by Walid Bitar
and finds, if he looks too closely,
himself in the middle of the picture
taken, to prove we’re all colour-blind,
in the black and white agitprop-meisters
prefer, spectrums uncontrollable
as the mobs. Don’t mean those assembled
by the state – ones that form of their own
free will. Mine, I wouldn’t share with them,
more like me than they’ll ever know –
I ventilate only under my breath.
LEARNING CURVES
Where I’m unwelcome, I directly go.
In the old days, I had too much pride.
Experience taught me: have even more,
a mountain man’s as well as a climber’s,
and try the patience of a time traveller
whose every stop seems like an eternity.
I was raised awaiting a messiah
I knew inside out till you took me for him,
life here cheap as happiness would be
to a savage in a golden age,
if he had the arithmetic skills
you picked up off a missionary,
swore, oath garbled, recovered, hummed
the unpronounceable. Your hand deserves
a second chance on the holy book –
near-perfect circles, your learning curves.
OVER THE RAINBOW
I am so full of myself when I deal
with others I go through the motions,
and our voices share the speed of sound,
appearances impersonal, yours mine –
don’t insist on an explanation,
relations built on the bliss of ignorance.
I’ll treat you as a sharp shepherd might
his flock outside a sacred text,
teach an apocryphal lesson or two –
third time lucky in the Church Militant.
I prefer tokens to batons, proof
I’m a tram conductor, not the coup d’état’s –
still at large, the maestro responsible,
suddenly dwarfed by monsters he unleashed,
didn’t do time hiding in the orchestra
pit into which he simply disappeared.
Hunt the recidivist: savour a stupor
relentless soul-searching throws you into,
perhaps unwilling to believe eyes
I’m for or against shutting completely,
then calm yourself. I’d show you how,
but I’ve already showered my affections,
and the rainbow I feel coming now
is cold and distant, its colours deceptive.
MARGIN OF ERROR
If you deliver belief in a saviour,
you’ll receive my life savings, a sum
almost equal to its margin of error,
price of a holiday in the sun,
where the rich disappear, suffer less
than us voyeurs left behind in limbo,
name we give an introspection
we are constitutionally unfit for,
shuttering windows when tempted to shake
their transparent surfaces for the hell
whose views I’m certain a crash wouldn’t change,
plus we’d be left X-raying hands,
vastly preferring the luck of a draw
to either the winners or the losers
sharing our salient character flaws,
why we try to outsmart one another,
help entry-level staff, learn to love
watching ourselves wipe mirrors, such romance
irresistible – we’re so repulsive
on the inside we can’t look half as bad,
desires burning with no objects in sight.
I advise blaming an arsonist,
and wouldn’t bother feigning surprise,
should it emerge you were him all along.
BENEATH THE LEVEL OF CONVERSATION
In the beginning, we were compatriots.
We’ve become what foreigners should be:
figures of fun I love hating
because they take themselves seriously.
You’re glad I lost my public recovering
in a private institution is costly,
yet it’s been done, out-of-style incentive
to do anything. Here’s how I view things:
not as they are in themselves, or even
as they appear – just under some influence.
We’re feted and trashed, a good and bad thief,
but don’t exaggerate the difference,
my she-goat, cabbage and wolf stew a hoax,
two out of three ingredients missing –
you’re out of your depths, which are my shallows,
so neither one of us learned to swim,
music lovers, conversation beneath us
in the lobby during intermission.
It’s less trouble, pretending we’re strangers –
bigger, though, letting bygones be bygones.
THE ACCORDIONIST
The accordion deserves equal billing,
at peace with itself in between shows.
Has nothing on its conscience, the instrument.
If headcases disrupt, the front row’s
sub-hypnotist should dial nine-one-one,
new on the job, fired from the old,
despite an Indian summer harvesting
crops whose names the master doesn’t own.
And I’m asked why I love the language.
Nobody’d call us pigs at a trough.
We’re not there yet – follow directions.
