Something Wrong
Adeeb
Kamal Ad-Deen
poetry
Something
Wrong
Adeeb
Kamal Ad-Deen
Poetry
Copyright (c) Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen
First published 2012
Author: Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen
Title: Something Wrong
ISBN:
978-0-646-57253-6
Subjects: poetry.
Printed in
Cover design by Sami Mohammad.
www.sami-art.ae
Many thanks to:
Julia Moretti, Jude Aquilina, Anne-Marie
Smith, Rob Walker, Mark
Kruszynski and Helen Agius.
‘Something Wrong’- Interesting, strange and
amazing!
Anne-Marie Smith
Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen is
an Australian poet of Iraqi origin who graduated in Economics and in English
Literature at the
Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen is
gaining a reputation as one of Australian’s finest poets, with work
represented in high profile Australian literary journals like
Southerly and
Meanjin, and in
anthologies such as Best Australian Poems
(Black Inc Press, 2007). In 2009 Adeeb published his first English poetry
collection Fatherhood
(Seaview Press). A prolific writer since 1976 Adeeb
has published fourteen poetry books in Arabic, English and Italian.
Something Wrong
is the second English language volume of poetry by Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen.
Its forty
poems
include poetry which he wrote in
We see some thematic similarity with his earlier
poetry’s stylistic use of a haunting timbre and of repetition from one
stanza to the next. The repeated phrases also give the effect of a refrain.
I did not
find
the giant
bird,
I did not find
even the name of
the bird,
I did not
find
the audience,
I did not find
even
that boy who
is me.
Boy
This echoing effect conveys
the style of chant to some of Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen’s
poems, as also shown in
a poem from ‘Fatherhood’.
Tonight,
what will I say to my children?
Tonight,
what will I say to my heart?
Tonight,
what will I say to my letter
And my dot?
Theft
Our thought pattern eases over innovative and
original concepts through some ingenious personification devices. After the
first poem where the song of a magician leads to a dance by corpses to whom
he eventually apologises, it does not take long for an inner voice called
perhaps by metonymy ‘There Is Something Wrong’- to warn us of the challenges
of our existence!
Semantic differences can be found in some of the
imagery. Adeeb’s new poems may contain less ambiguity (‘Dyad’ and several
pieces whose titles start with ‘An Attempt to…’ in Fatherhood). This may
result in a deeper representation of the human condition, yet one could say
that darkness, fear, passion and isolation remain close companions in any of
his work.
This poet shows that the universal concepts which
affect all of us human beings are not strictly culturally specific. We
recognise the generic emotional experiences he discusses. Images can exist
in diverse dimensions, and refer to varying genders and universes.
The sun
wants to spend the night
In the club
of planets and stars
But he is
afraid to be delayed
And will not shine tomorrow on his schedule.
Wishes
We join in with his
protagonist and experience the high and lows of day-to-day living, but we
always do so in a timeless line and from a worldwide perspective.
Deceptively simple
words move us around the complex sensations of life that human beings
experience.
You resemble
the sea.
No doubt
about it!
But what
kind of meaning disappears behind that sea?
Behind that
wonderful blueness which starts
So as not to
end
Or to end so that it starts again,
He is Blue and you are Blue
The questioning nature of Adeeb’s poetry is not
in doubt either:
Which
window? ...
This
question that has been torturing him
For years
and years
Since he returned from the sea!
Question
Adeeb uses questioning
as a literary device. Saint Exupėry, for example, strews
The Little Prince with
guileless queries. These delve for meaning while refuting the face value of
statements. They also may take on a naïve quality that Adeeb
attributes to part of the human condition.
And you who are simple like me,
Lost like me
And naive like me,
Noah came and went
The issues of belonging and exile and their
effects come to the fore. These poems raise readers’ awareness of anomie.
They also highlight the need for a sense of identity wherever we are or wish
to be.
In the
faraway country,
I am
sitting in a dark, isolated café
To recall your image that I buried
With my hands
Forty years ago.
Apology
With Adeeb we research a range of emotions, death
and betrayal. We follow the poet in his life or his dream. Few of us have
ever felt so intense that they have had to apologise to corpses.
Hundreds of
corpses surrounded him
Dancing the
dance of great torment.
The musician
became confused, horrified …
Apologizing deeply to the corpses.
Magician
Some memories can appear suddenly. Have you ever
felt stuck or numb in a lost environment?
My God,
I
am the only
one who is still living,
The only one who lives to witness
what had
happened.
I mean
the
living one
who writes
these letters
With his damn confusing
pen
Stopping
every minute
To make sure
That
his fingers
are still
able to write!
Why?
We also come to appreciate the beauty or harmony
of a sign on a page, the shape of some lettering or the sound of a word.
When the
letter sits opposite you,
Do not speak
before he starts speaking …
When he
sings
You must
stand up to dance.
So the
letter will be your flute
And your white bird soaring in the blue sky.
Will of the letter
Adeeb’s work has been
critiqued internationally and his poetry is the subject of numerous studies.
Comments revolve on his interpretation of the ‘Letter’, the Arabic hand and
printed script and its significance in Arabic writing. For the first time we
read about it in English. He explains in The
letter tree how combined letters and dots can
affect sound and form, making some letters “j”(ج),
sound and look harsher than “n”(ن).
J*…full of
enigma…
N*…full of
love's groan’…
And a dot called the Sufi's dot.
The letter tree
In the same poem, when Adeeb uses a word like
‘the tree’, we gradually gain an insight into the referent- the tree- and
its reality, and discover that the tree is the personification of the very
poet whose words you are reading.
When my
head was rolling on the beach
Amid
the exiled strangers' neighing,
A tree full of light and happiness emerged
From my
blood scattered on the ground.
Could it be the letter tree?
The letter tree
As we saw
earlier, an abstract concept 'There is something wrong’ not only is
personified but becomes a protagonist, an enemy or a fiendish friend-
depending how you wish to read it.
There is
something wrong in the bed, …
And in the surprise waiting for the bed at the end.
Something wrong
‘There is something wrong’ becomes a companion,
no longer ‘a chip on the shoulder’, just a whole person whom we are fully
aware of, alongside whom we can walk. Despite dark times, the hero’s
emotions brim with optimism, albeit in another life, as in the last poem of
the collection.
In my next life
I will
read a lot of poems
Of the poets who were not born yet
Hoping I will get sources of life
Forever.
