Greg Panagiotoglou; Unsplash.
At Home
1
Now I sit alone
around a circular table
Now I sit circularly
around myself
Now I sit, as empty as a table
Now I sit
Failing to understand
why my body smells of tobacco
and loss
My heart is a wardrobe filled with suspended clothes
and with relationships suspended like souvenirs
My head is a rusted tin of sardines
When it trembles in the breeze
A lost cat cries in my mind
When children pelt me with stones
They roll ball-like toward the trashcan
When I ask the time
I emerge into a void
When I ask
I have become light
Like nothingness
To my right, air
To my left, air
I float on air
And the air sets me down
When I rise above the surface of thought
I want only to fall back upon sharp truth.
I’m a stone that dreams of flight
Like an ancient deity, I rest on the threshold of my despair
I consider writing a poem about a woman I don’t know
I consider drawing a portrait of a woman who’ll never come
I consider how I’d ask her out for a cup of tea
I consider the long path that leads to my front door
I consider the long path that leads to my house
I consider the long path to my house
I consider the path to my house
I consider my house
Then I consider buying a doorknob for the door
And a door for the wall
And a wall for us
But I’m hungry now
I want to end this
And to cry alone
and sleep
2
A truck that picks up bodies
Drives around endlessly in my head
It runs over everyone I once loved
Before carrying away their remains.
Moist black rises from the back of it
Without end
Or names or thoughts
Only a constant, silent din
And the smell of memories expiring.
When I close my eyes, the old days shrink
Down to a tear
And sneak out
For a drink at the bar
Proceed to get drunk
Shake everyone’s hands
Are kissed
Pick fights
Then creep home before I wake up.
The truck, drunk
And maudlin,
Crashes around in the gloom of my skull
Dragging itself without wheels
—without even a body really—
Over a narrow and slippery pass
In search of an end
Or a stray thought
The truck, drunk
And angry,
Booby-trapped with the bodies of those I have loved,
Drives around
And around
Since before the deity
Since before time
But not for any reason
Or any person
But because it’s a truck
Because there’s a head
Because it should.
3
There’s a severed head in my fridge!
I have no idea what it’s doing there in the cold!
But that means someone slept
Free of nightmares last night
I could bear it on my shoulders
Walk down the street with it,
Chat to people
No one would notice when sound comes out the wrong place!
I could just as easily ignore it
Return to my life
Get married
Have kids
Grow old
Die eventually
The fridge would go to my children
Each in turn would open the door
Pick the thing up and put it on
Before walking down the street
Chatting to people
Who would take no notice!
4
When I wake up
There is a tree lying beside me
Hmm ... It must be thirst
That brings us both to a place like this,
I go into the kitchen
Where I find a bear on the dining table
I seem to have left several doors
Open
In my life
Telling myself that if I ignored them for a few years
They would disappear
Or
Would seem like nothing
When I turn the tap
Out comes a fish
Two
Three
A crazed fisherman must be
Chasing them
If I give them a home, they might live a bit longer
I plug the basin
And we drink together
Fish
Bear
Tree
I step away and begin to howl.
Farce
On the wall, I paint a man on his own like me
Then worry that I’ll feel lonely like him
So I paint a butterfly
But worry it’ll fly away
So I paint four walls
Then worry we’ll despair
So I paint a cloud in memory
Then fearing the question-crows
I paint a trap
Then worry it could work
So I paint an indifferent tree in the distance
Then worry that he’ll think it’s all real
So I paint a moon that’s been gnawed on by regret
Then worry that the poem will distract him
So I paint nothing
But then worry that he’ll discover the doubt
So I paint a door that has been expertly shut
But worry that he’ll get used to failure
So I paint him a suitcase, inside of which another suitcase holds a key
But then worry that he’ll learn the secret
So I paint a bottomless pit on the other side of the door
But worry that I’m proud of his madness
So I paint an owl on his right shoulder
But worry it could make him too wise
So I paint a wolf into his left lung
But worry he may avenge his body
So I paint a rollie between his lips
But worry it could suffocate the dream
So I paint a window
But worry about thieves
So I paint a rifle
Then the cold kills me
Then I worry I might forget.
