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.