Apology
Sealed in my mind are
some of the lines of Interesting,
Strange, Amazing!
- an existentialist yet humorous poem, central to this poetry collection.
* God is a
sun that speaks inside your heart?
- Yes.
* Strange!
Interesting,
Strange, Amazing!
A famed believer in
emotional responses to problem solving, Saint Exupéry told his readers
in Le Petit
Prince
‘The
eyes are blind. One must look with the heart’.
When approaching
Something Wrong,
why not embrace this very vocal volume with the heart and, I would add, with
the soul!
Poems
Magician
Something
Wrong
Depths
Drops of Love
Will of the
Letter
Two Poems
A Lot of
Pictures
I will Kiss
you Now
Little Dust
Wishes
Where to?
Or a Little
More
The Serpent
Tree
Interesting,
Strange, Amazing!
Question
He Is Blue and
You Are Blue
My New Poem
The Egg, the
Sea and the Moon
In the Drug
Addict's Street
Stones
Transformation
Mirror
About the Rain
and Love
Magic Country
Viewer
Boy
Intertextuality with Death
One Hand
Together on
the Bed
Noah Came and
Went
The Moon, the
Well, the Train
'Good Morning'
Charlie Chaplin Style
Beds
My Friend
Tolstoy
Why
The Letter
Tree
Scenes
Alcohol and
Blood
A Deer Whose
Heart was Eaten by the Tiger
Apology
Magician
Sitting on the
ground to play his wonderful music,
He started
playing childhood
So the
balloons of Christmas
And the
colorful butterflies dropped around him.
When he
started playing the spring,
Fruits and the
flowers dropped around him.
When he
started playing the summer,
The cries of
the ships,
The women's
clothes, their laughter and their small mirrors
Dropped around
him.
When he
started playing the autumn,
The sky
darkened and darkened
And he was
surrounded by storms of light and pain.
But when he
started playing death,
He was shocked
at once:
Hundreds of
corpses surrounded him
Dancing the
dance of great torment.
The musician
became confused, horrified.
His eyes got
teary
Then he began
weeping deeply,
Apologizing
deeply to the corpses.
But the
corpses did not understand
Any word of
his words
And continued
dancing and dancing.
Something
Wrong
1.
There is
something wrong in the bed,
In the bird
that flew over the bed,
In the poem
that was written
To describe
the pleasures of the bed
And in the
surprise waiting for the bed at the end.
2.
There is
something wrong in the fingers,
Longing, and
the moment of embrace.
There is
something wrong in the body.
I mean in the
apples of the body
And in their
unfaithful strange desires.
3.
There is
something wrong in the glass and alcohol,
In dance and
the female dancer,
In nudity and
the act of nudity,
In coffin
documents,
In the anthem,
the noise
And in the
wars that ate their children
Or will eat
them soon.
4.
There is
something wrong in the secret,
Grave, exile
and between the legs.
There is
something wrong in the airplane,
In the cockpit
And in the
years that suddenly disappeared
Without prior
warning.
There is
something wrong in the sea,
In the sitting
near the sea
And near the
naked women.
I mean the
completely naked women.
5.
There is
something wrong that becomes huge
And another
that breeds.
The third
becomes old,
The fourth
weeps.
The fifth
escapes from exile to exile,
From tear to
tear
And from ashes
to ashes.
6.
There is
something wrong in the letter and in the dot,
In the sandy
clock and the rocky clock,
In the memory,
the appointment and the knife,
In the key,
the door of the house and rain,
In the kiss
and the word of regret,
In the desire
of your lips and my lips,
In:
I love you,
In:
Goodbye.
7.
Finally,
In magic
short,
There is
something wrong that just resembles me
As the sea
resembles itself,
As the music
resembles the bird of the dawn.
A wrong that
neither forgets nor forgives until death,
Opens the door
of death
In black
quietness
And flies.
Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen's poem Something Wrong had been chosen and published
as one of The Best Australian Poems 2012 , edited by John Tranter
Depths
In my depths
There is a
white bird
That drops
slaughterous in the depths of the theater.
In the depths
of the theater
There are
screams, moans and torn clothes.
In the depths
of the torn clothes there is a dream,
In the depths
of the dream there is a river,
In the depths
of the river there is a boy,
In the depths
of the boy there is a heart,
In the depths
of the heart there is a poem,
In the depths
of the poem there is a letter,
In the depths
of the letter there is a dot,
In the depths
of the dot there is a Sufi,
In the depths
of the Sufi, there is God:
God who looks
at my slaughterous bird
With weeping
eyes.
Drops of Love
1.
She was
dripping the drops of love
Drop by drop
into my mouth
Trying to
extinguish my crazy thirst
And my crazy
desires.
She was
dripping, sitting in a half-naked body,
With breasts
full of fire,
Legs full of
the naivety and the pleasure.
She was
dripping, sitting on my narrow bed
In my green
room with its heavy curtain
Fearing my
curious neighbors.
In my stairs
leading to the dark hell,
To my wet roof
that quickly collapsed.
So my stairs
dropped that led to the past:
To the past
that resembled
A gallows rope
that killed thousands of lives.
So my curious
neighbors dropped one by one,
My heavy
curtain dropped,
My green room
dropped,
My narrow bed
dropped.
Then
I
Dropped
Member
By
Member
To the bottom,
To the dark
hell,
To the past
that resembled
A gallows rope
that killed thousands of lives.
2.
Alone
My sweetheart
remained suspended in the air
Dripping drops
of love
Drop by drop
With a
half-naked body,
With breasts
full of fire,
Legs full of
the naivety and the pleasure.
Remained
Dripping the
drops of love
Into my crazy
thirsty mouth,
Into my mouth
that does not exist.
Remained
dripping
In vain and
without hope.
Will
of the Letter
When the
letter sits opposite you,
Do not speak
before he starts speaking.
Listen to him
when he speaks,
Weep when he
moans,
Kiss his
bright forehead
When he kisses
your forehead
That is
covered with dust.
When he sings
You must stand
up to dance.
So the letter
will be your flute
And your white
bird soaring in the blue sky.
When the
letter burns with death and love-
And the letter
frequently burns with death and love-
Put your
finger to your lips
As a sign of
silence,
And start
writing the poem above the water.
Two Poems
1.
