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Horses
AND
they will come running
galloping galloping
gray black blue horses
forgotten horses
horses from all the centuries
will come
to crush everything they see
women men and children
and donkeys and foxes and dogs and cats
Come they will Come
horses and more horses
and nobody will be able to stop them
not atomic bombs
nor gases nor chemicals nor viruses
they will be the strongest horses that ever existed
horses that recall all
the injustices made and to be made
and the man will ask
Why in my time
Why in my house
Why my family and my children
and nobody will be able to answer
the blue horses, the celestial horses
those will be the worst
destroying 200 story buildings
destroying tanks and planes
blowing them apart
and the president will calm
and the specialists will analyze
and the televisions will speak
but nothing will help
more and more horses will come
out of nowhere
horses appearing suddenly
in front of people walking on the streets
and you, in bed, you'll look at me
despaired, waiting for rescue
I will look at you and suddenly
I will become
a red horse.
We Count Our Dead
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WHEN WE GO TO SLEEP
we count our dead
When we wake up
we count our dead
When we end the century
we count our dead
When we kill
we count our dead
When we live
we count our dead
When we eat
we count our dead
When we pray
we count our dead
When we celebrate life
we count our dead
When we write a poem
we count our dead.
Ars poetica
Because writing poetry is admitting
our errors
Because poetry is history
exiled from the History books
Because poetry is the bomb of the poor
Because poetry is the language of the dead
Because poetry is escape from ourselves
Because poetry is looking at the face of our mistakes
and our ancestors' mistakes
Because poetry is the first day of the universe
I dare to say this:
I am tired of poets, poems and poetry
I am tired of myself and my double
my light and my shade
For I know that
When I say the word truth I am already lying
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AND MY BED IS MADE of burning stones.
Self definition
You ask me to define myself
but I have no borders
I am a one man walking country
some days I am an Arab
others I am a Jew
others a European
and my mind wanders
when you see me in Paris
I may be in Morocco
When you see me in Jerusalem
I may be in Spain
Some days I am Goliath
others I am David
Some days I write with a pen
others I use the computer
When you ask me who I am
I feel you are shooting at me:
Sometimes the poem is my home
sometimes the poem is my exile.
Buildings
It may be wealth, it may be poverty after it,
maybe the hundred years old buildings
haunted by shadows of dying people
by screams of pain
it may be the weather and the cold air
the long winters
it may be all these together;
people here become more
cold and more mean from day to day
without paying attention, step by step
they gave up on smiling, on laughing
on the word happiness
negative feelings fill them
as an aura around their bodies.
In this city the sun
won’t shine anymore.
Buildings and people
It seems that the beautiful buildings
describe better than anything
this city
they are full of black soot
sometimes they are cleaned
and they are beautiful again
just like they used to be
but a few months later
they are full of soot again.
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THE DEATH OF A CITY
You can see everything is dying here
because poetry is dead
you can see everything is dying here
when you read the language
there is not one word, not one sentence
that doesn’t pretend to mean something else
and that something else
is related to something else that someone said
and the sentences become longer and longer
never ending, even the poetry
is written in prose.
And there is not one person
who can say
one clear sentence
you can see everything is dying
because the language is dead.
Stores that tell stories
Hundred years old stores close down
thirty years old people
look like their elders
and it seems
no one pays attention to what is happening.
only the tourists are still impressed.
The skies lower.
And everything outside shines
the new cars, the expensive clothes, the made-up faces
while everything inside is rotten.
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THE WORLD
the world is becoming
more and more
like
a family discussing to death
the heritage of a few houses
while outside
there is
an earthquake.
Gold bars
Who are these rich people
these desperate people
Why do they do look so ill
making others believe their money is better
Who are these sad people
Always expected to look great
never become old
never be ill
always be happy
in what kind of prisons
do these rich people live?
Rough times
whatever we do this is incredible
the rough times were better
when we moved alone along those labyrinths
times were lonelier than thought
the Thames looked better than the Seine,
Look at me she said holding my hand
as if to die
look at me
the weather is crazy but so are we
this rain will last forever
but we won't
this world will last forever
but our body our beautiful body deteriorating
as a God falling from the skies
look at me I said
lines of poetry as lines of your face
they get smarter as they get uglier.
Don’t let them
They tell you that you are crazy that
you have no culture
that you have no past
they tell you
you are fantasizing
that the past you are talking about
is idealization
they are afraid of you
afraid you might take their grants
and their prizes and their jobs at the universities
they are afraid they might have to learn something new
they are afraid you are better than they are
you have their culture and in top of it
you have your culture
you can see them but they can't see you
the only problem is they have the jobs
and the money
The road
the road gets longer
as the city of our dreams
gets closer.
Two Camps
there were those
who beat
and there were
those
who stayed silent.
Poets
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SO MANY WERE LOST THROUGH the journey
their tongues dried, their eyes shuttered
their words silenced.
Some became famous
others stopped writing.
Genome
The president of the United States announcing
the greatest scientific discovery of men reminded
me of Kelvin in 1897 telling his fellow scientists
that science has discovered everything, now
the biggest liars in the world, pharmaceutical firms
that have bought all the politicians and physicians
and researchers in the world, are telling us
that 3 years from now we'll have genetic drugs
my GOD, look at all the damage they did with chemistry
with atomic science, with all the technology, my GOD
do you have to give them genes in their hands,
what will happen in a few years for every people
they will save (and they will as they did) ten will
be born with hands on their hearts, vaginas
on their shoulders, two hearts below their kidneys
and new things we don't even know about and they
will sell this to us for all our money, medical funding
has no limits in the name of saving lives, but, remember
this, there is a long physicians' strike now in Israel and
as it has happened in every long strike of physicians
in Israel, the UK and Mexico the death rate
has fallen by half, so is it scientific now to say
that they kill three persons for each one they save.
