one hundred and two years old

one hundred and two years old
we are turned away from the face of the fire

by virtue of one document
oh, how important is paper to this land

taken out of the roots of its olives
splashed with the ink of hundreds tears

black as the day we were signed off
a place for no one, left for everyone

this is the fate of nations
for their kindness, a blow on the head

an increased hundred and two
years of pain washed out with sea-salt.

question on origin, once more

I have once asked earth
am I from you?
when I do not have dirt in my hair

it laughed,
all I could know is that
I don't not know for sure

where I descended from
an earth or a sky
or probably a bit of them both.

Aradi: Territories

Call it peasantry, the practice of hands turning the soil for air
dirt capsulated under fingernails:
a primal attachment that keeps you standing

gone is the old wind trapped under earth
leaving a new face out sunning
the arriving faces, like soil and oxen, turn over these small pieces of ground

Read the rest here: https://crevice.ro/a-game-of-hands-rock-paper-scissors/ 

hunger

I've seen the orchard
filling with apples yet denied myself
picking the blood you've planted for the season.

an east wind in summer

standard summertime
an east wind blows my way
it's only an hour's timezone difference

Acre, a fort

Strolling by the port
midweek, the sea is the same
strong like the fort it lives on its feet.

Haifa

We return, once more
to where we belonged,
after stealing an orange from a holy site.

in a car with a stranger

- Which country held your body, the times your brain was working?
- Soils, with different twisted tongues: one for home, one for elsewhere
I pay my attention to the window, where the nose of the lady meets a setting sun

- The horizon is beautiful
there's a muffed silence in the car, like fog rising
from the dashboard onto the glass

- Why did you reverse your footsteps?
- in what sense is a return a reversal:
reversal denote eraser and who wants to erase their history?

- What is your direction of prayer?
- the same direction of the sun, Eastward,
not a key change if prayer is still kept as a habit

- You sound an awful lot like someone who....
- Got cut out from a rooted tree?
there's a muffed silence in the car, like fog rising

- where is home?
I look from the dashboard to the glass
I close my eyes.

Stick incense

Reminder of an India I have never seen
with my very eyes, the smoke rising slowly toward the ceiling
reminds me of an India I have never seen live
but heard in a northerner's Urdu wordings
a delicate Delhi accent, a Punjabi poet rising
like smoke out of ashes.

a burial service for the King

Here lies the silent music
of the mourners, piling like rice

waiting for a resurrection
in a wasteland

here like the silent music
of the mourners, with flowers

holding petals, shredded out
yellow, red, pink and gradation of hope

for the King lies in a shroud
made with musk and linen

wrapped, Lord of the universe
maker, human, seeker of peace

here lies the silent music
of the mourners, us among them,

in black and dark blue
roughened and bruised

mourning the tapping
of a morning on the windows of resurrection.

Palm Sunday

He enters Jerusalem
like a soft breeze, on a donkey
we weep the walls that keep falling for him

Weariness in the step

This land makes me, this land kills the things I love
dreams dreamed out of the clouds
weaved with the sun, everlasting rain
this land makes me, Za'tar
breaks me bread, whole-wheat engulfed
kills the chance of standing on my two feet
without crutches propelling me upwards
this land kills those who love it,
with its thrones, with its rye
with what makes of it, a boundless emptiness
without borders or barb-wires.

Too valuable, these tributes

They have fallen, young jasmine
it is not yet spring- we say
gone too young, those who die for us to live.

the taxi tells me

This is what this modern city has become, he says bitterly
stones upon stones, like pillars made to make the city a space
but it is all built on our traditions and ancestors bones
just like this shifting culture we are making tells me again,
the taxi driver who picks me off the street.

The Laureate's birthday

This is the day you were born
a quote to celebrate your achievements is dotted over space

your vices, are kept hidden, like the same answer formalation
we give to tyrants and presidents at the same time

they've broken us, but we refused to break
this is something only you would write

only a man would write
only a man with a messy desk would write

only a man with slanting glasses and exiles would write
only a man with torn out passports and detention orders

it only took one man, to cover on a national level
causes that are ours and not ours at the same time

without blanketing but with the written word
the word that had descended first from a mouth holier than yours

having never kissed as many women
from both sides of the equation, yet remained grounded

it will sound sacrilegious if I speak of poets- national- like I would speak
of excuses, long and unbending

there are days where I work in your shadows
there are others where I taper into your spirit

a butterfly effect from a man's heart
crawling lightly on a woman's chest

from a balconey that overlooks
your grave, I will whisper today,

Happy birthday, restful laureate
for in death only you have found your peace.

hometown

I have seen a different rain this winter
mothers' eyes clouding over
sons screaming, fainting on the tarmac where the warriors once walked
locking children in the houses
clouds lifting from earth- skyward
this is my hometown, midwinter. 

memoriam

Your photo is framed black
the women weep
come back, even for a second

they say when the prayers rise
get across the river

come back the women say
but your photo is framed black

A brief history of genealogy

compact like sand grains in an hourglass
the minutes you spend narrating a story of an origin

like sand grains the voices are now
closer to being characters than people who have once hugged me into life

you say, gently with the peeling of beans:

one came with the eastern wind from where others are now escaping
the land of good food, merry afternoons and Palmyra making space for other civilisations

another came from the land of wine, vowels, warm suns
Roman ruins without retaining the language only short sleep and merriment

a third descends from where the cedars converse with God
on the matters of ordinary men and women between day-light and sun-down

the forth was birthed where I am standing,
surrounded with olives trees, dust, sunshine and struggles

binding is this difference, conflicting is this fear
of letting it go to waste; that beauty, that richness, that spirit

hard to tell, I lean toward the western sun,
teach myself to rewrite my contradiction like an old useless chapter of a long book

all this, then runs in my blood
of this genealogy I inherited the fear and a traveler's will

a bird has no roots
irrespective of its wings, it has, a home.

Repainting the roundabout

Paint drips over the end of the roundabout
fresh, like a surviving ice-cream

the flowers have been tainted too,
a little red on their summer-white petals

this doesn't save you, the face-value of paint
in the morning hours, there were thoughts

about a special occasion, made for the purpose of visitation
but the paint keeps dropping without guard

they said a king was visiting,
let's paint over this city;

repaint our tears
repaint the tank tracks
repaint the lovers night walks
repaint the tainted ugly faces
repaint the lack of air
repaint, let the red paint drip over the flowers.

Imagine the voices

As you sleep covering with the night
in the old house, stones borrowed, one after another
from the mountains that crumpled by invasive steps
like needles taken in a healthy body, for a double-check up measure
imagine the voices of those who carried, those who built
as you side with those who destroyed
know that my grandmother's back almost broke at eight years old
atop a mule riding to safety, while my grandfather, sixteen
rode the waves to the all-lit city to flee
so you can sleep safely, imagine the voices of those who died standing
were robbed a chance of sleep, where you now lay your head.