the field
The brine in the field

WhetherI
Is a diphthong codependent on

What isn’t there to stay in the field
The good you act is equal

To the good you doubt
Most have lost many

You are either prosperous
Or veteran in the field

•
•


A mother offers not necessarily
Sells her one-eyed son

For an education if you’ll bring him back
And stone dust for one
With congenital illness

And little boy with malaria
Same old gas

Money mixed with blood
Transfusion the doctor’s perfect record broken

Nobility of taking
A life you

Who must walk to and from your house
The jeep’s upkeep
The donkey-cart ambulance

•
•


One boot left behind

The one-boot photo I wanted
On a book military black the quad a clinic’s

Special Forces spun
By his dangling heels from

The pickup truck rushed
To a central town altered combative

With two scalp lacerations and blood
In his auditory canal

I was a lover of loss I tossed
The boot in the capital of suffering

Birth Read Poem

1
Three sparrows in the schoolyard while waiting for my daughter to finish up her play with friends whose purity she will come to question in a few weeks and in that way I am reminded of the president when he speaks of enemies to the other side of the mirror but only in that way the three sparrows ruffled up the dirt as their wings and heads spun motorbike doughnuts after one of them had come back with a massive potato chip for the other two to fight over perhaps he was the provider or wasn’t hungry but simply couldn’t let a good bit of food go to waste
Then a crow came and the winner sparrow went zooming into the orange orchard knowing fully well it would be impossible to alight and reappeared with a chip the size of his beak and a flurry of birds descended on the scene (I even saw a Fletcher) but kept my eyes on that little sparrow and am happy to report he kept what his mouth held though it occurs to me he was also mean and the one who seemed a provider might have been yoked in that way my wife during delivery was rung up like a bar code whenever the nurse knocked or the doctor was called

The Floor Is Yours Read Poem

My chicken pox hotel
your machine gun pointillism

My bamboo branch severed but nimble name
in the air of two alphabets
Picassos in bull-light routine

Your mantis welded on a pole
with a spiral staircase
my romance between pillager and villager

timed & timely intensity
inversely proportional to frequency

the chickadees in my voice
the thrush in your mouth

our polymers of I skipping
their archipelago stones

Your touchscreen
my ringtone heart

Your mahogany gift bag
puffed with confetti

my songs to appear as gauze
for a new island

Mimesis Read Poem

My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord

If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking

She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?

Moon Grass Rain Read Poem

1.

Here, shooting stars linger
They give out
A sparkling trail like a cauterized incision

Silver, or amber
If the moon is low and rising red


2.

And the rain melts the roads
And the roads
Can rupture a spleen
Or oust a kidney stone

As for the heart
It needs a beginning
The narrative
Burden of events


3.

“Mize, zey eat mize”
The Frenchman exclaimed with a smile
“Rraized and shipped from za States”

We raise rats! I thought
That’s a lot of protein!

“Maize maize!” it was, after our chickens
Have had their fill


4.

She was the only nurse in town before the war
She spoke seven languages and died suddenly
He was a merchant
He’s a doorman now and buys us cigarettes


5.

Here we are with love pouring out of every orifice
Here they are dancing
Around the funeral pyre, the corpse in absentia


6.

One of the drivers ran over the neighbor’s ducks
The neighbor demanded compensation
For the post-traumatic stress disorder he accurately anticipates

Do you know what it’s like
To drive on roads occupied
By animal farms: you cannot tell
Who killed who or how
Many ducks were there to begin with


7.

In the morning, elephant grass moves the way
Mist is visible in the breeze but doesn’t dampen the skin


8.

Today, I yelled at three old women
Who wouldn’t stop bargaining for pills they didn’t need
One wanted extra
For her grandson who came along for the ride


9.

Like lip sores
The asphalt blisters in the rain

And the boys
Fill the holes with dirt and gravel
And broken green branches
Then wait:

No windex.

