A Love Poem:

 

When we are in love, we do not whisper,

we do not talk too much, we forget poetry

easily and all it represents in imageries.

We watch an elocutionist stutter in utter

shock. We see a bird sitting on an olive tree

look beyond the grove, look beyond the road,

far into the sea and we stare into the sea

and find deserts in waters. No sea waves

slapping at the shore, no boats, no sailors,

no mullet smoked on a wood oven, no child

building a sand-castle. We wonder why this is

only to see a rice field blighted with diseases,

a child in Maiduguri whorled in shackles

because he is found at the European shore,

running away from war, away from shadows.

Why, Beloved, say I do not love you as you want

but I have sworn upon my mother’s frets

that I do. For what better way I will say you

remind me of poems unwritten, books I wish

to leaf through unopened and words

at their silence? What better way to say

each time I think of your bed, I am gripped by

the hands of a little boy with eyes plucked

out by scavengers? Let the sun set and I will

smoothen your back with musk and saffron,

grab your waist, send chills down your spine.

But I see them still, eating into my sleep,

seated in my eyes— young boys from Aleppo,

old men in Afghanistan spared by bullets.

I love you, Beloved— Amen. Till death do us part.

Schadenfreude

 

Here I am slipping, here you are sleeping

beside me, refrigerating the sun rays,

with soft face transitioning into beams,

sculpted into chairs with long, wide, legs,

of broadsword, of ironclad, like the steeled

shoes of a horse gambolling inside your belly.

Here I prey, here you pray, and your words

stray into the eyes of God, and He sends forth

for Mikhail among His angels, and you scoop

a feline with paws larger than a leopard’s,

feed it with purrs from rainy mist and rats

gathered in body-bags, too shock to breathe.

Here I am dying, here you are dyeing, nose

twitched, eyes obscured into the remnants

of your morn. I watch you too closely as you

lower the fabrics into steaming tubs, moored

by diligence with spine arched by cold stone,

and hands fumbling with sweet afterglows.

Here while I write, here you say it’s not right,

and a cold wind like a razor scrape across

my face. And I am stung by nettles in the

imageries I stain, poetry in departures, I,

waved at with both hands. Song about the

moon falling fast into flames and memories.

Here does not feel like home, for I am at the

enemy’s ground, for I live off on colours that

disagree with yours, for I wave black and I

wave beards and I wave a turban and I wave

God that mentions the contingency of bombs,

and I shoot, shoot a sparrow; and you shoot

shoot an empty nest? I am in chains because

a sparrow holds a breath and a nest but empty.

 

Incoherence

 

I aks

a brid

waht ti

‎      snigs

 

adn ti

rpelsie

‎   in wrods,

‎          bdoy

 

adn s-

uol of

‎   wihc si    ‎

peotyr.