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JAPANESE
I don't understand the Japanese
with their cameras, with their
never ending smiles, today,
a snowy day in Jerusalem, I don't
understand the Japanese I don't
understand either why this Japanese
subject came into my mind
in the middle of this snowy day
while listening to an Irish singer
who records for a Japanese label
that's the way it goes, no one
understand the Japanese but everyone
wants their money, and if we are on
the subject, I don't understand the Sudanese
the Palestinians the Germans the Danish
the French the English the Dutch
the Saoudians, the Egyptians the Canadians
and more than all of them together
I don't understand
the Jews.
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LAND OF LUNATICS
If these hands that caress my daughter
could caress the past
If this mouth that kisses my wife
could kiss Fatima
for one last time
when she came back from Belgium
to visit us
and brought chocolates
If these legs
could walk through time
and drink again and
again
that last cup of coffee with milk.
lately
all I do
is
smoke cigarillos
and listen to
early
Serrat
songs
crying
asking myself
what the hell did I do
in my previous lives
to have landed
in this land of lunatics.
Disappearances
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WHILE EXPLAINING
very important things to you
suddenly you used
to disappear
and I
used to go on talking
explaining
for streets
until finally realizing
I was speaking
to myself
explaining
inexplicable things
and thinking
what would people think
of me
so young
and already speaking to himself
on the streets.
You disappeared often.
Everyone was looking for you
always
until one day you left the country
and escaped from everybody
there nobody knows you
and no one looks for you
trying
to continue from the last sentence
so you can understand
the first.
Pacifist tanks
Carmela
These tanks are becoming
pacifists
and they want to convince me
that it is better to go with them
and lose all I have
than any good war
they say what's the use, they tell me
what the hell
they say that everything is relative
post modern
that there is no reason
to react in such a way,
Carmela
I will erase these guys
with rubbers
and scare the hell out of them
with water guns
with brooms
with disguises
until they show me the
the way to the
No.
Nobody
nobody loves the French
not even the French
and in the rue tilsit there are no more whores
Paris darkens from day to day
from year to year
and like an experienced old juggler
she tries to keep showing her beauty
from days of yore
without success.
Old Paris
Paris is an old woman
with a wrinkled face
and menstruation is
a memory to her
the only living creatures in her
are the gypsies in the metro
asking for a franc or two
saying they are homeless
and wasting them in machines
for candies and chocolates.
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THE PEOPLE OF THIS city
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THE PEOPLE OF THIS city
are flowers behind bars
they don't know
that behind their backs
there are no walls
the people of this city
Jews Moslems and Christians
carry the burden of history upon their shoulders
the people of this city
haven't heard the news
Pharaoh is dead
the people of this city are convinced
that life is death
the people of this city are condemned
to a death sentence:
Thou shalt live.
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GIVING UP
So many times I said
I couldn't take it
but I took it
The dirty dishes, the screams,
your silences, my tensions,
my always being right, so many
times I could have left if you just said so, so
many times you could have left if I said it.
Our departures never met, and I wonder was it
out of fear, or just the belief that there'll be better days
like these, sunny days of calm, wonderful days when
our bodies meet and become one, these are few
but aren't miracles rare?
So many times I wanted to give up
and I gave up.
Each time I did, something filled the hole
something new and unexpected, giving up
is believing in miracles.
Dirty white flag
We lost
and there wasn't even a fight, we
were defeated and there was
no war, we are prisoners in our homes
and the bars are our own hands, we were
squeezed by tanks that we couldn't see, we were
conquered and didn't even meet our enemy
our tongues have disappeared and our children
speak to us in foreign languages, we are aliens where
we were the owners of the sheep, the cows and the horses,
our sentences grow longer and longer trying to explain how all this happened
until we are left with one word we never heard we never saw
one word we don't know how to pronounce we can't see the letters
only the thought of it bring tears to our eyes pain to our kidneys
strokes to our hearts, and our children they are just waiting to get their shares
of our death and out across the corner an old woman naked is crying her fate
a young man is masturbating with his giant penis.
The serene face of death
There is this incredible smell of death in their rooms
the smell of rotten bodies
cells trying to live in this killing world
it's the smell of all the pollution of all the drugs
the bad food the bad water that we're drinking
and all our thoughts of jealousy and greediness
and out of all this mess, all the family
waiting for this man or woman to die
and killing him or her in their way with their fears
out of all this mess, a few days before death you
see suddenly this calm face coming out of nowhere
this serene face of death, this incredibly beautiful look
in their faces like you've never seen before
and you are puzzled to death, what the hell does
this serene face of death means?
The evening before
My father after his father's death, growing a beard
I was 6 years old, now coming of age and realizing
that I was in a house full of death, my grandmother died
when I was three or four, and we all lived in a same big apartment
Death was part of my growing up, my brother being ill
since I was 7, and he died when I was thirteen
and in many ways we were happy he died, but felt guilty
for not being with him in his last hours, then becoming religious
extremist, exaggerated trying to understand where death comes from
what is the color of this angel, the shape of his shoes
does he run, or is death just the moment when the angel of life
tires of us, and goes for another soul, and the first time I was
near a dead man, it was my father's corpse, covered by his blanket
dead on his bed, may I die that way, that's what I wish for
going to sleep at home in my bed and not waking up, and in
front of the corpse I didn't uncover or kiss, I tried to kiss my mother
but she pushed me away, I was guilty again of not being there, but
this time I had come the evening before with some cakes, croissants,
my wife. And we sat all four of us around the table, talking, laughing,
skipping the subjects that made us fight, we were so close to death
and we didn't know, what could we say if we did, that we were just
hours away from the most important encounter in life for those who leave
as well as for those who go on living wondering how that moment will be.
A drunken pilot
I have traveled your body
like a drunken pilot
360 degrees of warmth and cold
thousands of miles within your skins
sometimes the whisky was good
at times the beer was awful
the malt melted between mountains
snow followed the sun everywhere
my eyes were fixed
on one degree I cannot locate
one look in your eyes one sight of you
from an angle I have never palpated,
stick to me, it is late for sorrow or
understanding, flight is the answer.