No flowers or newspapers
And gratuity is appreciated


10.

“I have ants in my leg”
And “My leg went to sleep”
Are not the same thing!

The French argue
There is no sleep in a tingling numbness
The symptom of sluggish blood:

I agree.

Me too my leg has been anted
And we are learning to reconcile
The dark with the electric


11.

Four days the river runs to the border
Nine days to learn it wasn’t the shape
Of your nose that gave you away
And debts are paid off in a-shelter-for-a-day

A pile of wood plus change in your pocket
Is a sack of potatoes and change in another’s


12.

No more running long or short distance
The old women
Snicker at me when I pass them by


13.

She was comatose post-partum
And the beekeeper
Bathed her in love everyday

When she recovered I gave up
What he’d promised me for the woman
Who took up nursing their newborn
Since as coincidence would have it
Her name wasOm Assel— Mother of Honey


14.

The translation of a medical interview
Is not a poem to be written

Come recite a verse from childhood with me
I see you’re unable to weep, does love
Have no command over you?

The sea’s like the desert
Neither quenches the thirst


15.

Here, dry grass burns the moon
Here, a clearing of grass is a clearing of snakes


16.

And the rain has already been cleansed from the sky
The clinic is empty, soon
The earth will unseal like a jar
Harvest is the season that fills the belly


17.

Here, I ride my bicycle invisible
Except for a crescent shadow and the Milky Way
Is already past


18.

And a mirror gives the moon back to the moon
Home is an epilogue:

Which came first
Memory or words?

National Park Read Poem

We saw a lot more of them dead than alive
the living diffident by the side of the road
as the far-off mountains flanked and intoxicated
the speedometer into saunter

The dead were interspersed on the asphalt
their poor vision uncorrected by their auditory keenness
like a blind spot in a poet

and their fender-mangled corpses
were occasionally ripped in two
before vultures reached them

In our rental van
we left no mother bereft
and orphaned no piglets

Turkey buzzards and American vultures
were the javelinas’ gift to us

red and black scavengers
that perched on ranchland fences
the full span of highway
they’d circle above in diminishing downward spirals

or flinch at each other’s puffs and swells
or away from incoming vehicles

Still they shared the dead among them
as we sometimes share our dead
when we love our dead

Javelina the Arabic word for mountain
in its root and then the mountain
coming closer to an ear
became a spear

Non-terminal Read Poem

No shards
where one is bound to no place in the first place
where one is bound to no place in the first place

all shardswe were clear on that from the beginning
we were clear on that from the beginning

Absence is always sudden to hear your voiceonce more more
once more more

echo than shrapnel qualia of the forbidden

transforms itself into wounds regeneratesa hydra or lizard tail
a hydra or lizard tail

touch meI’m alive again
I’m alive again

there isn’t enough time or proximity
for your essence or mine          to vanish

we’ll remainfire and ice who turn to glass
fire and ice who turn to glass
that doesn’t shatter

mercuryif it shatters
if it shatters

Plethora Read Poem

You’re right about the praise I dish your way
jail’s the comeuppance of a liar poet

My only want is your content and if I hold
another want may I never be granted it

Each full moon is born of a crescent
yet what’s a full moon got

Vitiligo
and the morning sees me with eyes of dew

a fever that breaks out
on your integument

On your skin exanthem
is a pasture of anemones

Because you’re one of them
I love my enemies

Progress Notes Read Poem

The age of portrait is drugged.

Beauty
is symmetry so rare it’s a mystery.

My left eye is smaller than my right,
my big mouth shows my nice teeth perfectly
aligned like Muslims in prayer.

My lips an accordion.

Each sneeze
a facial thumbprint.

One corner
of my mouth hangs downward when I want
to hold a guffaw hostage.

Bell’s palsy perhaps
or what Mark Twain said about steamboat piloting,
that a doctor’s unable to look upon the blush
in a young beauty’s face without thinking
it could be a fever, a malar rash,
a butterfly announcing a wolf.

