All these daggers in my head
The door is half-asleep
No lock for it
I am not afraid
But I fear the night
When it gets drunk.
The dinosaur passed
And it did not look at me
As if he forgot me
Or as if I fell from its wicker basket.
I saw the light that came from afar
As blood flowing from the neck of the night.
The dinosaur entered to bathe
One of his habits is to stay
Under water for a long time
Recounting his memories
And whispering with what are in his head
And roasting his delusions on charcoal
Boiling illusions before it becomes
A poem without ends
And smiling at the obsessions stored
In the refrigerator at home
And moaning for the fallen leaves
From the garden trees.
It’s one o’clock
The dinosaur did not
Ask me about the time
He did not ask for a pen
To write his autobiography in exile.
My head is not a battlefield
Or the land of a race
Between warring tribes.
Where do horse riders come from?
Where do criminals come from
To occupy every inch of it?
Where does the notoriety
The astray and those who drink
Nitric acid come from?
Where do the sounds come from?
From their throats?
Or from the blades of swords that
Slaughter mercilessly
In battles we did not fight?
My head is jammed
The occupiers are in its minarets
Or sleep in the streets.
I cannot admit what I am going through
Despite the crowd of villains
My head is still generous in receiving them.
Is my head worth burning?
I -the stranger?
Or those who came from afar
To spoil my life?
Who put all these daggers in my head
Until it became blind areas
Devoid of light?
I am not the emperor of god
To stick blades in my mind
And who poured the coffee of illusion
Over two decades in my brain?
Who leaves horses to run
And the butterflies to flicker in my sky
And the bees to buzz inside me
And serpents to spread their
Poison in my tongue.
And the falcons came from an ancient world
To snipe me in a sleep
And elephants to trample me in the dream
Death became easier
And I listen to its music
As it is running into my water.
Tempe- Arizona-USA July31, 2019
Neither you nor the night sleeps
Does the dream die
If it does not find a dreamer
Or it flies through the air of
Rotten rooms
Drawing a question mark
And two exclamatory marks?
Sleep takes away the minds
Of the weary
Those who no longer differentiates
Between dreams and nightmares.
These are, then, delusions and sounds
Fighting in the brain
And nothing pleases the heart but
A sign from a palm whose embers
Are dancing in the morning.
Alone despite the millions that
Crossed the streets of his head
Secluded among the heads that
Overlook him.
He does not see me
He does not even see his own
Image in the mirrors that stifle the walls
As if the brain hates mirrors in summer
And it retires from seeing them in winter.
For mirrors are nothing but our image
When we reduce the world to
A sentence that has no noun or verb.
The unknown who attacks your
Head farm
Reaps the harvest
Steals the meanings
He has no name or family
There must be an invention to
Assassinate him at night
Or at least dissolve it in patience acid
Which I carry as an amulet
Or expel him-if I am not successful-
Out of the country
Oh, if you tell me his name?
And where did he come from?
I would have pushed any
Harm against you
I have planted a tree in front of the house
That only bears berries and gold.
You only finished one bottle
Of a lifetime’s wine
And when you are on the way to
The drunkenness of the second
It was broken in your right hand
While you were getting ready
To borrow the third from the stranger’s shop
The vineyard of the sky fell at your feet.
Since then, you have been
Trying to plant new vines
In lands you do not know
Who stole it from you at night
When I am away
I am thinking of stopping to walk alone in the parks
So that the three foxes that
You carried as a child would not
Go out and ask about you.
There are many bad days
They need books to monitor
But the worst day was
The day I feel Weak
No pocket
No bed
No way leads to me
No woman in my head
That I desire
And no strangers like me cheer for failure
Nothing but crossing into the
Other world to the sun
Nothing but broken mirrors
That show the ugliness in the city
And blocked streets
Where the dogs do not come out from unharmed
As they pass between fires waiting for the eaters.
Neither the night nor you sleep
No bed there
No satisfied land
And you are not seeing in front
Of you but two paths
A path drawn by your hands in
The composition notebook which
Was far from the dream
And a last way lost from your hands
It only leads to regret.
Tempe, Arizona-USA 29th of July 2019
Where there is no way and no brain
Has anyone changed my head
Or taken it hostage
For the money I do not have?
Did a villain from whom I Have known afflict it?
I have changed a lot
Crowded with demons, jinni
And bloodthirsty
I look over my head
From a small balcony
Still awake in the neck
I do not know the ways
I lost places in my brain
The streets do not salute me
And do not hand itself over to me.
My head that turned so much
And roamed the world was damaged
As if I lost it in a gamble
Where I do not know the rules.
Is this my head
Which I filled with poems
And texts of the dead?
Did the dead wake up in it?
Did they come for retribution?
I who lived and survived by them.
I was not a scoundrel with them I did not steal their eyes
Nor sell their bios to passersby.
