ABDEL LATIF MOUBARAK

 

ABDEL LATIF MOUBARAK

 

The Metamorphosis Of Dreams

 

I gather the faces of people,

in the treasure of folly,

engraving upon my poor dress

a song, a silent prayer.

I add colors to creation,

to weave a metamorphosis,

one after another,

echoing the depths of happiness.

I am your dream,

O people of reason,

a condition veiled in wonder,

eyes gazing towards tomorrow.

The streets are empty,

hearts outstretched,

trodden by the weight

of silent doubt.

I adapt to grandeur,

inhabiting an incapacity,

visible to all,

my nakedness, my fragility.

My feet are nailed

to the pavement's face,

showcases of sorrow,

where hope feels faint.

Sometimes it sighs,

and sometimes it softens,

your dream, O people of words,

is sweeter, but often forgotten.

For I am the one who wanders,

or do people wander with me?

A dervish in a circle,

lost in a memory.

I emerge, my soul pours forth,

between its lines, the strings

of longing for the sanctuary's robe,

and the blessings that true love brings.

They slept upon the shoulders of time,

testimony of interwoven moments,

signs of exchange,

a miracle yet to be found.

***

 

A Martyr

 

Sign me up, right here,

To a womb that defies history's commute.

Inscribe my name.

Never did I nurse from the breasts of women in a slave market.

I could not trust mystics,

Nor did their bells ring recognition in my heart.

A million fears

My fears, multiplied a millionfold,

When I find death staring into my life,

When I see coffins stacked,

Black as the tears of rain.

May God grant you a long life,

To console homes filled with sorrow—

The bodies of the martyrs,

Whose lives gifted you freedom.

Beside the widows and orphans,

Gallows craft your dreams,

Selling your heart on the very first road.

Be a martyr.

***

A frame to image painful

Sorrows planted deep inside hearts,

Awakening seeds of fear,

With horror facts concealed and capped.

Dressed in the wear of silence,

The sorrows of the day were sown—

A sign upon a grave, a dub

To the slow death of man, unknown.

Silence is no picture of them,

Without a paint, it's stark and grim.

Accepted: you die anonymous,

Though in your truth, you live a dream.

Though your heart in desert carries home,

Though your age was right for your own land,

Accepted: you die anonymous,

Like Zia's glory, a vanishing strand.

When such a spirit's light extinguishes,

And disappears, a beautiful dream ends,

Accepted: you die anonymous.

Too, houses died, their doors against walls bend.

Her streets, they mourned; the night came, withered,

Leaving a body, chronically loved,

A shiny star, whose songs no longer tethered

To the moon, now silently removed.

Rumored, the last beats from your heart,

You felt and then announced absence.

Faces passed like dreams, printed apart

On the plate-blooded board of lost essence.

Regrets the eye which saw of leaving

At mystery. It was not inspiring—

A frame to image aching, ever grieving.

 

Probability

 

The wheat stalks breathe you in,

Braid your letters for the evenings.

And stir your songs the day they met

Upon his face, the silence... the flock of stillness.

Depart to where we began our journey,

Indeed, the streams hold but fragments.

To a time squandered,

Forgive my death when I choose you,

To the mercy of the devout, in protest,

To the dwelling of the wound,

The distance of desolation.

And your endurance was to borrow

From the star, the day of collapse's rituals.

Within you, the debasement of poems eludes,

Towards the sunrise.

And you quiet above some plains

The languages of apprehension,

In your sailing times.

You soothe the blaze of solitude... cities,

And pour into the eye the tears of reunion,

Branches from the beginning we were,

For the land of severance.

We carry to it the beseeching letters,

To write in love,

The beloved's spinning song.

And you still swear by the earthquake,

So as to prepare a new homeland,

Which the questions lost in their lament,

And the impossible bolted its gates

With bursts of time that began to depart.

You never left the harvests of remembrance,

That we were quenching.

With your silence, visions will not overflow

The boundaries of emptiness.

And we...

Are in vain.

 

The Child Residing Deep Inside Me

 

The child residing deep inside me,

When fear ignites, blazes with delight,

Shattering every frame,

Out into the street, he openly proclaims

His right to taste a morsel of truth.

With utter innocence, he'd plead with the sun's rays,

As they arrived to confiscate tomorrow's darkness.

He never knew that the morrow,

Lying slain on the heart's threshold,

Was already sacrificed.

The child residing deep inside me,

Quietly gathers fragments from the shadow

Of the girl fallen from the window of desire.

He passes from beneath the navel,

To the furthest lip at the edge of the house,

Retreating to the corner, at the furthest bank,

And in the dark rooms, he rattles

Matchboxes.

The child residing deep inside me,

Has but one hand,

With it, he gathers the world before him,

Drawing it in clusters.

And within his notebook of dreams,

He scribbles, then redraws.

The child residing deep inside me,

Is inherently stubborn.

He demolishes every dream in an instant,

The moment he awakens

To a new dawn,

 

Happy Dreams

 

The heart speaks, "dum dum dum,"

And love comes out of a flask.

For you is the life that draws

Happy dreams that please me so.

Happy dreams that picture

My entire past life, now changed.

My coming life, with you, will light

The darkness of my torment and despair.

Gather the joy before it passes,

The harvest of happiness it gives.

It grows sweet in your clarity, and I no longer wish

To bring back a single year from my life.

Happy dreams, in them, is all yearning,

You are the bliss that waters them.

You are the song and the sweetest meanings,

Happy dreams that please me so.

 

I Am The Coming One

 

with the taste of the cry and the lament,

and the tear from eyes with rusty cheeks, a sign.

I am the end goal,

scattered by the winds of bewilderment…

and I am divided

on the faces of weeping… an address.

I am a human,

born of time and wind,

a pain that braids thorns

between the first steps of the soul.

I am the one bleeding,

fields of truth on my forehead

leading me

to blood-poems that ache,

and they don’t return.

Letters of embers brand me.

The seeds of the dream in my veins,

a choked hope.

I am the hanged one,

and the ropes of death blindfold me.

I surrender all my flags.

I am the Coming One.

I am the… Coming One.

 

ABDEL LATIF MOUBARAK