On the bus to Tel Aviv
The winter is hot
and the cars look like
mutilated bodies
the south American travesty
behind me is talking
in Spanish
about her first husband.
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SETTING THE RULES
Me and my lover we play
but we don’t know what the game is
is it a game of reconciliation
or a game of evaporation
I and Lover we play
but every step
changes the rules
of the game
until we don't know
whether it's a game
or life
I and lover
we game
until life is
nothing but
a play.
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EARTHQUAKE
Bodies into the land they go
no ceremonies in the middle
the land eats flesh
the sea takes its toll
buildings seen as monsters
become flies
children and elders
strong and weak
they're all the same
buried alive
under mother earth angry
mother angry father wind
angry son angry god sea
equality is found in death
under the earthquake
It's Izmir it's Agadir Tokyo
it's a memory you can’t explain
to your children how
everything was here and a moment
later gone how you ask yourself
you know there is no answer
but the question will be there
as long as you live.
Prophetic poetic
Four years after the war is forgotten
and the people become part of a history book
four young lads in Denver
will start a band named
The Kossovo Survivors
They will be marketed as the Denver scene
play alt-country-rock
and sell 25 million cd's
in their 4 years existence,
then the lead singer and guitarist
known by the name of John Kossovarvich
will hang himself
because his girlfriend
died in a car crash.
Total eclipse
Sometimes she is a memory
sometimes a line of a poem
met her in a total eclipse
thousands years ago
left her when the sun left the moon
her dark-skinned breast
and her deep big eyes
her Djerbian beauty
her Parisian sensuality
she's in Paris now if you see her
she has forgotten me
well into her marriage
her travel agency work
but I touched her breasts
when I couldn't penetrate her
her breasts when they were young
before they did mother
I knew them before her husband did
if you see her she may say
she doesn't remember
if you asked me any day
I would have said a surprised who
but now she's lines of poetry
breasts of metaphors
eyes lighting my letters
like poetry forever
she is the love that never was.
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BABEL
––––––––
SEEMS LIKE A THOUSAND years ago
we met and had the same discussions
somewhere in Spain
These discords seem to endure forever
seem to have been born with us
look like they'll never die
Even if the world is destroyed
even then our words will go
on discussing themselves
words without the need of voices
words without people fighting forever.
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HOW SMALL IS THE UNIVERSE
Today the universe is very small
I can hold it in my hand
caress it if I want
destroy it if I want
play with the stars
like a juggler
play with the planets
with humankind
with aliens
instead
I keep watching amazed
at how small the universe can be
in my mind.
Italian tableau
beautiful Italian songs
sung by old fat women
in family restaurants
where you can't eat
without having your stomach
go upside down
from the screams of the father
and the deeds of the son
eating those tasty spaghetti napolitana
and the pizzas without meat
drinking the cheap good red wine
amazed at the family at the end of the room
not noticing you and you only
noticing them.
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For a new old testament economy
––––––––
EVERY
50 years you should send your slave free
free the people
every fifty years
free them from their debts
free them from their
mistakes
from their parent's mistakes
free them from their mortgages
instead of seeing the stock market
collapse every 50 years
free people from their greediness
free them from the banks
and from their interests
free them from the stock market
and from their shares
free the oppressor and the oppressed
every fifty years
free the slave in you
and you will free thyself.
––––––––
LET THE WORLD BEGIN
every 50 years.
Faces
I have seen you in so may faces
loving face, caring face, caressing face
angry face, frivolous face,
aging face, not-accepting the facts face,
facing face, avoiding face, sexy face
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RESENTFUL FACE, ESCAPING face, disdaining face
approving face, gilt face, accusing face,
indulgent face, deadline face,
screaming face.
I have seen you in so many faces
each face making a bigger mystery
of your
changing face
I don't know whose face you are
but I remember
that face from our primeval days:
face
looking at me.
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THE VOYAGE
and there is a light
you know there is light
that will lead you
all the way to the cave
where a bottle of old wine
is awaiting you
since the falling of Lucena
800 years you know it is
waiting for you like
a candle that never reaches the end
you know it is awaiting you
now if you had the guts
to take the baton
and start the voyage.
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MOTHER DEATH
Here they come all colors your choice
here they come you can choose your death
we have viruses car accidents cancers aids
we have good marketed deaths we have rare death
how about old-fashioned death like tuberculosis
soon we will bring back the plague
while we find a new potent virus
that kill in a few hours
we are developing them in our laboratories
we have retro-death or sci-fi death
and you can now die in your bed
the hospitals are full
no matter how many we open
we have patients twice the beds.
this is not Mr. death anymore
this is mother-death.
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MOUNT SCOPUS CAMPUS
Every 2 or 3 years I go there
to hear a lecture never to read my poems
and swear I will never go back
then I forget and find myself there
after a few hours closing into myself
then feeling completely depressed
unable to communicate with anyone
and feeling that I should be in
a psychiatrist hospital, how can people
go there every day, this is modern
architecture at its worst, the ceiling
is closing on your head, you can never
go back through the way you came
halls and corridors like labyrinths
taken from a Borges or a Kafka text
the beautiful Jerusalem sun never gets in
you know it's our there but the light is dim
unnatural
and people looking tired, so tired.
It was 1981, and it was the new campus
I had finished my first year of English literature
and although I had some minor problems
like writing a poem as a paper on
Delmore Schwartz's short story
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
or discussing the monosyllabic words
in And Death Shall Have No Dominion
I still was going to get into the second year
I had already paid the registration fee
and then the first day in Mount Scopus
looking for the classroom and asking and not
finding it and getting a big headache
until I said
I wont study here, I just wont
and that's the way my university days ended.