My head flew
Nobody knows me in such a crowd
Those I know will not believe my fate
I wish it were stuffed with
A ton of straw or an acre of hay
So, I would have managed to
Shake it off at night
And come back to me again
But the scoundrels colonized it
They poured the oils of their
Wickedness into it
They gave their orders:
No sleeping Nor sitting
And eat a sea of fish.
*
I drink water and walk
Where there is no way in the brain
And where there is no way and brain.
Tempe- Arizona -USA August, 2019
I raise sheep of illusion
Here is a pond filled with the whales of Jonah
With howling rodents and wolves
And my water does not lie
Even if I live raising sheep of illusion
Feed demons with the flesh of my soul
Take care of losses with the tenderness
Of an absent father
People does not know that I drink alot
Because the tides attacked me
There is no sea or river anymore
No lakes pass through my veins
No springs under my feet
To make up for my poverty with bottles
Of blame and persecution.
In my head, there are festivals
That have no owners
Performed in untitled places
I have –there- a seat on which
I cry silently
My head is a suspension bridge
Crossed by pickpockets of minds
And the perpetrators of treachery
And the forgotten parents.
I am the son of an unjust doubt
Of an ambiguous imagination
I was deceived by my image in the mirror
And my wandering in dreams
Imagination took me to a well in the desert
Near to Cacti
Where the invaders forgot it while they were
Killing the earth and those on it.
My head stuck the ends in the corner
It divides spaces and volumes
It calls algebra to support the size
Of the incomplete pyramid in me.
I will do surgeries to ants on the road
Which accompanied me when I departed
I will make from all hidden things
A flag pointing to my trees
I open the morning door with question marks
I end my day with the call of the ancestors
And between them I recall from my
Memory a surah from the Holy Quran:” say”قل
Fear has become the sultan of my letters
Solitude is my crown
And I am strong with them
I have no choice but to escape to my head
Towards those who make my loneliness
They are destructive wolves in my bed
There is no treatment for their wounds
No supporters in my battles.
Fools drive me out of the house of my soul
They urge my birds to lay eggs
In my mouth.
I hide in my shirt pocket
To avoid harm
Where those beat me
And I am alone in my room
Defenseless except from my
Daggers of illusion that do not sleep
The door is locked from inside
And there is no way to escape.
I smile at them
I drink more water
They hurt me, and I was entertained
By them
I lost the love that I had been
Waiting for
And triumphed with over solid geometry
And the philosophers.
Tempe. Arizona- USA, 2019
Dogs pass through my fingers
Never ask again about the poem
About my condition in the Wind
Nor about my image in the clouds.
Do not ask me about my book
Because I closed the ink factories
I sold the paper stores to the fire
To satisfy their hunger.
Do not talk to me about dreams
That I raised in the bed of rest
And when they grew up
They denied me.
Nor about the boat that the
Fish chased in the Nile
Until rescued by a sleeping blue lily.
Nor about the dictionaries
That burdened me
And did not save my
Languages from their doom.
Do not talk to me about the shadows
Because I spent my life sitting
Under its trees
To be as ascetic as my sheikh
But I sold my illusions
To no one but me.
The sun has left its place in the house
I was left with nothing but dust
Even the mouse that I thought
Ran away from my cry
Returned in a wolf’s guise
It gnawed what was in the rooms for me.
I am the only traveler
Without food or luggage
No name for me
No passport
No road beckons at night
No meaning leads to a sentence
That starts and ends with me
No wind gives the sea
The freedom to die.
Silence has become an insulating wall
That prevents people from asking me
About the dogs that pass
Through my fingers
And about the crows that fill the streets
And I do not see them
As if my eyes have lost their articulation
And about Noah who did not come.
I only see my life as a sea
The fish drank its water
And died of thirst.
Death sleeps in my bed
So that I did not get tired of calling
It is closer than words that are not mine
Than a vein devoid of my blood
Than music that climbs the Walls
To be strong in the battle
Of ant armies in my brain.
I lost myself in battles
So, I became a thousand of People
And I wondered which one I am?
I am afraid to live in my mask
It is ruthless
And it gets hard at nights
Why do frogs sleep in water
And bats leave their homes to the trees.
I got out of the corners and angles
Circles can no longer tolerate whispers
Those, which hate obsessions and vanishing
They only know the severity of points and lines
I am the one who went to solid geometry
To nurture the imagination in my head
But it betrayed me
And it spoke to strangers to rob me
Every time I leave a letter
Unchecked here
It kicked me
Every time I leave a space
Between two lines here
The devil slept in it
Whenever I forget a word
Without points
It rained heavily
And the sky thundered with surahs
“By the heaven and At-Tariq “When the earth is shaken
With its (final) earthquake…. From the holy Quran
I walk in the streets
It is as if I am on pilgrimage
And circumambulating around my head
No pilgrims behind
But strangers continue to occupy me.
Tempe- Arizona -USA August 13, 2019
Ahmad Al-Shahawy’
Salwa Gouda
Alien Buddha Press 