Can I lie
facedown now as cadavers posed
on first anatomy lesson?

I didn’t know mine
was a woman until three weeks later
we turned her over.

Out of reverence
there was to be no untimely exposure of donors,
our patrons who were covered in patches
of scrubs-green dish towels,
and by semester’s end we were sick of all that,
tossed mega livers and mammoth hearts
into lab air and caught them.

My body
was Margaret.

That’s what the death certificate said
when it was released before finals.

The cause
of her death?

Nothing memorable,
frail old age.

But the colonel on table nineteen
with an accessory spleen had put a bullet through
his temple, a final prayer.

Not in entry or exit
were there skull cracks to condemn the house
of death, no shattered glass in the brain,
only a smooth tunnel of deep violet that bloomed
in concentric circles.

The weekends were lonely.

He had the most beautiful muscles
of all 32 bodies that were neatly arranged,
zipped up as if a mass grave had been disinterred.

Or when unzipped and facing the ceiling
had cloth over their eyes as if they’d just been executed.

Gray silver hair, chiseled countenance,
he was sixty-seven, a veteran of more than one war.

I had come across that which will end me, ex-
tend me, at least once, without knowing it.

Pulse: 1 Read Poem

1.

It wasn’t over a woman that war began, but it’s better
To see it this way, my myth professor loved to say, a man
From the South rumored to extort the bodies of college girls
Into higher grades.

My girlfriend of the time told me so —

He was a creep, she
Got an A in the class and liked his joke about religion
As self-mutilation, it was Ramadan then and, O Helen,
I was fasting.

I lie awake in a desert night east

Of the Atlantic on the verge of rain, the catapulted grains
Of sand on hot zinc roof, the rustle of leaves, the flap
Of peeling bark on trees whose names I do not know, and where
Would I find a botany guide here.

Water flowed

Like a river from the Jabal once.

There were elephant pools, alligator
Streams, and a pond for the devil to speak in human tongues.

All desiccant names now after an earthquake

Shuffled the ground decades ago.

It will rain soon,
I’m assured, since nothing has stopped
The birds from migration.

All the look-alikes
Are already here: the stork, the heron.

The white flying flowers, the ibis, and the one
That aesthetizes you more.

Scarecrow Read Poem

The rice field birds are too clever for scarecrows,
They know what they love, milk in the grain.

When it happens, there will be no time to look for anyone.

Husband, children, nine brothers and sisters.

You will drop your sugarcane-stick-beating of plastic bucket,
Stop shouting at birds and run.

They will load you in trucks and herd you for a hundred miles.

Old men will teach you trade with soldiers at checkpoints.

You will give them your spoon, blanket and beans,
They’ll let you keep your life.

And if you jump off the truck,

The army jeep trailing it will run you over.

Later, they will accuse you of giving up your land.

Later, you will stand in distribution lines and won’t receive enough to eat.

Your mother will weave you new underwear from flour sacks.

And they’ll give you plastic tents, cooking pots,
Vaccine cards, white pills, and wool blankets.

And you will keep your cool.

Standing with eyes shut tight like you’ve got soap in them.

Arms stretched wide like you’re catching rain.

Sleeping Trees Read Poem

Between what should and what should not be
Everything is liable to explode.

Many times
I was toldwho has no land has no sea.

My father
Learned to fly in a dream.

This is the story
Of a sycamore tree he used to climb
When he was young to watch the rain.

Sometimes it rained so hard it hurt.

Like being
Beaten with sticks.

Then the mud would run red.

My brother believed bad dreams could kill
A man in his sleep, he insisted
We wake my father from his muffled screams
On the night of the day he took us to see his village.

No longer his village he found his tree amputated.

Between one falling and the next

There’s a weightless state.

There was a woman
Who loved me.

Asked me how to saytree
In Arabic.