The lonely
tree has said,
The tree that
I visit every day
Where the
bird's nest and at the end of the river,
She has said,
'Because I am a holy myth
And you are a
myth whose crown and scepter
Have been
taken
So the
dialogue with you is unacceptable.
And if it
becomes acceptable, it will be useless'!
2.
The bird has
said,
The bird whose
nest sleeps on the lonely tree,
'Do not ask
about my name
Whether my
name was crow or dove.
But ask about
your ship:
Your ship that
was left by Noah
A long time
ago
And all the
creatures had disembarked
Happy,
optimistic from it.
Whereas you
stayed in it alone as death
Waiting for
the miracle:
The ship sails
Alone
Again!'
A Lot
of Pictures
My letter
friend,
We took
together,
A lot of
souvenir pictures
Near the
bridge,
Near the door
of the school,
Near the train
station
Whose train
goes down to hell.
And at the
table of the dot,
Her glass
filled with yearning,
We took the
naked pictures that have nothing
But pain,
The naked
pictures that have nothing
But the cries
of the night,
The naked
pictures that have nothing
But God's
shirt.
Yes,
We took the
colored pictures
With the color
of the sunset at sea
Or the color
of the tropical rain
Or with the
clouds of the faraway winter
Or with the
women's shadows
Or with the
sunlight
When the sun
undressed along the great ocean.
You called
these pictures-
And you are
right- poems.
You were
delighted with them
Because you
invented them
And you were
the outside and the inside of them.
Whereas I will
die without writing my poem
In which I say
the naked truth without pictures
Without
pictures of any kind.
I will Kiss
you Now
The dawn is
violent.
The dawn is
full of sun,
And the sun is
strong
As a blade
that enters into the eye.
The dawn is
parting.
Do not call me
by my name.
My name is
death
And it was the
apple or the kiss.
I do not know
But I will
kiss you now, so who are you?
Are you my
sweetheart?
My woman?
My attractive
female?
My killer?
My greatest
illusion?
Are you the
one who put poison in my glass?
Are you the
one who ruined my days and my youth
And scattered
my ashes in the wind?
Are you the
one who arrested my letter?
Are you the
one who threw my memory in the sea of darkness?
I do not know
your name.
I know you are
terribly confused,
And I am the
confusion itself.
I will kiss
you now.
What has
happened to the dawn to become
Violent like a
sinking ship?
What has
happened to the dawn to become
A corpse
thrown by sailors in the middle of the sea?
The dawn is
parting.
I will kiss
you now.
I know
something
I know you are
the cause of my death
And death has
surrounded me
As the
soldiers have surrounded
An unarmed mad
man.
Farewell,
The dawn is
violent
As a sky
blackens from the people's sins.
As a sky is
confused
And drops
piece by piece
In the middle
of the sea.
Little Dust
1.
Few lies will
remain
And the
ridiculous exaggerated praises of the poets
For the
dictatorial kings.
Few sermons of
the corrupted teachers
And the stupid
wives will remain,
Few orders of
administration to designate,
Dismissal and
expulsion,
Few of the
secret reports,
The articles
of insults, threats and intimidation.
Few of the
counterfeit victorious manifestos will remain,
And the
bloodstained military medals.
Few of the
lovers' bones will remain,
Their hearts
shattered by separation.
Little of the
beautiful women's beauty will remain,
Little of the
nudity at sea and in bed,
Little of
night, dawn, water and air,
And few of the
tears, dreams,
The
hallucinations and the nightmares
And few of
cries of the football and bullfighting fans.
2.
Few of
childhood's memories will remain,
The photos of
the unhappy Christmas,
The dreams of
puberty,
The love
letters and the family photos.
Few cries of
the orchestra will remain,
Few poems of
boredom, admonishment, and waiting,
Few clothes of
the clown, the drummer and the female dancer,
And few of the
refugees' tears
And their
rusty boats that drown every day
In God's
oceans.
Few of God's
commandments will remain.
3.
Yes,
Everything
will turn to dust
And little
dust will remain, too!
Wishes
The sun wants
to spend the night
In the club of
planets and stars
But he is
afraid to be delayed
And will not
shine tomorrow on his schedule.
The moon wants
to fly high
Out of her
decreed orbit
But she is
afraid to fall in the black holes.
The lover
wants to invoke his beloved
From the
depths of forgetfulness
But he is
afraid that when she comes,
The past comes
with her
And its ghosts
and its lighting knives
Through the
darkness.
The river
wants to return to his people
But he is
afraid of thieves:
Thieves who
have stood as lookouts for him
At the borders
of nature.
The poet wants
to write his new poem
But he is
afraid that its price is
His hand that
does not master but love
And his head
that lives passionately
In the Sufi
isolation.
Where to?
1.
The sail is in
the middle of the ship.
The ship is in
the middle of the sea.
The sea is in
the middle of my heart.
My heart is
sinking slowly
In its quiet,
violent dream.
2.
The ship is in
the middle of the sea.
The ship is
moving with our bodies:
I and You.
You are naked
like the desire
And I am the
desire itself:
Its nakedness,
Its eternal
fire.
I have been
kissing you from the faraway morning
To the faraway
evening.
I have been
kissing you from the faraway lips
To the faraway
feet.
I have been
kissing you from the faraway blood
To the faraway
sea.
And the sea is
carrying our naked bodies.
'Where to?', I shout, 'O my God, where to?'
Or a
Little More
After
repeating your naked picture in my poem
Combing your
long hair in front of the mirror
For half a
century or a little more,
I decided to
wipe this bitter honey from the memory.
So I got down
Off the
continent of water and the evening
Crossing seven
seas or a little more
To enter your
window that was full with nudity,
Full with your
long hair,
Full with your
huge mirror,
O woman of the
mirror.
But I was
surprised that your window was not in its place,
There was no
mirror for you to undress in front of,
There was no
house on the ground
And your
street disappeared from the map.
The entire
suburb and the whole city lost with it.
So I got back
quickly
Crossing seven
seas or a little more
To enter your
living picture in my poem
For half a new
century,
For half a
century or a little more.
The
Serpent Tree
1.
When I had
started crawling,
Then walking
little by little,
I climbed the
childhood tree
With happy
eyes
Looking
upwards to joy of apples
And the joy of
bananas.
