in translation

For Z, the better poet

Your words have despair
painted over them like a flag

all I have to do is be a vessel
that carries you across to the other side

with clear thought patterns
copy and paste your despair

over the towns and trees you've cut
with the edge of words

all I have to do is be the eagle
that looks with a sharp eye

on the nuances of what you don't say
does it make sense to paint the desert sand blue?

this too, is  vain, that poetry speaks
better truths than drunks

the truth is, in poetry we are both drunk
enough to reveal our biggest fears

etched with the sense that I lack
this very moment I am addressing

a body of words bigger than mine
washed out like a sea of treasures

fished out like the ways we spell
Baher, the sea, big and understanding of us both

this is what it is like to be someone's despair vessel;
attempt to cover the holes the wind insists on getting into with only bare hands.

Opening night: PalFest X

The night opens, outside the court,
in the auditorium we can hear the outside world dwindling
call for prayer and a pause for the call for words
nothing sacrilegious about the sun-set, the sound, the word

Ten years, write
read the voices that speak in the name of those who listen
read the words that have shaped nations
pushing them forth like ebb and flow

mark their words, with power
write: this is how the words gather to form you
a body, an audience, a history
write, let the words become you

back-dropped to the old court
back-lit walls, back-dated posters
a celebration is a sound you make in the throats of others
to cause jubilation; make noise, use the words

ten years merit the celebration
of nights opening and closing under an old fig tree
near where Mahmoud Darwish sipped his coffee every morning
watched the birds in flight and made the letters dance

a decade of dedication to the voices
that have once thought dead, fished from the rubble
nicked by the hands of time,
we are all aging, aren't we?

I meet them,master of the words, at the dark hour,
fresh from flight, unaware of the hearts
of the cities to come, with the week passing by
one week of their lives and a minute into mine

to go somewhere, you leave your whole self behind
but to come forth is a gift you give
those who are unable to move
too long is their absence and our fury

The night opens, outside the court,
in the auditorium we can hear the outside world dwindling
call for prayer and a pause for the call for words
nothing sacrilegious about the sun-set, the sound, the word

the night opens outside the court
and the outside world is alive
a call for prayer rings in the night
in respect we ask, do we stop for the voice of God,
or do we continue to hear, the voice of God reflected in our words?