KAREEM ABDULLAH

 

 

When The World Is Ruled

By A Group Of Fools

 

When fools rule the world, words become a crime, and silence becomes a virtue that trembles with fear. When the world is ruled by fools, children sleep on their empty stomachs and wake up to war anthems. They teach geography with maps that do not recognize refugees, and are required to draw the homeland. In colors that no one has seen.

When a fool rules the world, the ruler becomes a hero if he screams, and the poet becomes a traitor if he cries. Justice becomes a commercial, and truth is distributed like bullets:

Random, inaccurate, and kills more innocent people than it hits the target.

When fools rule the world, the sky turns into a screen, from which the lies of the new prophets are broadcast, and bombs rain instead of rain. They call massacres "campaigns", refugees "numbers", and disasters "side costs", and then bow reverently to stock market indices.

When a world is ruled by fools, trees are cut down in the name of development, the air is poisoned in the name of progress, and love is crucified at the gates of cities because it is a "weakness" in the age of iron machines.

O world, do you hear yourself? Do you see your face in the mirror. Or on a screen? Do you know how many children lost their mothers this morning because some idiot pressed a button… while drinking his coffee?

We are not enemies, we are children of nothingness itself, we walk barefoot on the skin of the earth, carrying a loaf, a dream, and a name threatened with erasure. We, who have no planes, no bombs, and no borders drawn in blood, tell you:

Leave. Leave your chairs, your speeches, our chests. We are tired of wars, and we are tired of wearing death masks whenever we want to love.

When fools rule the world, the poem generates a sword of light, with which blood is not shed, but darkness is broken. We - who now write from the heart of smoke - still believe that humanity will not kneel for long. And time, no matter how late it is, will return to its owners.

 

A Woman Who Defied

The Laws Of Passage

 

My heart was the sieve of an ancient prophet… women fell through it like rain through holes in the clouds, woman after woman, life after life, until I thought love was merely water that doesn't linger long in the palm of the soul.

 

All those who passed through me were like fleeting seasons: one arrives carried on her perfume, then melts like salt in the mouth of the wind. One left her shawl on the chair of evening, another hung her laughter on the window of the heart and then departed, and a third slept a while in the bed of the poem and awoke in another man.

 

But you…

O beautiful mistake of God when He sculpted a woman from the wonder of light, then hid her in a body of music… you did not pass through.  You were the only stone caught in the holes of the sieve, and for the first time, my heart was bewildered. It felt that it wasn't perforated as it had long believed, but rather that it had been waiting for its impossible star.

Who are you?

How did you enter this ruin adorned with women and not fall? How could your fingers mend the cracks left by emotional wars in the walls of my soul?

Whenever you drew near, I heard the sea arranging its waves like a celestial choir, and I saw the night shedding its darkness and sitting at your feet like a captivated hermit.

 

You are not a woman… You are the confusion of the primordial elements before the universe was set in order. In your eyes, I saw galaxies altering their orbits, and I saw time stumble upon your dress and fall to its knees like a terrified lover.  Now I know why all the other women passed me by: because my heart was practicing on you. It was learning how to endure a woman unlike any other, a woman whose smile would open an extra window in the sky for angels.

You didn't just pass by… you settled like an eternal prayer in the most fragile place within me.

And since I've known you, I'm no longer a sieve… I've become a galaxy, all its stars revolving around your name.

Kareem Abdullah

 

KAREEM ABDULLAH

 

KAREEM ABDULLAH is an Iraqi poet, writer and playwright. Born in Baghdad in 1962, Kareen Abdullah is the author of "Baghdad in Its New Dress" (Book House 2015). His name has appeared in many important Arabic literary magazines and he won the Tajdeed Prose Poetry Prize in 2016. Kareem has published eight collections of poetry in Arabic and his poems have been translated into numerous languages. Creator of the highly successful cultural project that promotes poets and artists with the critical literary and stylistic analysis that he carries out in collaboration with the international cultural promoter Elisa Mascia - Italy, with subsequent publications in Alessandria today Magazine and on the blog nonsoloarteepoesia Magiche Emozioni dell'Anima. He is an official international member of Ciesart and has been published in Humanity Magazine Global