May the Lord grant a second wind, demons
in you because He told them where to go:
this wilderness – for your homecoming,
no scapegoat’s either. Irrigation
squads transported the soil you were born on,
not exactly of your own volition,
bird of paradise captured and sold
by fellow natives. Man’s at his worst
when he’s himself, and now enough
of struggling for half-decent alternatives
generation after generation
ours doesn’t outclass, dialogue free
as hydrogen drunk at public fountains.
My acolytes, they love a bargain,
and are agog: yours is a higher
state of consciousness I would let
speak for itself, if it could. It cannot.
A FLIGHT OF STAIRS
I never claimed you were an archangel
invisible to the jet-setting eye
of a designer so busy starving
his runway’s lycanthropes they ate him –
their guru: the Rubicon’s ferryman.
I pace the bank, weighing pros and cons,
while he contemplates a jump on my scales,
the competition in these parts a travesty –
no decorations should I come in first,
my heart wherever your heart is,
pumping blood, the rest of the body’s,
a dirty job we have down to an art,
beneath the radar, under our breaths,
winners and losers at the mercy
of what we can lose, what we can win:
these stairs of yours, for example, a flight,
the protocols of consciousness spoiling
scenery that otherwise wouldn’t register.
No diplomat, you cover up
secrets perfectly charming open,
we saints patronizing you incapable
of harder power until we’re canonized.
I’ll visit heaven even if the trip resurrects
then kills me, the wits battling all mine.
You can’t pin life like a wrestler;
it’s inside you when you’re in the ring.
Let’s applaud your loudest detractors –
you chose the wrong sport, crowd noise deafening,
> yet retain the right to remain silent
I rarely exercise. It is written:
a man shouldn’t fear the sound of his voice
if he’s the only fanatic listening.
FALSE FLAG
We’re huddled together – stabs in the back
you might interpret as self-inflicted.
I’ll campaign in favour of stem cell
research, proving love for the casualties
follows shows of force, almost passes
legislation that routinely dies
on the floor of the house where no grass grows,
because farmers won’t vote with gardeners
who neither ignore insults delivered
by their rivals nor stop denying
they could have possibly heard what they heard.
Demand again that they hack the ice,
so we can whip out our rods, go fishing.
Out of spite, they squat meditating –
in our pre-fab monastery no less.
I kick novices seemingly fading,
though in this climate nodding off’s a plus.
My clearest views don’t interest me
as much as where yours end and another’s
begin – can’t expedite the transition;
it calls for pampas, a vast buffer zone
through which I’d ride, tall in the saddle
like a gaucho, if the nag weren’t a chariot’s,
if I weren’t preparing a buggy for battle.
ATHELING
Peace, atheling, we freedom fighters
procrastinators who, though we’ll become
your allies, aren’t yet, seem, in the interim,
unpredictable. You were irrational,
yet still lost the religion. When you stink,
there is no soul to side with against
epiderm you haven’t washed for weeks
in solitary, your quondam bookies
my confidential sources – you gambled
on their wrong odds. They apologized.
I wasn’t there, but believe me: applause
died at headquarters, where I spank
memoirs out, your finalized draft
of history my first. I’ll close your eyes.
I’ll bare your fangs, the future tense
an anaesthetic, and I speak its language.
FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY
Run along into oblivion, or
I will bump you off in the limelight
before your heldentenor imposes
restrictions on the music in my head,
the tunes less globalized than they could be
in various money-spinning ventures
vulgar to the aristocrat in me.
He’s equally vulgar – born a peasant,
I celebrated any holidays
we could get, flexibility a sign
from heaven we were on the fast track,
though that interpretation is mine,
mine the glory, and if it turns out
I am wrong, I deserve applause
for essaying the impossible.
Who else around here takes the trouble,
the majority of our population
bowing and scraping as if outnumbered?
I was calculating the ratios
when I received a generous offer
from courtiers hardly worth bringing up,
but we’ve drifted onto the subject:
I suggest a moment of silence,
more than sufficient – they’re alive and well,
each disguised as none of the others.