I went up and
up
And my
grandmother's prayer
Pushed me high
and high.
Suddenly my
grandmother died,
So I fell,
Alas,
From the
childhood tree.
2.
My fall
continued year by year,
But I did not
get to the ground.
I was light,
as the dream said.
I was light
enough to fall on another tree.
It was called
the love tree.
I climbed it
with happy eyes
Looking
upwards to the pleasure of apples
Because apples
are the fruit of love as legend says.
Suddenly,
My sweetheart
got lost,
My
sweetheart's kisses
And my
sweetheart's dates.
So I fell,
Alas,
From the love
tree.
3.
I was
expecting that my fall would be extremely noisy
Because the
love tree was as high as the heaven.
But in spite
of spending years falling,
I did not
arrive on the earth.
Perhaps
because I was happy, as the joke said.
Perhaps
because I was happy enough
To fall on a
third tree.
It was called
the death tree.
4.
This time,
The problem
was serious.
Because the
death tree did not like jokes,
Did not like
childhood or love.
It was a funny
tree:
It was as long
as hell
And its leg
was as smooth as the serpents' skin.
There were no
colorful fruits in its top,
So I could not
look upwards in to it
With happy
eyes and a naive heart.
Death tree-
As it
was said to me-
Was inhabited
by regret,
Was inhabited
by the angels
Or by the
black bells
Or by the
serpents.
And it was
said...
But certainly,
I climb it
every day
For many years
On my way to
regret
Or to the
angels
Or to the
black bells
Or the
serpents.
Interesting,
Strange, Amazing!
1.
* What is your
name, O poet?
- My name is
the bird.
*And?
- The fish.
* The fish?
- Yes.
* Interesting!
2.
* What is the
color of the sea, O poet?
- Ships and
women.
* What is the
color of freedom?
- Bread and
salt.
* Bread and
salt?
- Yes.
* Interesting!
3.
How do you
write?
- I enter in
the letter
Wearing the
secret of the letter,
Weeping,
thinking, napping,
Dreaming,
hallucinating, dancing and dying.
* And dying?
- Yes.
* Sad!
4.
* The dot, how
would you describe the dot?
- The dot is
my mother and father.
* So, you
spent your childhood with her?
- And I spent
my boyhood,
Youth and my
blind eon.
* Were you
happy?
- Yes,
Because I
lived in the center of the dot like the fish.
The dot was as
a sea that extended and extended
To what God
wanted.
* Did you see
God?
- No.
* Why?
- Because God
is a sun that speaks inside my heart.
* God is a sun
that speaks inside your heart?
- Yes.
* Strange!
5.
* Well how
will you die?
- If the bird
gets lost in the land of God.
* And?
- If the fish
gets lost in the sea of God.
* And?
- If the bird
picks up the fish.
* Amazing!
Question
1.
When he got to
the fortieth poem,
He decided to
write it at sea.
So he went to
the sea at night.
He did not
find anyone,
But found a
ship was about to sail,
So he shouted
at the bearded captain
To take him,
But the
bearded captain did not answer
Continuing
smoking his pipe.
He shouted at
the naked woman,
But she did
not answer,
Remaining,
looking at the frightening sea.
He shouted at
the dog lying at her feet,
But the dog
answered with barking.
2.
The ship
sailed.
He went
running behind it like a mad man.
Then in anger
he picked up a stone
Throwing it at
the ship,
Breaking a
window.
Which window?
Was it the
captain's window?
Or the woman's
window?
Or the dog's
window?
3.
This question
that has been torturing him
For years and
years
Since he
returned from the sea!
He is Blue and
you are Blue
1.
You resemble
the sea in everything.
Yes,
He is blue
And you are
blue.
He is naive,
stupid
And you are
naive more than often.
He is the
owner of the meanings that begin in the bed
And end with
death.
And you are
the owner of the bed.
There your
meaning begins to appear
Slowly
To end up
drowning and dying.
2.
Yes,
The sea
resembles your body that is full of fire torches.
He has breasts
of the desire rising and falling.
You have
breasts of fever rising forever.
He has legs of
the dream,
You have legs
of earthquakes.
Their torture
begins with kisses that rise
Right and left
To end near
the door of the myth
As the mass
murder of hundreds fleeing
From the
battle.
3.
In mentioning
the murder and earthquakes
The sea pushes
his heavy objects up
From time to
time
To slay his
fans and his lovers.
And you push
your heavy objects up
Every day and
every night
To slay your
unfaithful lover,
Not by the
horror of earthquakes
But by a knife
that sinks in rust and mud.
4.
How beautiful
you are!
You have
ruined my party since my boyhood,
You ruined my
poem from its beginning,
You ruined my
breaths
By your
breaths that are full of desire.
Then I have no
choice
Only to
undress in front of you full of dilemma.
You undress in
front of me
Full of
intrigues and secrets,
Full of your
legs, belly and moons,
Full of your
fire, rains, songs and tears,
Full of your
summer and spring,
Full of your
brave surrender,
And full with
my blind loss at the end.
5.
You resemble
the sea.
No doubt about
it!
But what kind
of meaning disappears behind this truth?
I got lost
between your hands forty centuries ago
As a damned
child,
As an angel
that got leprosy fever,
As an old
exiled man in the ends of the world,
As a poet
complaining of the desolation of the sun,
As a sun
fluctuates in a narrow sky,
As a sky plays
under the throne of gold,
As gold is
fought for by the bastard and the king,
As a king who
does not care about the cries of his
People
surrounding his palace,
Holding
torches and knives every night.
6.
You resemble
the sea.
No doubt about
it!
But what kind
of meaning disappears behind that sea?
Behind that
wonderful blueness which starts
So as not to
end
Or to end so
that it starts again,
Behind those
lost ships and the sailors who dance or weep
On their
sailing ships forever?
Behind those
cities that wait for them to forget them forever?
Behind that
whiteness, I do not understand?
Behind that
blackness, I do not accept?
Behind that
rising downing redness?
Behind your
memory that words and letters are unable to describe?
Behind your
living dying memory?
Behind your
holy memory?
7.
You resemble
the sea.
How changeable
the sea is!
Look!
Your body is
lying.
I am groping
with my fingers your burning sun
Going down in
panic to the door of the myth.
How much I
dreamed of the door of the myth,
O lost-forever
female!
O lying
-forever near my body female!
