Head(ed)

To Sarah Hijazi

The rhythm of stories

Who of us is writing
is it me or 
is it you
I can be a clever fool
Clever foolishness costs me everyone
cost us the land
a full-time wound
compulsive smoking
replacing water with coffee
Music carries us to safety
We fall asleep beside the book
its pages bound by nightmares

Come morning
we wake like stories
to avoid the night,
we become it
we drink gin
snort crushed painkillers
and trade love
a continuous spiral-

the rhythm of reality
like our always-awake minds,
like the moon.

The country

Those bastards ganged up on me
I fell off my bike
and they jumped me

A heart spells
r e d  l o v e
A dusty lung
springs into green
Garments carry streets
rebel patiently
A resistant head
head(ed)
registers the pain

Zeinab riding her bike
Flying 
From home to the street
From the street to the neighborhood
From the neighborhood to the mountains
From the mountains to the library
From the library to the café
From the café to the comrades
From the alley to the bedroom,

My bedroom
it smelled of flowers and 
books
The windows
overlooking Talaat Harb
leaked the voice of Fairuz
Licked my tears
like a cat
tending to my depression.

The air of a prison cell

I sealed my ears
ignoring the fairy's summons
who came on higher orders
They say it's to protect me
What are you protecting me from, pray tell?
I am here on higher orders,
she stressed.

And what am I accused of?
Raising a rainbow.
This coloured veil will cover
those killed before you
those who would not see the sky
for a single day after their arrest.

You accuse me of existing then
My body swollen with lilac
is your evidence.
You are not to blame, fairy
You are made in our image
You share this cell with me
And a mouse
-what is its crime?-
accused of screeching
screech
we feel in our teeth like railways
and melt into pain
and dust.

I remembered then
writing on the walls
of a prison cell in Al Qanater
Love will triumph
Peace will prevail
next to Sabah Arbawi's words
Injustice is Haram
Zeinab rides her bike
and flies away

Estrangement

Canada was
packed with snow
My desk
scattered with papers
An eerie chatter
encircles me
invades my reality
decides to stay

in my mother's tongue.
I wrote
to expose the bastards
I wrote
and something awoke in us

Darling,
how much more love
till we reach your heart?
morning and evening
you sit there
dance with your lover
dissipate the cold
transgress boundaries

it becomes a mirror
We look into it
and out of it
to see without a doubt
You are me
And I am you
Even as I melt my hands
reach out to you

We dance
under the mind-light,
always-awake
like the moon

Imagine the sea

I felt the symbolism
of crossing from one world to another
It haunts me
Fairuz's voice
could not
numb my depression
if anything 
it brought my demise
Longing is
-the smell of houses
washed up on beaches-
demise.
I could be the cat this time
and I just happen to be there
so they would write about me

if only I didn’t remember dying.
Here, the sea smells
of the stubbornness of flies
The houses smell
of the sea's resting place-
of what it holds

dogs, cats, people, sheep
all the same
we cannot stop breeding
eternally drawn to the sea
what lies behind it
like a third kiss
or a scream
under the sun.

Rainbow

That day
disappearance
was real
a spur of the moment
that stays on

for example

As I danced
waved a cloth
a rainbow
A current
lifted me as I rode it
on my friends' shoulders
a place where
I do not take bullets

Distance didn’t separate us
that day
immortalised by my smile
jumping
a happy image
serenading colours and skies
a moment of permanence
Oumayya's piano
Ziad's voice
Frida's paintings
the beats of friends
That day
I didn’t know that
I would die
three waves from now
Zeinab rides her bike and flies away