When he’s himself, he improvises,
occasionally speaks his mind, the idiot –
not a mother tongue like you, and I’d
happily leak almost anything
if I were you, as I wouldn’t care
about unintended consequences.
I’d only be you temporarily,
the weight of the past unbearable –
a fraction lighter, though, than the present.
By the time it makes me gasp,
I have had a chance to rehearse.
WATERBOARDING
No depths to which my people won’t sink;
fortunately, these aren’t inside us,
a few underwater, your oilfields
halfway around the globe, most landlocked,
opportunities photojournalists miss
worthless – supply far exceeds demand.
Instruct your lawyer. File for bankruptcy,
while brothers rot in your debtor’s prison,
this much learned: fighting to the death
beats either surrender or victory.
You know where you stand, your posture less well,
navel-gazing a discredited option
when the hunger starts. No poaching for
talent unavailable in the food chain
lunch hours at the hourglass factory,
any sand certainly contaminated,
the correct time my least concern,
victim, like you, of uranium poisoning.
You came up with the wildest excuses
for air after the waterboarding,
said one thing, meant another, believed
a third, self-destructive before we arrived
in tall ships. We merely continued
inflicting all you’d inflicted on yourself,
if only, and not only, because
our logic’s cold-weather. In wrong climates,
it wilts – a flower, it isn’t. A miracle
hatred, though mutual, didn’t unite us.
STILL IN THE CAMERA
When the home team bends unwritten rules,
visitors are set free, start scribbling,
what’s on my mind just passing through –
the tradition in there isn’t hospitality,
the stiff you dropped off today unwelcome.
Only bodies of childhood friends
granted the privilege of growing up
should be brought back down to our level,
surviving heroes advised against
defying a superpower I,
who’ve served twisting loyally in the wind,
might sabotage from the inside mañana.
Last time I was at the end of my rope,
I envisioned skipping it in heaven.
To perish exploring bang in the doldrums,
you need a single trait: hyperactivity.
I’m the first person I ever controlled –
nostalgia co-exists with temptation
to curse my disputed date of birth,
though I believe in reincarnation,
life after life wish I had control
over either the slaves or the masters.
A neutral observer, I watch revolts,
cheering on the right side, then the other,
help myself, scarcely commit treason,
pick through merchandise, searching for bodies,
admire a few – never mind the reasons.
I’m of the old school, swatting at flies
you keep releasing to irritate me,
and I keep killing. Your endless supply
proves I can’t win. We remain close.
Purple prose that justifies your actions
won’t do much by way of improving
your bad image, mine still in the camera,
beneath contempt but above suspicion,
unless one dark day the film’s developed.
THE NATURALIZATION
Took our telepathized gods seriously
as possible for a while – in the end,
you roared I was all of them, once feared,
rolled into one. Well, monotheist,
look me in the eye, as if it belonged
to forecast hurricane-force winds.
I’m not myself, no more than the cost
of knocking off a luxury item
is its pr
ice, and you’ve paid; you were captured
near your manor, sold into slavery.
I beat you in the humiliation
department, voluntarily relocated
to a continent whose victory over us
I was hired to declare a draw,
each rung of my ladder the last,
and so on ad infinitum – correct me,
for any appearance that’s deceptive
is definitely mine. Driven mad,
those whose power overwhelmed us cannot
resist it now – it’s all they have left.
If you were dead, you couldn’t imagine
dying. Since you can, stop complaining.
I’d plunge in, save your drowning emotions,
if mine were as undisciplined,
and I pushed unflattering comparisons
too far by making them sing like praises –
a citizen of the world’s, in theory.
In practice, I’m from where I’ve been aged.
NOT SO THE OCEAN
Always impolitic, biting the hand
that’s the heart and soul of your body.
You would find declaring independence
a hollow victory, and a puppet’s.
Go side with light against the visions
I toss and turn expecting, didn’t need
when my simoleons could rent first-class
compartments, human beauty sleep
a cause I was unwilling to die for
till I avenged the time to be lost,