How much I
dreamed of the door of the myth
And the sun of
the myth.
Thus, as one
who gives up to his fate
That resembles
a circus of clowns,
I left my
fingers near that door
Groping my
childhood, my youth and my old age,
Groping my
letters and dots,
Groping your
naked belly.
Ah,
How much I
dreamed about that fluctuate sun
As a wave of
the sea generated from the right to left,
From birds to
the cloud,
From the blue
color to the yellow color,
From standing
to jogging,
From refusal
to surrender,
From fire to
snow.
No,
No,
There is no
snow, ever.
There is a
fire that shifts with me,
Shifts as the
curse of leprosy in the flesh,
Shifts as the
curse of poverty with the poor,
Shifts as the
rumor passes between the mouths of elderly women,
Shifts as the
letters move from a word to a word,
From a poem to
a poem,
And from death
to death.
My New Poem
I gave my new
poem
With the
fingers of confusion and desire
To the
attractive woman seated beside me on the bus.
I said to her,
'Put the poem between the breasts
To find out
her secret and eternal meaning.'
The attractive
woman did not care about my words
And busied
herself with her red handbag
And her small
mobile, full of appointments.
Then I gave my
new poem
To the child
who played in the park.
I said to him,
'Play with her.
You can make
of her a lot of toys
With the
endless rainbow colors.'
The child
cried and ran away.
Then I gave
the poem to the river
I said to him,
'God was placed on earth,
Take her. It
is also your daughter.
So bless her
and uncover her eternal meaning, O eternal'.
But the river
remained dreaming and dreaming,
Staring in the
faraway distances
Without paying
attention to my words.
Only the
policeman approached me
Shouting in an
ugly voice,
'What's in
your hand?'
I said, 'A new
poem.'
'What do you
say in it?'
I said, 'Read
her to discover her secret and meaning.'
He took her
from me and entered his dark room,
To tie the
poem to an iron chair,
To whip her
with a long whip.
Then he hit
her with the gun butt on her head.
The poem bled
so many letters and more dots
Without
admitting her secret and meaning.
The
Egg, the Sea and the Moon
1.
The past had
dropped
So the present
protested
And the future
went out in a mass demonstration.
2.
The egg had
dropped
So the bird
sitting on the tree
Wept for his
broken egg.
Whereas the
worms on the ground
Celebrated
For this
legendary feast.
3.
The sea had
dropped
So the ships
overturned
And the
witches came to the beach
Dancing until
dawn.
They were
totally naked and joyful
Carrying the
torches, the skulls and the drums.
4.
The moon had
dropped
So the sun
disappeared.
All the lovers
cried
With the tears
of sorrow and regret
Throughout that unfortunate day.
5.
The dictator
has dropped
So his golden
chair cried,
His fierce
dogs cried
And the gates
of his great prison cried.
In
the Drug Addict's Street
From the
balcony of my room overlooking
The street of
the drunken, the drug addicted and the naked women,
I appear to my
drunken audience every night
To speak to
them about God,
Love,
And peace.
My audience
were patient,
But they
mocked at me when I left the balcony.
When I became
seventy years old
One of them
who was extremely drunk and violent
Shouted at me,
'You false
prophet,
We got bored
with your God
And your false
words about him.
Show us a
miracle,
You lying
prophet!'
I got
confused, trembled
And my throat
dried.
I no longer
saw anything
But my fingers
extended to my heart,
Took from it a
white bird
And threw it
towards the audience.
The bird flew
over the audience
Then rose
higher and higher
Until the
audience shouted with happiness.
And the one
who damned me wept
When he saw my
corpse collapsing on the ground.
Stones
No longer
withstanding the knives of separation
And the stabs
of desire,
He decided to
go to her one day.
When he
knocked on her window overlooking the street,
She did not
open it to him.
So he went to
the door
Whispering
with her tender name
But she did
not open it to him.
When he
returned to the dark window,
Stones were
thrown at his back
One by one.
He was
knocking.
Stones were
increasing and increasing
Slowly
Covering his
back, legs and feet.
He kept
knocking and knocking
Until he
disappeared behind a heap of stones.
Transformation
When I kissed
you for the first time,
A red rose
grew on your beautiful belly.
When I kissed
you the second kiss
A white bird
flew over our naked bodies.
When I kissed
you the third kiss
A blue storm
raged.
When I kissed
you the fourth kiss
A thunderbolt,
neither eastern nor western, struck us
To burn our
joyful bodies
So you went to
life like a red rose
And I went to
death like a white bird.
Mirror
1.
Mirror,
I have
remembered you now.
I remembered
your name was a combination of laughter and weeping,
I remembered
your kiss lighting with illusion,
I remembered
your death too.
I remembered,
Yes, I
remembered everything
When I look at
you, through you and by you.
I remembered
my youth that fell from the back window
Of the
alienated play in the carriage,
The carriage
in the family,
Family in the
body
And body in
alienation.
I remembered
as well-
What a
pleasure!-
My youth in
the room hanging by the sky of deprivation
And the sight
of boys playing in the street
When I looked
at them without eyes.
And I
remembered-
And this is an
important addition-
My run from
street to street
When I heard
one of your names, happily,
As if I were
granted the Solomon's seal!
(Is it a
cloak?)
2.
This is an
opportunity that does not repeat for clarity,
So I will
remember with you: my sinkage in the river
Then my
getting out from it
To the mystery
of the female who was swimming
Up and down in
it like a fish,
The fish that
will bewitch me
To scatter my
ashes and my poems in wonderful torment.
And I will
remember my childhood: my tear
That
surrounded me every one of the winter's nights
Because I was
born to a cruel letter
And to a
tougher dot.
Mirror,
I will
remember in front of the flood of your waves
The hand of
the drowned man screaming,
Waving left
and right.
(Could it be
my hand?)
I also
remembered getting lost in the name of God
In spite of my
nostalgia for Him.
My nostalgia
that perhaps resembles His nostalgia for me.
3.
So I am lost
when I look at you
Because I see
the flames of fire inside you,
I see the
glitter of gold,
The window of
dream,
The circle of
desire,
The triangle
of the body,
And the bird
of death.
Mirror,
Even though
you resemble the woman
As if you are
the woman herself
You are so
damned true.
This is the
only difference.
Whereas she is
(as I think) so damned false.
