Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Note to the Reader:
I, Sadek Mohammed, a citizen of a country that gave me seven wars which stole my youth, murdered my dreams, killed my wife, kidnapped two of my sons, terrified my other children, displaced my neighbors, massacred my friends and forever poisoned my life, wrote these clay tablets for no one. I also wrote them in English because I’d never mastered that bloody language and because no one read in the place where I intended to bury them. If ever you come across them, don’t read them!
1
This is how the story began.
Nammu,
the Mistress of the primal sea,
created An and Ki.
An was heaven.
Ki was earth.
Heaven and earth loved their mirth.
Banded together.
They clasped each other.
Like uncle Hisham and aunt Aseel
They sired a son.
They called Enlil.
Enlil raped Ninlil.
Ninlil bore Nanna.
Nanna remained single.
Then he married Ningal.
Ningal and Nanna fathered Innana.
Indiana. Montana. Americana.
Botswana. Ghana. Banana.
From that whore
flared the war.
2
Today was wasted.
Obliterated.
Today was lodged between three car bombs,
six explosions,
and a yellow lie.
Today,
I mean this heartache,
this crucifix,
this ax,
this long arm,
this distance between two fingers in the hand of death,
was shoved,
like a rock,
down the city’s throat
and left her dazed.
I
will
not
remove
blood
stains.
I will not question your intentions
when you decided to leave me
in the middle of the way
and said we were done.
I will not ask Kafka about this transformation
nor demand a fair trial.
I will not look for the man who disappeared,
nor the twelve bloodied hands
and the mother who cuddled her lifeless son.
I
WILL
NOT…
……….
Damn you were so fucking gorgeous that night,
but I was depressed.
Or what was it, exactly, that pierced my heart?
3
This city is not suitable for love.
It keeps moving backward
like the feet of a sportive cat.
The way war collides with love here
makes one wonder
why would Yeats propose to Maud Gonne again
when this was the seventh collision?
Why would I be angry with you
when nothing remains but stones in our streets,
nothing is left but memories in the wind?
Why should I give a damn
about The Ring of the Dove
when the writer’s tongue
is a twin
to the headsman’s sword?
………………………….
I saw no ripe heads.
I saw no ripe hearts.
So it does not make sense
if one falls in love at first sight,
or while asleep,
or by description.
You need to quiver
like the wings of a blue butterfly, my friend,
and hover high, like a bird,
in the breeze coming from a far forest.
Forgive me!
I buried my heart
under that white acacia tree
I need a shovel to unearth it.
4
He who has seen all wars prefers to be
invisible in front of his friends’ graves.
The issue is not about loyalty,
or why do I
always remember
that I need to smoke every time
I go to a gas station.
The issue is why today’s dinner
was better than yesterday’s
and why should I give
a damn about
the British Royal family
or the Secretary of Defense.
The issue is you
and I,
tonight,
after
this.
I.
L.
O.
V.
E.
D.
Y.
O.
U.
in all the colors of the rainbow,
but I couldn’t
marry you
because
I was depressed,
guilty,
and short-sighted.
5
I think of you to smoke my last cigarette.
I think of you again to sit in my old chair and blame Bob Marley & Samantha Fox.
I think of all my dead friends to call to mind that they died standing
with eyes full of tears
& hands full of dust.
I think of the shrapnels of silence,
the silence of shrapnels.
I think of the rules of loss,
the loss of rules.
I think of the order,
this order,
the one who gave the order,
the chaos of the order,
the order of chaos to cry out:
O Lord of the Seven Skies, this crowd is softer than a virgin’s breast!
I think of the last war, this war, the coming war.
I think of the empire, lost desire, balls of fire.
I think of colonization,
subjugation,
segregation,
emigration,
deportation.
We were right when we created rhyme,
but wrong when we trusted the western wind.
Dear friends,
I got your message.
I’m staying here till next Ashura.
6
It’s Friday.
The quiet cups of silence/ the silence of the cups,
the dirty anguished table/ the table of dirty anguish,
the brimming ash/ the ash on the brim,
the empty packs of cigarettes/ the cigarettes in packs of emptiness,
The leaning shelves/ the shelves of the leaning,
the open mouth of the window/ the window of the open mouth,
the long journeys of the mind/ the mind of the long journeys,
the river of impending dying/ the impending death of the river,
the death of the city/ the city of death,
the loss of a woman, the woman of loss.
It seems she has left her mark.
I told you that.
“Be honest!”
The noun is a ladder. The adjective is a well.
The noun is a ladder. The adjective is a well.
That ladder invokes a well.
The well invokes a ladder.
The ladder. The well.
The invocation…
You know you have to be honest.
You are not real, you know that.
When you stumbled upon the bed, she carried the baby.
Most women carry babies.
The man carries his stick. Most men carry their sticks.
When the Imam says, “Be honest!”-
he does not mean Hamlet killed his woman.
He simply means it’s Friday.
7
So that woman.
That sad woman.
That raunchy sad woman at my friend’s funeral
knew that I wanted her more than tea and tobacco
yet I chose to measure my leave time in bottles of beer.
A bottle for snipers.
A bottle for wet trenches and army samoon.
A bottle for the deep wound on my left side.
A bottle for shrapnel fire at any given moment of the day.
A bottle for the Katyusha salvos screaming like tempestuous winds in my ears.
A bottle for the bloodstained dust and the smell of different deaths.
A bottle for my girlfriend who found out that marrying an officer was a shortcut to El Dorado.
A bottle for Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Bonaparte and Jabar Shanshal.
A bottle for Macbeth, Othello, Richard II, and General Qassim.
A bottle for Fortinbras giving orders to carry Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage.
A bottle for the blue-skinned woman who tossed the golden apple in the feast of the gods.
A bottle for Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s ethics.
A bottle for all the bullets shot at me so far.
A bottle for gunners, sappers, signalmen, hedgehogs, and mines.
And a bottle for me as I look at my fingers on the grassy knoll,
but if I get drunk…
kill me!