Poetry

At the beginning, there was no homeland…
There was an old sad letter, only
We opened it... And started reading
Then we suggested: we shall make it a map…
And let's assume that these puddles of tears that we shed on it: a capital and provinces.

You are our favourite victim
Our bloody coat that we inherited from our ancestors, as if a warm bandage
That we never take off, however death fashion is changed
Our bloody coat that eternally matches our burned and torn shirts
Our bloody coat…
That always comes in one size, always: God is the largest…
We wear it and walk in this world: showing off all this sad elegance.

Birds can also think of revenge…
You have to be afraid of this
They leave their feathers hanging in the air: while their bodies moulder in cages or on the ground…
Invisible feathers…
Falling sweetly and slowly for years and centuries…
In the end, they settle down on our shoulders: suddenly, we feel as if carrying an unbearable weight.

I don't know what it is, that is eating us…
But I do know that he knows nothing about eating etiquette
Today, we served him ‘a dessert’; he ate it… But he didn't leave the table.

Maybe Allah was thinking of flutes when they presented him the moulding of our bodies, so that He can blow spirit in them…
Otherwise, how come…
Our sweetness cannot be realized unless we are pierced by bullets.

A bottle full of questions, a piece of cloth of weariness and fear, and a good lighter of futility
Then throw this Molotov cocktail of your silence on days…

I know an orphan who suffers from colour blindness…
He colours blood with green
Once he got an ‘F’ at school…
For the teacher said to them: draw your fathers
And he drew a wide garden.

And I saw them…
Removing the 'A's from Your name, dear ALLAH
And using the rest: as bars for a skylight of a prison cell.

At the first grade at school…
Mr Jeliel, our teacher said that 'A' is like a tent so that he can clarify the idea to us
Then asked: each one of us should write his tent in his copybook.
We didn't know that Mr Jeliel then: was like You, dear Allah…
Until people were displaced…
And Your angels started to write in the book of sins for each one of us: A tent.

And I saw fathers: who go like stable electrons around the nucleus of the family….
They leak out faraway as power: in the wires of war
And I saw orphans: with hearts that glow…
As if: that screwdriver, with which we check electricity
Whenever someone puts their hands on their heads.