About the Rain
and Love
1.
I will write
about you the rain poem,
I will write
about you the love poem,
I will write
about you the death poem
And I will ask
you with the child's innocence:
Can the rain
be stronger than love?
Can love be
stronger than death?
Or can death
be stronger than the rain?
2.
So I will ask
you for
A kiss in the
rain.
Then I will
ask you for
A kiss of
love.
Then I will
ask you for
A kiss of
death!
3.
I know you
will not agree
Because my
requests are pure craziness
That has
confused your quite, cold heart.
And my fire is
as black as the Magi's fire
That burns
utterly everything.
I know you
will not agree
So I am used
to your sour sun.
When I kiss
you
The rain of
your heart hides
And your small
rabbit hides.
When you
decide to make rain,
Your rain,
alas, is accompanied by earthquakes
Because it
happens at the time of the decline of the sea
And the
control of death on its naked sky.
4.
So I will ask
you for a comfortable death in the rain.
I will ask you
for love in the sea
While the
sailboat of longing and vigor sails gently
Carrying our
naked bodies
In the middle
of the blue tide.
I will ask you
to write with the secret of the rain
My longing
letter
So I can write
with the secret of the secret
Your ambiguous
dot.
5.
I will ask you
all my life
And I know
that there is no answer.
I will repeat
the question every day
Because the
poetry is love,
Love is the
rain
And death is the rain and the sea.
6.
So I will
write about you the death poem:
The poem whose
letter is the sea and love
And its dot is
the rain.
Then I will
write about you the love poem,
O sweetheart
who changes her name every day.
I mean I will
write about you,
With great
patience,
The sea poem
When the sea
is drowning slowly
In the rain.
Magic
Country
In the land of
the kangaroo,
You must fly
Without a head
or a wing,
Without a
compass or a direction.
You must sleep
While you are
cutting off the ocean,
Floating over
your piece of wood.
And you must
cut off the ocean
Floating over
your piece of wood while you are fading away
And you must
fade away while you are dreaming
And you must
dream while you are burning
And you must
burn while you are practicing sleep.
I mean you
must burn while you are sleeping
In great
quietness!
Viewer
In the final
scene
I became
certain that you really and truly died.
You had been
looking at the sea at night,
The sea was
white
And your
clothes- as the director chose them- were white
And the trees
surrounding you were black, black.
It was not
strange that you were dying.
The strange
thing was that I looked at you in the scene
While you were
dying quietly
As if you were
not my title poem,
As if you were
not my strange wound
That haunted
my lifetime
From a cloud
to another,
From darkness
to another.
I looked at
you with complete neutrality
And I was
clever enough
To forget
utterly what I have seen
By the next
day.
I mean the
next day of
Your happy
cinematic death!
Boy
1.
In the street
full of high buildings
The giant bird
flew down,
Flew down
until it touched the ground,
Flew down in
the center of a spiral of wind.
So the
audience fled.
It was strong
Flying with
black color,
Flying with
two fixed-wings of iron.
The audience
shouted and ran away.
But I
approached the bird
(I was boyish
in the full sense of the word)
To catch the
bird's wing with one hand
So the bird
lifted me a little
Then I dropped
on the ground
Amid the
audience's laughter.
2.
I have gone
back to the same place:
The street
that is full of high buildings.
I did not find
the giant bird,
I did not even
find the name of the bird,
I did not find
the audience,
I did not even
find that boy who is me.
A thread of
sorrow and surprise
Appears on my
face
When I lift up
my hand-
As I did half
a century ago-
To catch the
bird's wing.
The bird I
certainly know
That does not
exist at all.
Intertextuality with Death
1.
On the way to death, the ancient holy death,
I
was surprised by a new death:
A
delicious death with the taste of poison
A death that I did not book for an appointment
Or a seat.
2.
In the presence of the music that spills
To write letters
of life and love,
I should write poetry that is full of the sea
And the birds.
But for an ambiguous or understandable reason
I write about death.
Perhaps because death is my only confidant
Or my friend who
dances beautifully
near me
While I collapse in the middle of the street.
3.
I said to the death, 'Bravo'!
Did I say to death, 'Bravo'?
Or was it death that coldly said to me,
'Welcome'?
4.
When death attends:
In Africa they beat the drums,
The Eskimos release the birds,
In the kangaroo's land they play the joyful music.
Perhaps because they think death is only the drums
Or only the birds
Or only the joyful music that delights the listeners!
5.
Who believes that the letter who holds the miracle
Will collapse in front of the death like this?
Who believes that the dot,
The dot who has faced the hurricanes,
Fire and the earthquake
Will weep in the presence of death,
As a blind man who has missed the way home?
6.
Glory to you, O my God,
You have created death to sweep us into quiet
suspicion
Just as the wind sweeps the scattered leaves on the
ground.
Glory to you, O death.
Glory to you, O end.
7.
The letter told me,
'Do not care a lot. Everyone will die
Even death itself will die!'
The letter told me that and spread out his wings
Flying like an eagle in the sky.
Whereas the dot turned into a great cloud
Traveling towards the faraway sea.
How I wished she had taken me with her,
Not left me in the hands of the ghosts:
The ghosts who were surrounding me
As the thieves surrounding
A half naked, half crazy dervish!
One Hand
With one hand I have read the secret of your slim
belly
And of your lips burning with desire.
With one hand I set out to your horrible secrets and
lies
Knowing the ritual of the dot and the blood of the
letters.
So I changed my boats one by one,
Carrying my heads one by one,
Throwing them behind me one by one
In the river, at sea,
In prison and in the well.
With one hand I crowned you as
The queen of exile and the act of exile
And I crowned myself
In a secret holy ceremony as
The king of death and the dead.
Then I wore the red cloak of magic
Forever
With one hand!
Together on the Bed
There is a sea
I carry with my right hand.
There is a death
I carry with my left hand.
When I get tired,
I put the sea on my left hand
And the death on my right hand.
When I sleep,
The sea sleeps restful beside me on the bed.
But the death remains pretending to sleep,
Counting my breaths,
Looking at me with suspicion and doubt,
Lying beside me as well
on the bed!
Noah Came and Went
You will die now.
I know, my friend letter, you will die now.
Your dot that is more pure than the dew of the rose
Can no longer stand all this magic suffering,
The ambushes in the dark
And the loneliness of the seven whips.
