A desert swelling on the map..
Cities searching in the pockets of the unseen
For the keys of the century.
Streets narrow for the smoke of your cigarettes
Open terraces..
Deluded with the washing drizzle
On the pavement you bow
Under hanging meat
You pass with a woman
A driver gave her the way
In return for the light of her legs.
Posters on the walls
Workers on the side of livelihood
Consuming coals of the narghiles.
Italian shoes
Don’t understand the language of our streets.
Lovers pretending to be relatives
And kisses postponed to the next century.
Boys pushing to the dream
Carts of tobacco.
And girls happy with the small breasts.
Hot phones till the morning..
Waiting for the residential crises to be solved.
And mosques minarets..
Promising the patients for a peaceful judgment day,
And paupers idealizing the failure
And feel satisfied with praising Manhood.
Ready identity cards in pockets
And you..
At the end of the café
Cursing the government
Because the tea is without foam.
Your impossible girl
Wasting her body in fitting rooms,
And the bad liquors..
Is not enough for your absence..
As soon as the others see you
They swallow your stature
And stagger..
Luxury vehicles
Snatching the girls from the trap of the poems.
Despite the well chosen words,
And the tidy pens in the shirt’s pocket
And your subjective critique of renowned poets
The new girl friend tells you:
That a comfortable chair
Is better than a vague poem
And you lose because you’re like this,
And because the half opened stores..
are vigilant against Gheble and thieves.
In your pocket a shopping list
And in your head a list of prohibited items,
In your hand a broken watch,
And a ring that drives away the admirers
Remember..
Your early arrival to your job
Doesn’t mean that you woke up
And the children that slept all the day
Will hunt your pleasure…
next night.
Your jealous wife..
Cleans your clothes from beach’s tar
And your eyes from the pictures of female presenters.
Remember…
What lights your room
Isn’t necessarily…
the glow of your early sleeping woman
You spend your night waiting for a poem
And on the steps of the court
You spend your day waiting for a fresh divorcee
Thus, terror hits you
While you struggle for the scene
And you smell in the eyes…
The forest fire
And you search the city
For a bench for two lovers
And you’re inspecting your friend’s comic drawings
More terror hits you
When you return back home
Without crossing off the list:
You have to bleed a lot..
So, your sleep becomes lighter.
You have to draw a sober frown
Thus, laughing kills the heart
You have to invent your secret name
To each new lover
You have to fade the window’s light
And plant an eyehole in your door
You have to insert your knife
In the woman’s body
To test her sweetness
You have what you have
Before you meet –face to face-
Your lean face
A wound, the size of the mirror
A vast homeland
Without a place to make love
A window..
At the end of the corridor
Listening to the footfall of foreign shoes
And a desert
Swelling
In the heart
…
…
And on the map
_____
* From the collection (A bench for two lovers) (Mek’ad Le Ashikain) 2002.
** Salem Al Okali (b.1960 – ) Renowned Libyan Poet, has many published works of poetry and essays.
