The Desert

My era tells me bluntly:

You do not belong.

I answer bluntly:

I do not belong,

I try to understand you.

Now I am a shadow

Lost in the forest

Of a skull

I'm on my feet, the wall is a fence -

The distance shrinks, a window recedes.

Daylight is a thread

Snipped by my lungs to stitch the evening.

All I said about my life and death

Recurs in the silence

Of the stone under my head...

Am I full of contradictions? That is correct.

Now I am a plant. Yesterday, when I was between fire and water

I was a harvest.

Now I am a rose and live coal,

Now I am the sun and the shadow

I am not a god.

Am I full of contradictions? That is correct...

The moon always wears

A stone helmet

To fight its own shadows.

The door of my house is closed.

Darkness is a blanket:

A pale moon comes with

A handful of light

My words fail

To convey my gratitude.

The killing has changed the city's shape - This rock is bone

This smoke people breathing.

We no longer meet,

Rejection and exile keep us apart.

The promises are dead, space is dead,

Death alone has become our meeting point.

He shuts the door

Not to trap his joy

...But to free his grief.

A newscast

About a woman in love

Being killed,

About a boy being kidnapped

And a policeman growing into a wall.

Whatever comes it will be old

So take with you anything other then this madness - get ready

To stay a stranger...

They found people in sacks:

One without a head

One without a tongue or hands

One squashed

The rest without names.

Have you gone mad? Please,

Do not write about these things.

You will see

Say his name

Say I painted his face

Stretch your hand to him

Or walk like any man

Or smile

Or say I was once sad

You will see

There is no homeland...

There may come a time when you'll be

Accepted to live deaf and dumb, and perhaps

They'll let you mumble: death,

Life, resurrection -

And peace be upon you.

He wears Jihad uniform, struts in a mantle of ideas.

A merchant - he does not sell clothes, he sell people.

They took him to a ditch and burnt him.

He was not a murderer, he was a boy.

He was not...

He was a voice

Vibrating, scaling the steps of space.

And now he's fluting in the air.

Darkness.

The earth's trees have become tears on heaven's cheeks.

An eclipse in this place.

Death snapped the city's branch and the friends departed.

You do not die because you are created or because you have a body

You die because you are the face of the future.

The flower that tempted the wind to carry its perfume

Died yesterday.

The sun no longer rises

It covers its feet with straw

And slips away...