You who are simple like me,
Lost like me
And naive like me,
Can no longer stand the desolation of this trip
That we did not prepare anything for
And nobody tells us about its never-ending disasters.
We waited- you and I- for Noah's ship a long time.
Noah came and went!
We waved to him for a long time
With our hands,
Our shirts,
Our clothes
And our heavy tears.
We waved to him with our eternal orphanhood
And with our eternal loss.
We waved to him with our naked childhood,
With our small sun whose taste changed
And became the size of a withered lemon.
We waved to him with everything visible,
With everything invisible.
The man did not notice us.
He was good, peaceful
And worried about his ship, son and birds.
We were asking for nothing but help!
Help!
Yes, my friend letter,
Let us scream now,
HELP!
Perhaps the good man or WHO sent him
On his wonderful mission could hear us.
Let us scream, O good letter,
Perhaps he will pay attention to us.
Do not die, please!
Look this loaf of bread is for you
And this is a dose of water too.
Look this is our sun still shining
Although its size is as a grain of wheat.
But it is a sun anyway.
Do not give up!
Hold on to your dream even though it is light like
dust!
Please
I have not lost hope yet!
Please
H ……..E……...L….….P!
H ……..E……...L….….P!
H ……..E……...L….….P!
The Moon, the
Well and the Train
1.
The
dot will go crazy from love
And the letter
from deprivation.
2.
The moon said
to the letter,
'Do not give
me a new name.
My name is
what you already know
When you are
sleepless
In a garden
during a summer night.'
3.
The train
passed brightly and slowly.
I did not know
its destination and purpose.
But I am
certain that it becomes smaller
The further it
gets away!
4.
Whenever I
remembered the past,
I wished there
was a well in the house
To look into
and to quietly wipe the memories away.
5.
Should I
return to you now, my sweetheart?
But the return
to you resembles writing a love poem
Without the
tears or the fingers or the letters.
6.
The moon is
surrounded by the clouds.
In the middle
of the dream
The women
appear beautiful and naked
Or appear ugly
and do not stop their gossip.
It does not
matter:
The letter is
dead in its dream
Whereas the
dot is trying to arise from death.
7.
The letter
will go crazy with boredom.
I know this.
The dot will
go crazy from fear.
That is what I
fear.
8.
The moon
disappeared, and nobody bade it goodbye.
'Good
Morning' Charlie Chaplin Style
Good morning,
laughter.
Good morning,
giggles,
Mockery,
Happiness,
The shabby
childhood,
The black
poverty,
The white
richness.
Good morning,
the tears,
Hunger,
The boiled
shoes,
Unemployment,
The adventure,
The beautiful
beloved woman,
The homeless
lover.
Good morning
marvelous America,
The ugly
Capitalism,
The miserable
proletariat,
Freedom,
Slavery,
The breasts,
the legs,
Deprivation.
Good morning,
the small creature
With the
animated hat and the kind stick,
With Hitler's
moustache and the entertaining walk.
Good morning,
my beautiful films that dominated
The cinemas
every place and every time.
Good morning,
great success:
Laughter,
laughter and laughter
Until death!
Beds
1.
The God's bed
They call it
the throne
And the bed of
lovers
They call it
love.
Bed of the
body
They call it
desire
And bed of the
kiss
They call it
the pleasure.
The
motherhood's bed
They call it
the sun.
Then the
childhood's bed
They call it
Christmas or Christmas clothes.
2.
The bird's bed
They call it
the egg
And the bed of
anxiety
They call it
desolation.
Then the bed
of the sea:
They call it
the woman or the cloud.
3.
I forgot to
talk about the bed of the letter.
They call it
the word
And I call it
the dot!
4.
What else?
There is the
bed of memory,
They call it-
by mistake- the poem.
What about the
bed of life?
It is death.
They call it
death.
And it is a
common mistake
As death
himself told me
When we once
sat together on the bed!
My
Friend Tolstoy
You do not
have the right,
My friend, O
great Tolstoy,
To throw Anna
Karenina-
Heroine of
your novel-
Under the
train's wheels!
How could you
allow the train's wheels
To cut off
Anna's luxurious fingers,
Her face that
lights up with sweetness, tenderness and beauty,
Her glamorous
hair
And her body
which was loved by everyone who saw?
It is not your
right, my dear friend,
To kill Anna
In front of my
eyes that are full of tears,
My heart that
sinks in sorrow
And my body
which dies quietly
At the end of
the world
To make me a
speechless witness
Who cannot do
anything
But to
apologize to Anna Karenina
Every night
With
meaningless and shapeless words
For a crime he
did not commit at all!
Why
My God,
Death buried
the beloved and the lover,
The singer,
The song
And the
listeners one by one.
Then death
buried the café owner
Who used to
turn on the song every day
With his old
radio.
Then death
buried the old radio,
Chairs of the
cafe and its huge mirrors.
Finally,
Without any
meaningful or meaningless reason
Death buried
the mysterious river,
That gave the
magic of life to the café,
To the song,
To the singer,
To the
listeners,
To the owner
of the cafe and his old radio.
My God,
I am the
only one who is still living,
The only one
who lives to witness what had happened.
I mean the
living one who writes these letters
With his damn
confusing pen
Stopping every
minute
To make sure
That his
fingers are still able to write!
The
Letter Tree
1.
There is no
tree by this name
Or by this
meaning.
So I have
planted my skeleton in the desert,
Dressed it
with the dream hat and the red shoes of my childhood.
And I hung on
it
The colorful
birds having the shape of the letter N*.
Then I put on
it a large yellow egg.
Its name is
the dot!
2.
There is no
tree by this name
Or by this
meaning.
When I got
down from the long black boat,
I
saw people carrying the trees:
Some carrying
the gold tree
Or the
pleasure tree
Or the blood
tree.
The others
were carrying the forgetfulness tree
Or the alcohol
tree
Or the fire
tree.
So I
extended my hand into my heart unknowingly
And got out a
very small tree that is full of the sun.
I called it
the letter tree!
3.
There is no
tree by this name
Or by this
meaning.
But it
happened that I was jailed for life.
In order to
waste time in my eternal prison,
I planted a
very small tree
In the old
metallic dish
In which the
jailers put my food.