I didn’t tell her.

She was sad.

I didn’t understand.

When she left.

I saw a man in my sleep three times.

A man I knew
Could turn anyone into one-half reptile.

I was immune.

I thought I was.

I was terrified of being

The only one left.

When we woke my father
He was running away from soldiers.

Now
He doesn’t remember that night.

He laughs
About another sleep, he raised his arms to strike a king
And tried not to stop.

He flew
But mother woke him and held him for an hour,

Or half an hour, or as long as it takes a migration inward.

Maybe if I had just said it.

Shejerah, she would’ve remembered me longer.

Maybe
I don’t know much about dreams
But my mother taught me the law of omen.

The dead
Know about the dying and sometimes
Catch them in sleep like the sycamore tree
My father used to climb

When he was young to watch the rain stream,
And he would gently swing.

The Tea and Sage Poem Read Poem

At a desk made of glass,
In a glass walled-room
With red airport carpet,

An officer asked
My father for fingerprints,
And my father refused,

So another offered him tea
And he sipped it.

The teacup
Template for fingerprints.

My father says, it was just
Hot water with a bag.

My father says, in his country,

Because the earth knows
The scent of history,
It gave the people sage.

I like my tea with sage
From my mother’s garden,
Next to the snapdragons

She calls fishmouths
Coming out for air.

A remedy
For stomach pains she keeps

In the kitchen where
She always sings.

First, she is Hagar

Boiling water
Where tea is loosened.

Then she drops

In it a pinch of sage
And lets it sit a while.

She tells a story:

The groom arrives late
To his wedding
Wearing only one shoe.

The bride asks him
About the shoe.

He tells her
He lost it while jumping

Over a house-wall.

Breaking away from soldiers.

She asks:

Tea with sage
Or tea with mint?

With sage, he says,
Sweet scent, bitter tongue.

She makes it, he drinks.

Tell Life Read Poem

1
1


I now release from my blood                the bird of   thirty she wasted
that’s how wars                                        crumble us

I now tell those                                        who are exhausted from the expense
of children the secret                              of   happiness and happiness itself

from what is arrived at                          but doesn’t come
from the language                                  of   balance

defeat                                                        has the taste
of    being shrouded                                 with another’s banner
while your enemies                                chant your names

Some music                                              some shelling
will strike our dead                                 who flew off in the early raids
have you seen them                                return from their flying?

They stayed behind                                 hanging by the thread
of their surprise                                       and by their women’s hair

We will dance                                           in the wreckage drink the coffee
our dead left brewing                             we will open our tombs
to windows for the sea                            in order
for the sea to remain                               besieged

Right here                                                 right here
a corpse shook its trunk                         in the earth a corpse snapped
God’s ropes                                               houses gathered then hid
what’s easy to interpret                          of   people’s speech

Which mourners ebbed                         and turned the sea to tombstones
for our dead which poem                      was said and revived us?

And that huge rose of ours                    our only bewilderment
our offense                                                on earth our balcony
on the kingdom of   heaven                    the grandfather’s house

a hand that gestures                               farewell
in the roar of   the massacre                   a white hand like old time
a free hand like death                             after death

Tell my love                                              space has been plucked
tell her to sleep                                        on disaffection’s stone


2
2


Two raids three raids                             a whole morning
a year of   long                                           bombardment over your going

Did you forget                                          a newspaper of   palm fronds
a time of   white dawn                             some hay from last season’s siege
a brief greeting                                        like a mumbling
on mornings                                            of   slow advance

a suitcase a rug a palm                          with which you touched the evening
of shelling                                                 into a meaning
for a people                                              kind and assured and silent?

