I
In the beginning, I say I love you, and I hate my soul, hiding in the shadows like a child feeling guilty, my soul that have implicated me in love, in the fist of silk and caltrops. My soul that cries shamelessly before a cold-blooded emotion waving its stick.
I love you, and I enthusiastically watch the universal theatre, I do not sympathize with the villains, unlike you after each Arabic movie. The villains that hate the protagonists, and plot conspiracies in the middle of the story.
What do I do now with all that evil around us? I must be good at hating in order to embody the content of the dramatic complication. It does not suit the likes of me to talk about tolerance, when they are surrounded by disappointment.
II
I fail to deeply hate those with secondary and primary roles, and to pay attention when the camera moves (Pan Left)
Because the director usually gives orders to show the heart-side so that the spectator knows how much time is left before I fall like a loser.
Then I will die in a close-up scene
My face will fill the screen
Looking at the depth of the frame, and muttering a single word.
People will guess my last words
And curse open-endings
It is pointless for you to not know that you are my last words
It is pointless for you to be far away
When the director claps for the final scene
But I will love you even after the movie ends
I will love you freely from the requirements of the scenario
There in death, away from scenes
And away from the roles that we master for nothing.
III
I love you
As I move in my bodily vehicle from one floor to another, from a room and lounge, to a studio with an American kitchen, which I rarely use.
I love you here in the face of the door’s coldness, behind the window’s devils, next to the disappointment fridge, and the corpses of cowardly friends.
I love you in the selfishness of the streets that hide your voice like nonreturnable gifts, here in front of the keyboard that suffocates with cheap ashes, ashes that I collect in my lungs in an infinite passion.
I love you on the seat that is forced to carry me, while listening to a song that I repeat twenty times a day, in the despair that grabs me by the shirt, and the sunken ships between my fingers.
IV
I love you
In the moment when my friend stops complaining, in the seconds between one comment and the other. In the bar’s absentmindedness that intrigues the sad women, in looking on the tables trying to find something that does not represent you. In the prompt and deep cinematic kiss, in the coquetry of the actress when she goes off-script and the director commending her aggressive nature. In remembering your deep affection, your childish anger at women who have passed poems by without a delicious pain.
V
I love you
In loser novels, and the similarities between you and the lovers of dead poets, in my escaping steps towards any directions, under the coincidences roof. In the diaspora written on my forehead, in mixing coffee with water, in the first and the last sip. When my mom cries on the phones as she asks me to come back, and I almost cry before God as I ask him for persistence in love.
VI
I love you
In pressing the buttons of the elevator, the phone and the remote control, when asking for the bill, when craving ready-meals in front of petrol stations. In the naivety of expecting miracles, and blaming the driver when he chooses a new and costly road. In touching glass and wood, announcing rebellion on Microsoft, and clicking the Firefox icon. In downloading an old Italian movie, and deleting it two days later. In uploading blog files, and changing the password.
VII
I love you
Before sleepiness, after wakefulness, in my exercise of dreaming about you as I arrange my bed, in greeting the room number, in the morning of laziness three times a week, delighted with how I saw you in my sleep. In comparing situations, complementing the poor guard with a few words about the ancient history of his country, reassuring the Indian servant by paying her in advance. In escaping from you to a mountain that shelters me, and escaping to you from the flood of longing on my shoulders. In the voice of the black songstress on the jazz rhythm, and guessing her deep relation with the old musician. In the shine of glasses, the color of clear drink, the melting of ice, the lip’s anticipation of a new poison.
VIII
I love you
In following the tricks of politicians, in hating of the Prose Poem Fair, in the moodiness of the national coach, in the adversity of family and country, in the concern of experts about the lasting distress. In front of the urgent news bulletin, and the field reports, the night the president dies, and the “Brotherhood” cunningly talks of inner peace.
IX
I love you without fear
Before the grave of my father over whom we secretly cried
In a lust that glorifies life
I love you
And I regain fatherhood in my fear for you
I climb the family tree
I call you: My love, my daughter, my mother, my sister
You are related to me through fifty branches of kinship
You are the blood of my veins in a hundred previous life
You are a woman who readies the genealogy bed for me
How can I hate you for just one or two incidents of sufferings
How can I lose you because of a worthless life
That I threw under the train
Because it did not bring you
Did I go mad to lose you like this
In a short movie?
Did I go mad to write you like this
Without a new bullet
To shoot at my hand?
Rest assured …
I will go back home
And prepare for another life
In which I go out to you
I will be careful that it does not quickly become corrupted
So that I do not repeat my indignation
And throw it to the train
X
Oh, how I need you tonight to say I love you
To hide the candles for you in your bag
In the side drawers
Under the table
In the outershoes
And the sleepwear
How I need to be crazy
To threaten you with singing
And dancing on the table
And maybe jumping with a small chute
Onto the bed
Believe me
I do not need many miracles
I just need you here
In front of a great candle
With which I filled the house
Come closer
For me to bless you in your holy month
Come closer
For you to bless my crying over you
Because I will not die worthless like this
I will not let that destiny pass
Without saying: No
I have grown enough to love you again
To teach the pain an existential lesson in love
XI
Here in this narrow nest
On the palm of a giant demon
I hide from your eyes
I swallow my grudges
And I practice forgiveness
Until the dogs of jealousy bark
In my sixth sense
The jealousy left in hunger
Because for a long time
You have not thrown it bread or water
I know no use for all this pain
My fates have to know this quickly
Because I am deep in stubbornness
Because the arm twitch that I skilfully hide
Is nothing but my fingers committing suicide after you
The sudden poke in my chest
Is nothing but an unexpected attack of longing
There is no use for all this pain
My fates have to know this quickly
I have suffered enough
To enter the house of wisdom
To love you again
And glorify you in heights
XII
Rest assured …
I will tell a lot about you
Until I drive boredom away
From my friends in hell
It will be good to remember you
Amidst human screaming with no pleasure
I remember you as I ponder upon false salvation
And the Perfection that my mother innocently chose for me
Without knowing my name
Is laughing mockingly in front of the house
XIII
Come closer
My life now is spying daily
On my deserted soul
Like a rabid animal
On the borders of the fields
A kind animal screaming in the wilderness
Without knowing
Why must he be this lost in love?
Why does he have to light one candle
On his bed
And sing: Happy birthday
While hanging with a holy rope
Hanging alone from nothingness
And imagining a beautiful woman singing behind him: Happy birthday?
XIV
Forgive me, my love
I will turn-off the phone so that nobody overhears me crying. I will turn-off all electronic devices so that nothing draws my attention but my tears that fill my hands every ten minutes, then I go to put it carefully in the flower bed.
Now I have a great orchard of black roses on the walls
I do not know how they grow out of nothing?
I do not know how my crying can push nature
To produce roses with neither soil nor seeds?
All I did was to cry hard
I asked God to provide me with a new affliction every day
To bleed from my small eyes all the seas
That I remember in the geography book
Maybe there is not a sea or a river left that I did not cry over you
Even the small canals and unknown lakes I use sometimes
And I find many reasons to waste their water, thanks to you
XV
My hands are two tables of flames
And my mouth is a mute bird
What is all that fire
It restrains me with a deep emotion
And eats my tongue
So that I cannot say: I love you