The tree grew
up year by year
Until it
produced a letter J* which is full of enigma,
The cries of
blood and of the wars
And a letter
N* which is full of love's groan,
Love's
feathers,
And a dot
called the Sufi's dot.
4.
There is no
tree by this name
Or by this
meaning.
In the strange
boat,
A gathering of
the exiled strangers:
Of the
savages, madmen and semi-madmen
Sailing to
become lost in the middle of the sea.
The first
said, 'We will reach the beach
When we see
the apple tree.'
The second
said, 'When we see the Dinar tree.'
The third
said, 'When we see the bird tree.'
The fourth
said, 'When we see the woman tree.'
When it was my
turn
I said, 'We
will reach the beach
When we see
the letter tree.'
When we
arrived at the beach
A damn, huge
king with sharp eyes
Received
us.
He gave to the
first stranger an apple,
Gave to the
second a Dinar,
Gave to the
third a bird
And gave to
the fourth a woman.
When it was my
turn,
The king's
face got extremely frightening and he shouted,
'O hangman,
Cut off his head!'
* * *
When my head
was rolling on the beach
Amid
the exiled strangers' neighing,
A tree full of
light and happiness emerged
From my blood
scattered on the ground.
Could it be
the letter tree?
***********************
N*: Arabic holy
letter. It is also used in the Arabic language to refer to women in general.
J*: Arabic letter with
which many fearful Arabic words begin such as: jinn, madness (Junun), corpse
(Juthah) and hell (Jahanem).
Scenes
Everyday Scene
****************
Every day my
poem comes full of the sun
Lifting to the
fiftieth-floor
Of my
building: the building of letters.
In my strange
room, she begins to comb her hair
And put
lipstick on her lips.
Then she
undresses completely
And goes to
the window
Staring for a
long time at the city:
At its black
birds that have filled the sky.
Landscape
**********
The leaf fell
from the tree
So the wind
held it to send wherever the wind chose.
Emotional
Scene
***************
Kneeling in
front of her,
He told her
with tears dropping from his eyes,
'If you are
the big tree
I am the small
axe,
O my
sweetheart!'
Theatrical
scene
**************
'Let your love
be burning forever!'
The
professional actress shouted at the unprofessional actor
Over the
stage.
Then she
kissed him hotly.
The
unprofessional actor got confused with her passionate
kiss
And his words
fell on the stage
Like stones
Word
By
Word.
Madness scene
*************
On the top of
the huge mountain,
The madman
knelt over the spring to drink water.
But instead of
water,
He drank the
moon and the stars.
Scene of
happiness
****************
I bought a
field and planted it with pomegranates,
Leaving the
birds to peck at them
Or for
children and the homeless to gather them
After the
pomegranates dropped.
I was
delighted:
Because, when
the children, the birds and the homeless went,
I picked up
the sound of the pomegranates landing
On the ground,
Then I
released it again into the beautiful air
As poems full
of happiness and madness!
Death scene
***********
The captain
shouted to his drowning ship's passengers
While they
were surrendering to cold and death.
He shouted to
them
But no one
woke up.
My God,
Even the
captain's shouts
Surrendered to
cold and death.
Giggle Scene
************
The wind
scattered him and her,
Poverty and
hunger divided them,
The
earthquakes the thunderbolts and the wars ruined them,
But they
remained giggling all their life!
Tragic scene
************
After forty
years of separation,
She met him to
begin at once
Cleaning his
words from rust and dust.
So he began in
divine quietness
Cleaning her
body from blood and the stab wounds.
Alcohol and Blood
My poet friend
had written
A poem about
the star.
So he got
meningitis
And they found
him after forty years
Dead in the
street
Holding a
bottle of alcohol.
Whereas I had
written a poem about the cloud.
So I went
crazy
To die in the
last continent of the world.
But
fortunately they did not find my corpse,
They instead
found a bottle of blood.
A Deer Whose
Heart was Eaten by the Tiger
I love you
when I am inside the text,
I love you
when I am outside the text
And I love you
when I write inside the dot of the text.
So be kind to
me,
You whose name
is mercy,
Because the
text does not know who breathes it
Every moment
Shining within
through the darkness
Every moment
Pulsating
within every moment.
You,
And only you,
Know who reads
the text
Without
uncovering its secret.
You also know
who breathes it
Till it nearly
pulsates within the heart
Pulse by
pulse.
So be kind to
me
When I am
inside the text
Or I am
outside the text
Because the
darkness that has deepened around me,
Is not like
any other darkness
And the thirst
that has ruptured my tongue
Makes my words
wounded
As a deer
whose heart was eaten by the tiger.
Apology
1.
When the snow
of the winter's poem had melted,
The white
paper overflowed
With the
letters and the dots.
2.
Trying
everything to recover from
love sickness,
I began with
burning and fire,
Addicted to
alcohol and the homeless streets,
Shared with
the talismans of magic
And its jinn,
madness and smoke.
Then I wore
the Sufi rag
Ending up at
death, at the iron gate of death.
But I never
recovered.
Something
strange:
I tried
everything to heal from your love sickness
But I did not
try
Once
To see you!
3.
In the faraway
country,
I am sitting
in a dark, isolated café
To recall your
image that I buried
With my hands
Forty years
ago
In the center
of ashes,
And in the
center of the oven that burned suddenly
And almost
turned me burning forever.
4.
In my life
I had read a
lot of the dead poets' poems
Until I was
filled with hopelessness and death
So I died.
In my next
life
I will read a
lot of poems
Of the poets
who were not born yet
Hoping I will
get sources of life
Forever.
5.
I was afraid
to see you
And to see
your bed
Because I know
that it had traveled
In a left and
a right way.
And its
sparrow died a long time ago
Leaving only
the crow
Croaking for
forty years
With the voice
of loss and unfaithfulness,
With the voice
of sunset and dust.
6.
So before I
died
I was smart
enough to apologize to the crow,
To apologize
to the winter and the white paper,
To apologize
to the alcohol, homelessness, magic and mysticism,
To apologize
to the faraway country and to the isolated dark cafe,
To apologize
to ashes and fire,
To apologize
to the dead poets and to the living poets,
To apologize
to hopelessness
And to the bed
which led me
From exile to
exile,
From letter to
letter.
And to
apologize to the sparrows that died a long time ago,
To apologize
to life and the sources of life,
To apologize
to death once and forever!
*******************************
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