On Imran of Aleppo

Call me a fool

I most likely fit the bill

Though I will not call off

My search among the rubble

For a doll whose face and apparel

Are overly smeared

By dust settling only to rise

From the cloud and maddening din

Of orbiting debris in outer space,

Out of sheer human senselessness

All over, all around, and whichever ways the dust blows…

Son of my Mom

Wherever you care to tread is smithereens

And in the fashion of a weary trooper

You seek an angle, a corner

Of a floundering spandrel

And you lay your head

On a cracked keyboard or a pillow-like piece of brick

To take a break from the clamor of things

And in the midst of your snooze

Something itching inside your mind’s eye

Awakens you

Your instincts speak to you

“Go inspect the fresh fragments which just populated your corner

And comb the litter for your doll”

-Some pursuit with which to kill pain -

To fool yourself into thinking this nonsense will stop and that you can actually breathe into the womb of your doll so she starts strolling with you amid the shrapnel miraculously metastasizing into petals, pollen-carrying bees, and hum-drum green streets with kids walking back home from school and street vendors singing the praises of their shawarmas and Kamaruddin drinks and sundry other formerly uncelebrated little happenings and the little tender life in your palm waving her hand to another across the street amid the honking of cars by folks honoring the hustle and bustle of their lives,

And if you’re lucky

You’ll wake up for the fifth year in a row

With a slab on your chest

Dust in your nostrils

And blood gushing out of a vein under your knee

And a piece of smoldering concrete

Laying squarely on your camera

And your little baby doll

In her eternal sleep

And in the havoc being wreaked, they manage to stitch your limb, press your shirt around the bloody thing, and dust off your eyes so you can continue, against all odds, to inspect the wreckage for your living baby doll.

PIECING OUT THE PUZZLE...

And then, at times, you find yourself

Placing the time pieces

And you smile for a while

But oftentimes you find pieces right there

Staring at you

Daring you to do or undo

What’s been done with you

And the days dash to their ends

And the nights mutate into dawns 

And before you could gasp

To gasp for breath

You hit a ditch

Out of which you labor to pull your weight

Off the grime of the evening

And strain to walk

Against flat land

Using ropes and pegs

Placed by ancient and fresh climbers

On the canvas of time

And on the brink of space

All you do is sweat  

To avert small rock and avalanche

Gosh, is this what's it's all about?

In my tender years I was told

You'll clear the plots 

And place only furnishings 

Of your own choice

And you'll walk straight

To the no-man's land

Where your mind

Draws the maps

Designs the universe

Sets it in order 

And hoists an orderly fence

And you will lead a full life

With no closure or anguish in sight…

On third thoughts though

It will be wise to surmise

That the final draft

The author plots

Will prevail at all costs.

Crescendo

A long pent-up Mount Etna
Suffuses the dark Catanian sky
With charcoal red,
Numbs the alabaster
Curvy hills with flame
That slowly flows a mile
Curls, then rests,
Scintillating just a while;
Drops of dew,
Hanging on to leaves of grass
Meaning to twitch the seed
Before mutating into vapor.

Etna, you might say,
Is a local upheaval,
A curse, an earmark of hellish wrath.
But no!
It's rather a healing move,
Rectification, not cacophony,
Not self-incrimination.
Sicily's in love with Etna,
And Etna with Sicily.

Ali H. Raddaoui