Whenever glass shook                           you would shriek
kid                                                              I pluck
your death’s anemone                           and eat it

Each land                                                  has its people
each time                                                  has its folks and time
for a while now                                        has been standing on our throats

As if   we don’t love                                  or hate as if we’ve seen the land
only as a bracelet                                    a house a dress a poem left filled
with those who were killed                   without war


3
3


Memory shrinks                                      until it fits in a fist
memory shrinks                                      without forgetting

a boy in a farm                                         a chicken on a roof
a dot on the planet                                  mysterious and intuitive like parents

or a tree for a hat                                     with prairies
for a dictionary                                         and days like sleeves

short in summer                                      cotton in winter
they resist when squeezed                     between our knees

A not so First World                               rains on a calm boy
torn apart                                                  like a tattered tent

The lily of words                                      enters his heart takes a wedding
by the horns                                              a well-trained bulbul
by the scandalous                                    fruit rush of the river

His return                                                 will be washed shrouded
a field’s first flower                                 guarded by dirt

Coffee coffee                                            for the beautiful one
whose heart’s                                           a tambourine this morning
while war                                                  shouts cold on slopes


4
4


In the saddles                                          grass grows
warmth matures                                     in oleander
the river pours                                        in your absence
everything                                                will happen

I exchanged                                             half of my books to sit near you
flung my hand                                         so that it may see you
then retrieved it                                      to touch what it saw

We slept like sponges                            near the river butterflies descended
from the ribs of shadow                        then left behind
a mirror pitched                                     like a house of   jinn


5
5


It’ll be difficult                                          that you go
before you choose a grave                      fit for sleep

It’ll be difficult                                         that you die
before you choose a grave                     fit for running
for flood swimming                                for dense reeds by irrigation channels
for bird snares                                         for the lettuce garden in the backyard

for old dry thatch                                    on mud roofs
for jujube shrubs                                     for climbing on trucks and holding on
to vegetable boxes                                   for the diffusion of secrets
loading and unloading                           in the big market

A grave fit for you                                    to see Jericho light up
through the windows                              as a neon garden
the refugee camps                                    by the marshes touch

A grave fit for you                                    to see Jericho’s convent toss
grass liquor our way                                fir for some arches
where oleander wilts                               near Bedouin tents

And their watchdogs                               will dig and dig
and dig and dig                                        and you won’t come


6
6


And the mules                                           in the junkyards
does anyone feed                                      their loneliness when they cry?

Or has anyone quenched                        their oneness or washed
their dead necks                                       or visited them to remember how
they blackened                                          in their sleep?

The mules the movie                               extras who fold their torsos
in the packed air                                       as lineage
floats on light                                            an icon
of wondrous dust                                     and riddles


7
7


And our neighbor                                    the one whose voice
fenced us with reeds                               all day and all night

She would forget                                      her rings in our hands
two boys                                                    who used to dance for her

I Have a Seat in the Abandoned Theater Read Poem

I have a seat in the abandoned theater
in Beirut.

I might forget, and I might recall
the final act without longing .

.

.

not because of anything
other than that the play was not written
skillfully .

.

.

Chaos
as in the war days of those in despair, and an autobiography
of the spectators’ impulse.

The actors were tearing up their scripts
and searching for the author among us, we the witnesses
sitting in our seats
I tell my neighbor the artist: Don’t draw your weapon,
and wait, unless you’re the author!
—No
Then he asks me: And you are you the author?

—No
So we sit scared.

I say: Be a neutral
hero to escape from an obvious fate
He says: No hero dies revered in the second
scene.

I will wait for the rest.

Maybe I would
revise one of the acts.

And maybe I would mend
what the iron has done to my brothers
So I say: It is you then?

He responds: You and I are two masked authors and two masked
witnesses
I say: How is this my concern?

I’m a spectator
He says: No spectators at chasm’s door .

.

.

and no
one is neutral here.

And you must choose
your part in the end
So I say: I’m missing the beginning, what’s the beginning?

If I Were Another Read Poem

If I were another on the road, I would not have looked
back, I would have said what one traveler said
to another: Stranger! awaken
the guitar more! Delay our tomorrow so our road
may extend and space may widen for us, and we may get rescued
from our story together: you are so much yourself .