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NOW, WHEN I TELL THIS to other people
they say yes, it's one of the worst
and most awful building in this country
but no one has the reaction I have
or had yesterday theorizing that
I was killed there in a previous life,
see, I am going crazy and now that I've
written it I am not going back
never going back again.
Witches
The witches look lovely tonight
they are all dressed for the wedding
of Lilith and Prince Charles
Their noses are perfect
and they walk to applaud
the love they always had
The witches they have names
that burn the water that tighten
their belly to the next oven
and we all know the witches love you
they love kings and princes
they love poets and slaves
they love everything
for they are witches
and their loves are ashes.
Slopes
I am wearing this uniform but I don't care for wars
I am wearing this uniform to beat you and prostitute you
to unchain your heart out of your flooded hat
to destroy all that we built with our own horse
I am going now to Bethlehem to build me a boat
I will then fly through caves of death and fire
and when I see you again I reckon you won't
even think about looking at my shining face
My face will become gold and fire out
of my nose will arose the words you say
and just when you think you understand
What I am saying your tongue will be dryer
than the desert, and your words will invade
your ears, do you hear my slopes now?
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FINALLY I THANK MY parents
––––––––
EVERYTHING I EVER LEARNED
came from my parents' mistakes
the solutions of one generation
are the problems of the next
Whatever they did to help me
was against my nature
Swimming against the waves
I learned where my future was
I shouted and cried until I silenced
and there I could see my angels
helping me to get through
It happened in dreams where
funny films were screened before me
waking me up, my laughs from nowhere.
––––––––
READY
Used to say I am ready to die
but I was a coward
I was not ready to live
second hand lives
lives of few seconds
Used to say I was ready to die
now I am willing to live
to die anyday now
ready to live ready to leave.
Crocodile
Mama I want a crocodile
I have been sweating all night long
I know they are coming to get me
and mama I need a crocodile
the horses are tired the lizards sleeping
the cats are eating lions
the dogs are barking to the dead moon
and I want my crocodile mama
I need it to fight my enemies
no, mama, a pistol wont do,
no, I don’t need a Uzi, no
not even a tank will do
I want a crocodile I want to see my crocodile
eating my enemies, eating every limb
eating their flesh and their tongues
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MAMA OPEN THAT DOOR....
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MISSING IN ACTION
I'd rather miss you
than be with you.
reality has divorced itself
from the dream
and they keep
distancing themselves
as a ship from the harbor
but since scientists have proved
the earth is round the question is
will they meet again
when and where.
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In memoriam of Townes Van Zandt
YOUR WINTER CAME EARLY
now the world is more orphan
especially for those who never heard of you.
Foolish bird
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MANY LIVES AGO AND many lines ago
there was this small bird
calling my name inside my ears
and waiting for my answer
and I gave him answers
and each time he said no
this is not the answer
and I said yes it is
but after2days I understood
he was right.
now the bird is dead
I don't have the answer
and I don't have nobody
telling me I am fooling myself.
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THE YOREH
Yoreh in Hebrew means 'First Rain'.
Everything will happen in October
After the Yoreh
it's a new year
Everything will happen in October
I'll win a contest
my poems will be so good
women will faint
in October
after the first rain
my wife will love me
and my children will be beautiful
in October drops of rain
will become gold
in my hands
everything will happen in October
I'll win the lottery
there'll be no more pollution
we will discover that the twentieth century
was all a dream
and we will be able to see the light of the sun
in October
the light will be bright.
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THE CRUELEST MONTH
No one knows which is
the cruelest month anymore
all months are becoming dinosaurs
of flood heat freeze and fires
No one knows if the winter
will ever come and if it does
Will it be only rain or floods
No one knows what to pray for
rains that don't stop
or some drops to clean the air,
and next summer
will the heat kill us
or will it snow.
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RUNNING AWAY IN CIRCLES
Hey hey man where are you running?
It's the end of the world.
Then, why are you running?
I want to see the end of the world.
But... if it's the end of the world it should be everywhere.
I am running away from the end of the world.
But... if the world ends you can't run away from it.
Can you stop asking questions please, I am running.
Because maybe that's the reason for the end of the world.
Migrating
I am bird who's lost his Africa
I am a bird who's lost his summer
I am a bird who's lost his voice
I am a bird who's lost his language
I am a bird who's lost his direction
I am a bird who's lost his legs
I am a bird who's lost his smile
I am a bird who's lost his tribe
I am a bird who's lost his family
I am a bird who's lost his nest
I am a bird who's lost his joy
but one day
I will fly
again.
Zionism
You asked me to forget
my hometown
you wanted me to forget
my neighbor
you asked me to forget
my name
you forced me
to forget my Morocco
you wanted me to forget
my ancestors
you asked me to forget
my Spain
you made me
a master forgetter
Till I forgot you
and remembered all this.
The Hamass terrosist
after Wysalva Czymborska "The Terrorist, He watches" and dedicated to Asaf and Meital and to all the victims who lost legs, lives and futures.
––––––––
1.
In a few moments he will blow himself
he is young, he has no children
he has no wife, in a moment
nothing will be left of him.
No one will know who he was
he left home years ago
and disappeared
forever.
I am sitting very close
drinking an espresso
and smoking a cigarillo
my friend asks me to come with him
to the place of the bomb
I tell him I am tired
which is not true
and that I will wait for him.
he doesn't know and I don't know
that in a few minutes
the terrorist will explode
the hope for peace will explode
and that Meital's leg will explode
and her brother Asaf will go to heaven.
Meital's husband, a Doctor
will hear the bomb and run to help the wounded
not knowing that his wife and her brother are there.
I am savoring the espresso
It is a sunny day in Tel Aviv
and after this bomb
nothing will be the same again for months
people will be afraid to come back here
Dizengof street will be deserted.
No one can stop him now
it is too late
he will die for Allah
and for being young, virgin
and indoctrinated.
Even if I go there I can't stop him.