A Jungle Appeared When You Left
1
You can’t uproot a tree called
Forever
Not even by trapping it between the covers of a book
One day
Someone will open it
Liberating the jungle that appeared when you left.
2
From time to time
Kick pebbles
With your feet
Pretending not to know is a temporary death
Don’t make it a habit.
3
At the supermarket
In front of the seafood freezer
Is the only place
I stand cheerful
Where I can see the ocean
Finally
In a cage.
4
I lean on words
Because everything else wobbles
And my hand is as feeble as the rest of me
It yearns—it longs to suffer
Because the hands that reach out
Spatter me with new memories
With a new void whose limits my exhaustion cannot know
With an unripe euphoria
They come with claws and canines
It is perhaps less desolate than usual
Loneliness
kills faster than boredom
I fatten my heart for its knives
As it’s more merciful than pity
I hand over my regrets for it to weigh
As it’s more gentle than ignoring loved ones
Without the slightest trepidation
Where everyone can hear me, I call it by my name.
5
What good is a memory?
It’s a party
in an elevator
Stuck between floors
No one else can join you
The thought alone
Makes me claustrophobic.
6
I’m no longer sad
I have a new shirt
It feeds the plants when I’m gone
Opens the door for me
Wipes my sweat on its sleeves
Embraces me
When I’m feeling low
It sneaks up behind me
To rubs its buttons across my back
Sings softly in my ear
When I have a fever
It flops like a frightened puppy
onto the bed beside me
After I fall asleep
It spreads out
On the clothesline
Dreams up names for the stars
And like me it
Cries
Awaiting you.
7
There are good days
And bad
And there are days, which
I can’t understand why God would create them
In your absence
---
I want to love you
I want to hate you
A little
Want my intense hatred
To be a way
Of loving you.
---
I’ll repeat what I told you before
I’m your toolkit
Use me to repair
The world.
8
“To my friend Umar Murshid”
I gave him a shirt
He gave me a pair of socks
For a second, I thought
What I’d done would make him handsome
More handsome
Meanwhile, he wanted to find
A way
To keep my feet
Warm.
Two days later, I lost a sock
But found it again on the third day
By then I’d lost the other one
It went on and on
Each day
Losing one warm half
Only to find the other.
There are things we don’t think of
That are worth living for
That’s one of them.
---
Lonely people’s gifts
Frighten us
Because they resemble them.
On War
1
The bullet enters through the front of the soul
Through the place of seeing
Through a window designed for that purpose.
Through a book by an anonymous author,
Through a silly plot
Or some shortcoming in the narrator’s imagination
The bullet enters through the back
Through a vertebra—to be specific—
The perfect place—to be specific—
To cause partial paralysis,
The bullet enters between the thighs
Like semen does,
Like rulers’ spikes,
Like time entering in on itself,
The bullet enters through yesterday
Through a tomorrow recycled one million times
Made grimy by politicians and clerics
It enters through bugged phone lines
Sewers
Power lines, half of which are real,
The bullet enters through the computer screen
Like porn
A teenager’s bedroom,
Like despair
The depressed,
Like trees
A wood stove.
The bullet enters the memory
The origin of thought
The instinct of self-sacrifice that all prey share,
The first executioner’s whip
The revised history of slavery,
An unknown beginning!
An uncertain end!
The bullet enters for free
Like a bullet
And never leaves.
2
When the war is over
The sniper will return home and hug his kids
He’ll cook his wife fish
And go to bed and wake up for months
Years, maybe
He’ll wash his face
Go to work
See his old friends from the war
They’ll smoke
Tell jokes
And return home to their families
They’ll have sex
Or write good poems or perhaps not
But when the war is over
He will go back
And wake up for years
He’ll smoke
Have sex
Have sex
Smoke
---
Until we die.
Jalal Alahmedy
Translated by Adam Talib.