.

.

and I am
so much other than myself right here before you!

If I were another I would have belonged to the road,
neither you nor I would return.

Awaken the guitar
and we might sense the unknown and the route that tempts
the traveler to test gravity.

I am only
my steps, and you are both my compass and my chasm.

If I were another on the road, I would have
hidden my emotions in the suitcase, so my poem
would be of water, diaphanous, white,
abstract, and lightweight .

.

.

stronger than memory,
and weaker than dewdrops, and I would have said:
My identity is this expanse!

If I were another on the road, I would have said
to the guitar: Teach me an extra string!
Because the house is farther, and the road to it prettier—
that’s what my new song would say.

Whenever
the road lengthens the meaning renews, and I become two
on this road: I .

.

.

and another!

In Her Absence I Created Her Image Read Poem

In her absence I created her image: out of the earthly
the hidden heavenly commences.

I am here weighing
the expanse with the Jahili odes .

.

.

and absence
is the guide, it is the guide.

For each rhyme a tent
is pitched.

And for each thing blowing in the wind
a rhyme.

Absence teaches me its lesson: If it weren’t
for the mirage you wouldn’t have been steadfast .

.

.

Then in the emptiness, I disassembled a letter from one
of the ancient alphabets, and I leaned on absence.

So who am I
after the visitation?

A bird, or a passerby amid the symbols
and the memory vendors?

As if I were an antique piece,
as if I were a ghost sneaking in from Yabous, telling myself:
Let’s go to the seven hills.

Then I placed
my mask on a stone, and walked as the sleepless
walk, led by my dream.

And from one moon
to another I leapt.

There is enough of unconsciousness
to liberate things from their history.

And there
is enough of history to liberate unconsciousness
from its ascension.

Take me to our early
years—my first girlfriend says.

Leave
the windows open for the house sparrow to enter
your dream—I say .

.

.

then I awaken, and no city is in
the city.

No “here” except “there.

” And no there
but here.

If it weren’t for the mirage
I wouldn’t have walked to the seven hills .

.

.

if it weren’t for the mirage!

In Jerusalem Read Poem

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me.

The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy .

.

.

ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?

Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?

I walk in my sleep.

I stare in my sleep.

I see
no one behind me.

I see no one ahead of me.

All this light is for me.

I walk.

I become lighter.

I fly
then I become another.

Transfigured.

Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.

”
I walk as if I were another.

And my wound a white
biblical rose.

And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.

I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured.

No place and no time.

So who am I?

I am no I in ascension’s presence.

But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Muhammad
spoke classical Arabic.

“And then what?

”
Then what?

A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again?

Didn’t I kill you?

I said: You killed me .

.

.

and I forgot, like you, to die.

No More and No Less Read Poem

I am a woman.

No more and no less
I live my life as it is
thread by thread
and I spin my wool to wear, not
to complete Homer’s story, or his sun.

And I see what I see
as it is, in its shape,
though I stare every once
in a while in its shade
to sense the pulse of defeat,
and I write tomorrow
on yesterday’s sheets: there’s no sound
other than echo.

I love the necessary vagueness in
what a night traveler says to the absence
of birds over the slopes of speech
and above the roofs of villages
I am a woman, no more and no less

The almond blossom sends me flying
in March, from my balcony,
in longing for what the faraway says:
“Touch me and I’ll bring my horses to the water springs.

”
I cry for no clear reason, and I love you
as you are, not as a strut
nor in vain
and from my shoulders a morning rises onto you
and falls into you, when I embrace you, a night.

But I am neither one nor the other
no, I am not a sun or a moon
I am a woman, no more and no less

So be the Qyss of longing,
if you wish.