My friend disappears.
2.
Suddenly there is a boom
and then there is silence
15 seconds of silence
like the moment before God created the world
or it is like the silence before
being born
It is a screaming silence
that can cut the air,
then there are police cars
stopping the silence
first comes a Peugeot 205
one, two, three,
fifteen of them,
then the ambulance comes
then people come from the place
they have to tell the story
they speak to everybody and to themselves
a mother doesn't know what happened to her daughter
people are making phone calls
with telephones and mobiles
very soon the whole system collapses
this is the center of Israel
Dizengof center in Purim
everybody is here or could be here.
I sit,
hear what happened
don't know what happened to my friend
(he reappeared 5 hours later)
I am left speechless
for half an hour
I stand
try to talk to the waitress
I can't make a sound
I go back to my seat
drink the water left.
3.
I think of the whole day
then I am really afraid.
How I skipped the place of the bomb
a place where I always go or pass through
I took many side streets
and my friend didn't understand why
he just followed me
I wanted all the time to go back to Jerusalem
"Half hour in front of the sea
That's enough for me"
I said
but he wanted the coffee
"let's drink it here
in Sheinkin
and then go back"
but he insisted
he wanted to drink it in Frishman,
and so on for the whole day.
He has promised not to insist again
and just follow me.
––––––––
4.
My religious friend said it is a sign
but a sign of what
of being right or being wrong.
What kind of smoky shadowy cloudy
world
is this
that when there is a sign
we can't decipher it.
––––––––
ELOHIM
––––––––
"AND YOU WILL BE ELOHIM, You are all sons of Eloha."
Bible.
––––––––
"ELOHIM CREATES WORLDS and destroy worlds."
The Talmud
––––––––
ONLY 5 MINUTES AWAY
from the complete destruction
of this world
and all in the hands of man
and then you will be Elohim
and no one to remember you
but you are thousands of years away
from creating a world
where there is a place for every man,
as far as man was
when Cain killed Abel,
As far
and as close
if you are Elohim.
––––––––
TRACES
traces and traces and traces
everywhere I walk
I leave something behind me
and receive something
from the traces other left behind
and from the soil
stop a minute to see
who was here
who will be here
who lived here
who was buried here
and who will be buried
who will be born and who will die
on the place where I walk
and the road becomes more interesting
more lengthy, more
impossible.
Moroccan
I always had the feeling
that the reasons for which
I was published in Israeli magazines
were extraneous
they needed a Moroccan
a sefardi
to see themselves as
liberals
but they never understood anything
of what I was saying
convinced that if I am speaking about Morocco
I am not speaking about the world.
––––––––
BROTHER OF THE ROADS
1.
Please stop the car
You travel too fast
Please brother
I think we're lost
Are you sure this is the right way
You travel too fast
And you don't listen to me
Listen listen brother
to the dance of the dew
Listen to the trees
haunted
Brother
You are deaf
Now I realize you are deaf
I wake up in the morning
an head for an unfamiliar road
impenetrable
I go to sleep at night
And I don't recognize
my bed
I don't identify the woman
sleeping next to me
Brother
Please take me home
it's cold out here
I want to see mother
and caress her
before the night comes down
I want to return home
and this is not the road
––––––––
AND YOU TELL ME:
We have Already returned
And this is the house
We have Already returned
and there is no house
We are lost in the forest
and this forest is our home
Mother is sleeping
And you should not wake her up.
Brother brother
you know you are lying
but what you say
is the only truth.
––––––––
2.
The house, brother,
is at the end of the Mediterranean
But where is the end
of the Mediterranean
The sea is circular
and closed
The house is everywhere
and nowhere
Brother
I was always afraid to drive
Because I knew
no car could take me
to my goal
I let you drive
and my goal is now the road
and the road
becomes longer everyday
There are those who say
that the road is created
by walking
but I am afraid,
I prefer not to move,
I am afraid
of the lion.
––––––––
THE POEM
First there is a sound
a familiar and distant
sound
coming from the twelfth century
in Granada or Lucena
then
less than a
second
later
there is a rhythm
like a lonely drum
in a high mountain
played by the leaves and the branches
sometimes subtle
sometimes noisy and unbearable
then there are the words
a line or sometimes two
when written the
words start flowing
as if they were waiting for
the door to be opened
sometimes
it is just one poem
mostly
there are hundreds
waiting for me
to write them
no matter how hard
I tell them
there are not many
readers left
to read them
they all want to be written
screaming at me
convincing me
asking and begging
but I have to make the choice
which ones to write
which ones to leave.
Upon hearing that Mahmoud Darwish was ill
and I hear that you are in a hospital near Paris
and I hear that you are very ill
and I feel my hair chilling
and I say no I can’t write a poem about Darwish
he is my enemy
but I know He is not my enemy
I am just afraid of what the others will say
It's one thing to say that
Darwish is the best Israeli poet
just to see their half smiles
saying that I am crazy
and another to write about you
and I have loved you poems
you, like me,
an exiled in the world
when the world is all exile
when the words are all aliens
and I loved when you said in an interview
that
had you known your poems would be translated
to so many European languages
you would have written them differently
with less symbolism an clearer
I loved you when you said that a poet has to
write his poems clear
I loved when you wrote about Al Andalus
and making love in the afternoon.
May god be with you, Mahmoud,
my friend not my enemy
my fighter with words
stronger than weapons
may Allah be your healer
may you live many years to come
and may you rest when the time has come
in the gardens of Eden.
Not poem
not to try to write a poem
not literature
not to try to succeed
a poem
to write the words
as they come
to tell the story
to forget
all the history of
literature
the moment you hold
the pen.
The bourgeoisie
In his last years even
old Buk
wrote about the bourgeoisie
he hated all his life.
But he taught the bourgeois
how to write
about it.
He faced literature
as if it was a horse race
in every poem he bet on a different horse
sometimes he won, sometimes he lost
but he always took chances.
