RANDOM HANDSHAKES - ALI H. RADDAOUI

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Carving a place for oneself in a world gone wildly geometrical is not the easiest of undertakings. While a certain level of determinacy is useful and welcome, I find living one’s life as an all too known a quantity with clearly delineated contours is not of necessity an enticing proposition.

THE NUMBERS


I have to leave the house
The perimeter of the rooms
Squarely a round figure
Neither plus nor minus
The tiles, too, so geometric
There’s no place for a hitch
Else the entrepreneur and the builder
Would be taken to court
And their licenses revoked.
The queen-size bed also
1984-ishly rectangular
Like a post-modernist shawl.
The 75 % polyester comforter
Fell half way on all sides
By sheer petty calculation…
The wall paint a good match
For the color of the cutlery
Hue 253 G.
The mind belches, excuse me!
I have drunk a house-made opiate
The chemistry was flawed
I have to throw up the numbers.
Let me leave
And relinquish control
To the dark womb
Of indeterminate shapes far away;
Far from the cacophony of numbers
I need to crouch
And contribute to nature
As I used to before I was relocated
By the force of modern calculus.
I want to be a free contour
Natural non-number.

A.H. Raddaoui.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is hard to believe though, that such a creative mind,and such a poetic spirit can be bothered by numbers or geometry which are means to regulate certain aspects of life;
and they are in no way the basics of life.
The least I can say is congratulations!

Ali H. Raddaoui said...

Anonymous,
I do not wish to say that there is something schizophrenic about living one’s life as a poet and leading the regular life the poet leads as a regular human being. Numbers, measurements, indices and metrics are all hallmarks of our modern world, and you can’t help but deal with them, and sort of live life in an ‘organized, structured and perhaps regimented’ way. We all wish to have a daily plan and a long-term view of how our life unfolds; failure to do that is not conducive to progress.

At the same time, there are things that we may not wish to see determined in this way so we could feel we’re not exactly conducting ourselves like robots. Trying to be the two people at once requires some doing and some determination so as not to completely give in to ‘The Numbers’.

Many thanks for your comment.

Ali