As for me
I like to be loved as I am
not as a color photo
in the paper, or as an idea
composed in a poem amid the stags …
I hear Laila’s faraway scream
from the bedroom: Do not leave me
a prisoner of rhyme in the tribal nights
do not leave me to them as news …
I am a woman, no more and no less

I am who I am, as
you are who you are: you live in me
and I live in you, to and for you
I love the necessary clarity of our mutual puzzle
I am yours when I overflow the night
but I am not a land
or a journey
I am a woman, no more and no less

And I tire
from the moon’s feminine cycle
and my guitar falls ill
string
by string
I am a woman,
no more
and no less!

The Cypress Broke Read Poem

The cypress broke like a minaret, and slept on
the road upon its chapped shadow, dark, green,
as it has always been.

No one got hurt.

The vehicles
sped over its branches.

The dust blew
into the windshields .

.

.

/ The cypress broke, but
the pigeon in a neighboring house didn’t change
its public nest.

And two migrant birds hovered above
the hem of the place, and exchanged some symbols.

And a woman said to her neighbor: Say, did you see a storm?

She said: No, and no bulldozer either .

.

.

/ And the cypress
broke.

And those passing by the wreckage said:
Maybe it got bored with being neglected, or it grew old
with the days, it is long like a giraffe, and little
in meaning like a dust broom, and couldn’t shade two lovers.

And a boy said: I used to draw it perfectly,
its figure was easy to draw.

And a girl said: The sky today
is incomplete because the cypress broke.

And a young man said: But the sky today is complete
because the cypress broke.

And I said
to myself: Neither mystery nor clarity,
the cypress broke, and that is all
there is to it: the cypress broke!

The Horse Fell Off the Poem Read Poem

The horse fell off the poem
and the Galilean women were wet
with butterflies and dew,
dancing above chrysanthemum

The two absent ones: you and I
you and I are the two absent ones

A pair of white doves
chatting on the branches of a holm oak

No love, but I love ancient
love poems that guard
the sick moon from smoke

I attack and retreat, like the violin in quatrains
I get far from my time when I am near
the topography of place .

.

.

There is no margin in modern language left
to celebrate what we love,
because all that will be .

.

.

was

The horse fell bloodied
with my poem
and I fell bloodied
with the horse’s blood .

.

.

To Our Land Read Poem

To our land,
and it is the one near the word of god,
a ceiling of clouds
To our land,
and it is the one far from the adjectives of nouns,
the map of absence
To our land,
and it is the one tiny as a sesame seed,
a heavenly horizon .

.

.

and a hidden chasm
To our land,
and it is the one poor as a grouse’s wings,
holy books .

.

.

and an identity wound
To our land,
and it is the one surrounded with torn hills,
the ambush of a new past
To our land, and it is a prize of war,
the freedom to die from longing and burning
and our land, in its bloodied night,
is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far
and illuminates what’s outside it .

.

.

As for us, inside,
we suffocate more!

To a Young Poet Read Poem

Don’t believe our outlines, forget them
and begin from your own words.

As if you are the first to write poetry
or the last poet.

If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs,
but to correct our errs
in the book of agony.

Don’t ask anyone: Who am I?

You know who your mother is.

As for your father, be your own.

Truth is white, write over it
with a crow’s ink.

Truth is black, write over it
with a mirage’s light.

If you want to duel with a falcon
soar with the falcon.

If you fall in love with a woman,
be the one, not she,
who desires his end.

Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think
of the matter too much lest we hurt emotions’ health.

If you ponder a rose for too long
you won’t budge in a storm.

You are like me, but my abyss is clear.

And you have roads whose secrets never end.

They descend and ascend, descend and ascend.

You might call the end of youth
the maturity of talent
or wisdom.

No doubt, it is wisdom,
the wisdom of a cool non-lyric.

One thousand birds in the hand
don’t equal one bird that wears a tree.

A poem in a difficult time
is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.

Example is not easy to attain
so be yourself and other than yourself
behind the borders of echo.

Ardor has an expiration date with extended range.