The man of long winters
to Klaus Gerken
the man of long winters
writes me emails
understands my poetry
better that the Israelis near me
writes like we’ve been twenty years together
and always influenced one another
he writes about Yoric,
the cousin of Henry,
who doesn’t want to work
but is a barber twenty years.
being a barber, like being an accountant
is not a job for a poet.
There is no job that fits a poet.
The dangers of the poet
I can see his talent
and that's quite a lot
but he is like a spoiled child
from early age his poems
are esteemed
published in important magazines
and publishing houses
and he is afraid to lose his position
not yet thirty and already afraid to take risks
twenty years from now he may understand
that a few rejections could have made him
a stronger poet, a better poet
or he may become a university favorite,
another kind of death.
so many dangers stand
in a poet's road
and fame is not
the smaller of them.
Need
Please
Tell me that I am right
please tell me
that I am not dreaming
that the mountains I see
are not uncanny
that the memories
are not inventions
tell me that all this
never ending trip
has some meaning
Please
even if it is lie
tell me that my native home
is still in the same street
tell me that nobody has knocked it down
please convince me
I am not an elephant
and that my memory makes sense.
Please
I have to hear these words
many
many times.
The poets
No longer they censure us
no longer they kill us
no longer they put us in the jail
there's no need
we censure ourselves
we carry the censorship
in our brain
We are not dead
but we live in caves
and nobody sees the light
of the sun
they don’t give a damn
they know very well that
no one reads us
that poetry has died
even if the poets are alive.
Yoric in Paris
dedicated to Klaus Gerken
yoric, the cousin of henry,
walks through Paris
and in the boulevard Des Italiens
he sees no Italians
in the champs elysees
he sees no fields
in the poetry books
he doesn’t find any poetry
in the literature books
no literature
in the women
he sees no woman
and in the people
he sees shadows.
The difference between now and then
is that he has stopped
looking for anything
in Paris.
––––––––
SCARY WORDS
Some words scare us
the same one that
could release our fears.
Words, like monsters lying dormant in lakes
waiting for the big day to wake up.
Words, mantras of lost arms
rivers no one can see
prayers our souls most need
shoes to walk with
on the sea.
I read the poems
I buy the books and I don't read them
I says
tomorrow the day after until they
lose all interest better poems
fill my head from books I
don't read just look at the first page
lightening a new poem
but the poetry books, those I read them all
all the poems, the good ones the bad ones
I give them chances and more chances to change
maybe one day. poems, yes poems, are
the fuel of this world, that's why so many are written
that's why we need so many of them.
The Rabbi
Winter Jerusalem chilling cold empty central streets
me and my friend who became a rabbi
reciting poems by Dylan Thomas and shouting
that 'death shall have no dominion' at night
then shouting 'we are rich and famous'
because a poem was published in some obscure
literary magazine where death had its toll
we are almost famous both of us, not really rich
then we never really cared about money anyway
and there is nothing important about being famous
you're never rich enough or famous enough.
Depart
I was here and then gone
a few moments passed
many thoughts
my mind held the universe in it
I was here and then
gone
Some will remember me
others
would rather forget
Some poems will remember I
wrote them
others will go their own way
when all is said and nothing left for the wind
I will walk from the land and scream
my last word to nobody.
To Rumi
It is when I finish the poem
that I ask myself
how will I be able to make sense
of this world until the
next
poem
The only silence I know is the silence
of the written words
pleading to be part of this world
pleading to make it a better place to be.
Noble prize
Ginsberg didn't get it, Buk neither
was a bum
Borges some said was fascist
but Garcia Marquez got it
Did you know
Winston
Churchill got the nobel
of literature, have you read his prose,
Toni Morrison yes but not Amiri Baraka
not Kerouak died too young O.K.
But why not Henry Miller
died too old?
Maybe Ferlinghetti still can get it
Burroughs? too crazy or too american
now we need someone from the east
now we need a jew, an african
in the mean time my favorites writers
all dying not getting nobel prizes,
most of the winners just bore me
Czymborska O.K. though,
then what are my chances,
too crazy yes, but also African,
born Morocco, jew, live in Israel,
write poetry in Hebrew, Spanish some English
like this poem, and if I win I promise
will read this one when they give it to me.
The Vintage book of
contemporary American poetry.
November 1990
First Edition.
I bought it at Strand
April 20
Broadway Boulevard
1999, for half the retail price of 14.95$,
7.48$. I asked them to mail it to me
with ten more books to Jerusalem.
In it I found a receipt
from Barnes And Noble
from 9/20/94
for 7.48$+0.62 tax
total 8.10.
I don't Know Which Barnes And Noble,
in Manhattan the
Address is not precised
the phone number is 212-633-3500
The buyer paid in cash 20.10$
and got 12$.
The receipt says THANK YOU,
I found it in page 396,
Mark Strand says in that page in
a poem called "The Story Of Our
Lives":
"We are reading the story of our lives
which takes place in a room.
The room looks out on a street.
There is no one there."
I look at the woman who bought this book
in 1994, it was a lovely autumn day,
she was lonely, she was 30 years old back then,
she was a poet, she was a writer,
That day she woke up very happy,
one of her poems was going to be included
in a very important anthology,
she wanted to celebrate it
by buying a book of poetry,
and a bottle of wine, she liked Chilean wine,
the leaves were falling on her window,
she looked out of her window,
but just before she was going to leave
she noted that she was menstruating,
it always happened suddenly to her
her periods weren't dramatic like her friends',
she didn't have many friends,
she lived not far from Barnes And Noble,
she wanted some poetry book
but she really couldn't decide
so she went for the anthology
which had a 50% discount,
a bit of Ginsberg, a bit of Berryman
Ashbery and a poet she never heard of till then
Mark Strand, and
many others.
