Love Poem I

Will I write a love poem?

It is not easy and I have not written one before.

Yet, perhaps the sea,

truly aquamarine blue, even effervescent

in this city inspires me to admit how much

I love you.

The sound of your voice,

Your lips,

Your coarse black hair,

The tiny hairs that cover your body.

The curly, wiry hair in that place below.

Yes, a love poem this shall be,

from Beirut,

with love...

(2008)

Old Sana'a

Sometimes I am a prisoner of my body, of my mind.

I carry my history around,

heavier and heavier,

like a washerwoman's bundle around my shoulders,

Garments.

Some beautiful, to be sure.

Others dirty and barely wearable.

One day my load shall become too heavy

and I shall sit down and die.

I thought I would die yesterday,

when the crazy big steel bird I was riding in

came in for a bad landing and then

SWOOPED up again,

even when we touched down (finally)

it was uneven;

Praying that I would be given time

to repent of the things I've done

(the things I've done with you).

And now I sit on the rooftop

smelling the faint shades of cardamom,

watching the birds and the minarets,

and the mountains which are

carelessly sculpted by erosion.

I search for release,

Which I find only in your arms.

(Sana'a, 2008)

Last Night's Story

I observed him in the crowd,

coming towards me,

much more pleasurable to look at than the others.

Who says that true love doesn't exist?

We eat. And then we do other things and

I am left feeling cleaner, by the end,

than I was at the start of the evening;

Perhaps for the first time, in a long time.

Washed clean again, no wonder we said we felt no shame!

How could we?

(2008)

echo

It is true, your echo still remains

still

what is an echo?

a memory? feelings for a memory?

memory, sweet

A Verse from Cavafy

I searched in vain to find a verse,

From Cavafy, to speed his journey.

I imagine his back,

No doubt sweating underneath his shirt

Against the vinyl covered seat of a

Cairo taxi.

On the way to his dance class,

Unbroken almost fearful silence.

Here his echo still remains,

Tatty cushions tossed around like flotsam

Litter the living room floor,

The scene of our last love-making.

Tender kisses that I still feel on my fingertips,

his sad good bye.

The Old Photograph

What am I?

And

Where is that boy,

standing on the beach,

shyly looking away from the camera

with a cuttlefish skeleton in his small hands.

Eight years old, hair bleached white and

skin as brown as an Egyptian!

He, I, remember the moment,

the wind in his hair, surly grey sea.

Stood on another beach now,

thousands of miles away.

The same, yet transformed;

Hair darker, hands bigger,

He's not changed,

But I'm not the same.

We Leave Together

We leave together,

the boy from Alexandria and I.

Bodies still tingling from common knowledge,

Appetites appeased from the same meal.

I confess that I was slightly drunk

in the old lift on the way down,

I hope that you were too...

You brush against me softly as we leave the building

and go into the busy morning street.

The passion that we shared the night before still glowing.

Our forbidden secret somehow not visible

In the morning light.

Our hope for a love that was not to last

more than a few days.

(2007)

On the Metro

You kissed me on the metro,

on the mouth , lingeringly.

"So sad," you said.

At 6:30 in the morning

In front of the fat man.

Luis, the boy from Columbia,

You kissed me on the metro.

(2007)

How Could I?

The room was cheap and sordid,

a one bedroom, rented apartment

above a busy, noisy and dusty street.

A five minute conversation with the doorman,

about the prices of rent,

Then I entered that nest that was dedicated solely to love making.

There, on that humble bed

I possessed love's body,

(or rather it possessed me)

for a time...

But he required pain, tearing and ripping of his own flesh.

How could I

open things that are not supposed to be exposed

in the body of such a young God?

I did not know that you had sacrificed yourself so entirely,

That the blood that you made emerge from my nipples

was just a request for me to ravage your

own delicious orifice?

(November 2007)

We Took a Flat Together

We took a flat together,

just back from the sea.

You and your friend spent all day

and night searching for it.

You lay in my arms and I told you

I didn't want anything else in all the world.

You laughed, said "ya walad."

A mirror in the bathroom

Showed us both our images.

I caressed us both in it with my eyes,

26 and 27 years.

We took a flat together,

But it ended in disaster!

(November 2007)