So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake,
follow it before you reach your path.

Don’t tell the beloved, you are I
and I am you, say
the opposite of that: we are two guests
of an excess, fugitive cloud.

Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule.

Don’t place two stars in one utterance
and place the marginal next to the essential
to complete the rising rapture.

Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions.

Believe only the caravan’s trace.

A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart
a deadly wisdom.

Be strong as a bull when you’re angry
weak as an almond blossom
when you love, and nothing, nothing
when you serenade yourself in a closed room.

The road is long like an ancient poet’s night:
plains and hills, rivers and valleys.

Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily
follows you or the gallows.

Your tasks are not what worry me about you.

I worry about you from those who dance
over their children’s graves,
and from the hidden cameras
in the singers’ navels.

You won’t disappoint me,
if you distance yourself from others, and from me.

What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.

From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future.

Don’t think, when you melt in sorrow
like candle tears, of who will see you
or follow your intuition’s light.

Think of yourself: is this all of myself?

The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.

No advice in love.

It’s experience.

No advice in poetry.

It’s talent.

And last but not least, Salaam.

Who Am I, Without Exile? Read Poem

A stranger on the riverbank, like the river .

.

.

water
binds me to your name.

Nothing brings me back from my faraway
to my palm tree: not peace and not war.

Nothing
makes me enter the gospels.

Not
a thing .

.

.

nothing sparkles from the shore of ebb
and flow between the Euphrates and the Nile.

Nothing
makes me descend from the pharaoh’s boats.

Nothing
carries me or makes me carry an idea: not longing
and not promise.

What will I do?

What
will I do without exile, and a long night
that stares at the water?

Water
binds me
to your name .

.

.

Nothing takes me from the butterflies of my dreams
to my reality: not dust and not fire.

What
will I do without roses from Samarkand?

What
will I do in a theater that burnishes the singers with its lunar
stones?

Our weight has become light like our houses
in the faraway winds.

We have become two friends of the strange
creatures in the clouds .

.

.

and we are now loosened
from the gravity of identity’s land.

What will we do … what
will we do without exile, and a long night
that stares at the water?

Water
binds me
to your name .

.

.

There’s nothing left of me but you, and nothing left of you
but me, the stranger massaging his stranger’s thigh: O
stranger! what will we do with what is left to us
of calm .

.

.

and of a snooze between two myths?

And nothing carries us: not the road and not the house.

Was this road always like this, from the start,
or did our dreams find a mare on the hill
among the Mongol horses and exchange us for it?

And what will we do?

What
will we do
without
exile?

Your Night Is of Lilac Read Poem

The night sits wherever you are.

Your night
is of lilac.

Every now and then a gesture escapes
from the beam of your dimples, breaks the wineglass
and lights up the starlight.

And your night is your shadow—
a fairy-tale piece of land to make our dreams
equal.

I am not a traveler or a dweller
in your lilac night, I am he who was one day
me.

Whenever night grew in you I guessed
the heart’s rank between two grades: neither
the self accepts, nor the soul accepts.

But in our bodies
a heaven and an earth embrace.

And all of you
is your night .

.

.

radiant night like planet ink.

Night
is the covenant of night, crawling in my body
anesthetized like a fox’s sleepiness.

Night diffusing a mystery
that illuminates my language, whenever it is clearer
I become more fearful of a tomorrow in the fist.

Night
staring at itself safe and assured in its
endlessness, nothing celebrates it except its mirror
and the ancient shepherd songs in a summer of emperors
who get sick on love.

Night that flourished in its Jahili poetry
on the whims of Imru’ el-Qyss and others,
and widened for the dreamers the milk path to a hungry
moon in the remoteness of speech .

.

.

Poems by Fady Joudah

Fady Joudah (born 1971) is a Palestinian-American poet and physician. He is the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for his collection of poems The Earth in the Attic.

dogtoothdyke

Poems