She sat in the village
the sun was beautiful on her face
making it shine for some real goal
and she drank some coffee
reading the book, she read for hours,
until I woke up seven hours later
in Paris, It was a beautiful sunny day
the leaves were dancing to the wind
and I looked out of my window
and saw her going back home,
she was lovely and she was gone
before I could dream of her
before we bought the same book
before our fingers touched the same paper.
International poet
I international poet I multilingual poet
walk the streets of this world in any language
walk paris walk madrid walk malaga
walk antalia walk istanbul
walk austin walk new york
walk lisboa before reading pessoa
born tetuan close to tangier a.m.
while burroughs ginsberg and corso
writing their best work wondering
if there was any cosmic influence
but bukowski not in tangier
he king of american poets
king of wine king of swine
king of anarchy poets
even five years after his death
they academic know what don’t know
still don’t put him in their anthologies
great bukowski had them all
they not see his poems are even becoming
better after his death
me international poet I love that
I love to be antiestablishment
once my wife told me I am
the most antiestablishment man
she ever knew and she knew men and artists
international poet born in small city
while forty miles from there
some crazy writers were making
the greatest literary revolution of
20th century
so what is big what is small
tangier or new york city
or tetuan, and who is big
truman or ginsberg or corso or buk
and what hour is it now, now
if you know you are a saint.
Austin NYC April 1999
––––––––
1.
At Shakespeare and Co.
New York city
poetry rack poetry month
a big sign
The Bukowski books are in the
Drinking smoking and screwing rack
at the front of the store,
there also Burroughs
did he smoke, I think he didn't drink
then Celine
did he screw anything else but
his own life,
then we have old Buk
it's like he drank, smoked, screwed
and then
wrote some poems
and the most important things he did
are that he drank screwed and smoked
and not
that he was the best American poet
see that's the problem with all
dis american cultu'
we want to know who did he
fuck, how many, how much he drank
but much less
we want to read
what he said
2.
Time of suitcases again
end of New York city
Greenwich village
looking desperately
for a place to piss
half the time
getting harder and harder
even once almost did it in my pants
while walking on these same streets
where Ginsberg walked
wondering what would he have said
about Kossovo
when people of truth die
we miss them
when they are alive
we disagree
admiring their truthfulness
had some good food
not lots of music
found some good books
it's time for suit-
cases
again
fear of flying
hate of planes
will remember McDougall street
and Broadway avenue
would rather forget 5th avenue
would remember Austin
its poets and wonderful music
too much too long planes
to come back soon
then again
who knows
as my grandmother said
trips happen when they
happen.
The poet's blood
Oh people I have walked your cities
but you have not listened
You talked to me of
Mercy
I have cried in your streets
And I have shred my clothes apart
I have torn my skin apart
but you have not seen my blood
You were drinking your wine
inside your houses talking
about God, Atheism and Justice
Oh people I have walked your sidewalks
barefoot
till my feet were flesh
till there was no more blood
still you couldn't touch my pain
and my joy
still
you didn't hear my silence.
The old poets
are easily offended.
those who didn't make it
and live from the compliments of their friends
one compliments the other.
the successful ones
are not sure they are good
the poems don't come anymore
no literary award can make them sure
they are good poets anymore,
even the old poems are no solace
Soon they start to fight and scream
the old woman poet cries
she is not receiving enough attention
for her just-published book
I am there asking myself what am I doing there
suddenly I want to be like Mother Theresa
and kiss them all, but they don't now they are poor.
The only judges of poetry are the centuries
and very few make it, not always
those who were known in their lives
I want to shout at them:
If you go into a cave don't complain about the light.
The important poet
Poor man he has started to think he is
an important poet.
And he is so busy being an important poet
he can't read, write or talk to his friends.
When he was unknown it was funny
now it is ridiculous.
When someone he doesn't remember
salutes him in the streets
he thinks it is because he is an important poet.
He went into a bar in Tel Aviv and ate a falafel
and the owner told him it is for free
because it is the first time he comes
He told me this an added:
Do you think it is because I am an important poet?
I just had a good laugh, heavy noisy good laugh.
He looked at me very seriously and said
WHY NOT?
The dead poets
They're the best.
Once their egos are gone
they write their best poems.
The poems in their books
start to change
some appear for the first time
poems you never read.
They are not famous for the
wrong reasons
nor unknown for the same
reasons.
They are only poems.
The best of them have installed
the poetry machine
that makes each of their poems
better every day.
The old bull
I imagine him often
the old bull
sitting in front of his computer
writing one poem after another
5-7-12 poems in one morning
7 more in the evening
and it makes me want to ameliorate myself
to write more poems better poems
he started writing his poems at 37
I started at 15
so I may still win at the end of the race
if my horse holds 35 more years
and I am not destroyed by family life
working as an accountant
signing a contract of six figures
or being in before I am 65
everything
from the strongest tornado
to the smallest falling leave
can and has destroyed poets.
––––––––
CREAM OF THE BOOK
It's the book month and the small publisher is trying
to sell me a writer that was banned 40 years ago
as if it was something new, it's the same publisher
who is banning another writer that 40 years from now
someone will ask how come nobody understood
his genius, but I don’t say anything, I just listen
a book about Eichman's life and moral problems
well, I don't have the appetite, I must tell you I'd
rather have a Bukowski biography, a Felafel
or an Italian ice cream, even if these were not
banned forty years ago, spinning cream.
So you want to be a poet
––––––––
SOOOOOO YOU WANT TO be a poet, OK?
Here's how it works
If you're poor you can't write
because you have to work, right?
If you're rich you have nothing
to write about
If you have a lover s/he won't let you write
wants your attention
If you're lonely it's the loneliness that kills you,
the sound of silence
can be dangerous,
If you have many lovers that's good for sex but
not for writing busy all the time, phones and bills
Now get married and then
you have wife and kids
to feed and they shout all day, can't write
that's understandable,
you can't write, if you have no kids
your spouse wants one, so you have to deal with doctors
no time to write,
now what kind of work should you do
Accounting? boring
don't make enough money,
you can be a doctor
too worried about your ill patients to write,
you can become a teacher, then you are talking about writing poetry
you don't know how to start a fucking poem,
now, OK, become a famous poet
very very famous if you're lucky,
then you have to go to all the festivals,
judge in many prizes, when do you write
everybody is phoning you,
and if you're too rich then what will you write about, said dat OK,
you will have all the time in the world, boats, yacht, whatever
but there wasn't even one really great rich poet, or was it, some were
real poor, most middle class you need some education, you can
also be translator, editor, publisher but dealing with other people's
writing doesn't help either, so get this into your head, you have no
time to write, no matter what you do, no matter how you manage it, no
matter who you are, and if in spite of that you still write then man
you are a poet.
––––––––
MANY TONGUES
I left the Hebrew language
as others leave a loved woman
they have been trying to fuck
for ten or fifteen years, saying
woman I am a man, hear all the
other women that want me and
now I have to go and get what
I need from them, I am a poet
woman, and you can't be my
fantasy forever, I am poet in search
of a language and many tongues
have loved me and your door has
been closed for so long, I had to
open other knobs with other hands
I can't behave like an amputee forever
and now that so many doors have
opened, now you open yours to see
if I'm still there, I am not and when
you see me near it's because I took
a walk, a walk through my old habits
I don't need your tongue, many tongues
have loved me now and I don't miss
your never existing caress anymore.
––––––––
IN A FEW THOUSANDS years
In a few thousands years they'll say about us:
They had great poetry
but their technology was primitive
they used heavy materials for everything
They'll say:
They had great poetry
but their medical system was hell
they had to kill to save lives
they needed snakes to take care of people
and their medical system
was the very idea of a bad system
doing more harm than good
They had great poetry
but for some reason the most famous books
were written in a genre called novels
a strange way of complicating
simple stories
They had great poetry
but their world was a world of racism
they had black people and black poetry
gay poetry and minorities poetry
African Asian and western
and no one was equal to no one nowhere
They had great poetry
but they loved making wars
and constructing heavy weapons
and killing people and destroying cities
this was the most common sport of that time
They had great poetry
but their poets were mostly poor and unknown
They had great poetry
and anybody could write
they didn't need diplomas and studies
to do their craft
They had great poetry
but their poetry was useless
they thought that only science
could help people until
it destroyed everything.
And at the end of the lecture
a young boy will say:
Maybe that's what's needed
to write good poetry...
Because we have no good
poetry today.
The Reader
When the poem is read
by the good reader
his interaction
creates the
echo
that brings
to the poem
someone who's
never read poetry.
He's the best.
Waitress
I don't stare at you like I used to.
Ships interposed between our eyes
I watch the waitress young and eager to give
think of you when you were a waitress and didn't return my love
coming with another girl to make you jealous without success
staring at you like I stare at the waitress today
thousands of waves have covered our sands
the foam is white our hands are green
and you say "can you please look at me"
and now everything is clear, I notice I have been dreaming
away from our Titanic, everything is tumbling down
I have forgotten your name, your secret name
written on your front that only I could see
you have forgotten to show it to me
you are hiding and you don't know it and I
watch you staring at me staring at the waitress behind
your back and you can't see her she's the waitress you were.
Now here I am an a thousand years old poet
reminiscing about the days you
were young I was never young.
Ask me for that love again
The one we couldn't believe would happen
the love when we didn't know we were in love
the love when I couldn't write a love poem
so busy was I loving you,
now I have so much time to write you poems
but you don't ask for my love
you are in front of me but you are memories
and in your eyes it is not me I see
but the idea and the image you have made of me
and I say now if she only asked
for that love again
but there is no again there is no going back
our cells have been destroyed and remade
we are not those two young crazy lovers
we are not who we are
and our cells have been given to other creatures
sitting between us as a sun
not letting us see each other
siting between us as a sea
not being able to see the other shore
now if you only asked
I would give you that love again
but you can't ask and that love
would not be the same
the look in your eyes the color of my eyes have changed
they are looking elsewhere for someone else
asking for that love again
that love that will make me forget my pride
that love so much like malt whisky expensive and making forgive
without a hangover in the morning
please ask for that love again
ask for that same love
but you won't ask you are trying to forgive me
you are trying to appease me you are trying all the time
instead of asking of demanding
it is your it is my right to have that love again
if we had it once if we lost it if we know its taste
we have the right to that love again,
we can only blame ourselves, life and God.
––––––––
THIS POEM IS BASED on the poem “Don’t ask me for that love again” by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
A love poem if there ever was one
––––––––
WHEN YOUR BODY WAS stone
I
was
a cat
When your breast was a leaf
I
was
a tree
When your eye was a star
I was
a shoe
When your were a river I
was a lake
When your hand was a stone I
was
a wallet
When your smile was a highway
I was a monument
When your lip was a continent I was the amazons
When your sleep was an arch my lips were a horse
when your hair was a lantern my legs were elephants
when your past was a bridge I was not your future
when your echo was a town I was not your cowboy
when you slept under foreign pillows I wasn’t a memory
when you laughed like a summer girl I was not in your thoughts
when you were a whore I was not your client
when you were a mother I was not your son
when you were the virgin Mary I was not Jesus
when you were the sea I was not the shore
when you were a pigeon I was not the sky nor the riffle
when you were prison I was not the bird at your window
when you were the lover I was not your eyes
when you were a lesbian I was not a woman
when you were a daughter I was not your mother
when you were a grave I was not sand
when you were a raincoat I was under the sun
when you were an umbrella I didn’t need shelter
when you were my body I was not yours
so how,
how can we say we are in love
after all these years
trying to find each other
under the caves
of our decaying
temples.
––––––––
FREEDOM
Freedom is what starts a poem
but by the end you're always back in jail.