Amman Arithmetic

I want a view of the city from a tall stained window
Where my mind can spend summer afternoons tracing
The jagged homes in all their sandy-colored glory
Count the halo of birds on the eastern hills
Tallying up the kites tangled in the skyline
Reckoning murmurs from the asphalt
Finding sequences in car horns
That blaze through the rocks of seven hills
From the dizzying circles to the Hashemite square
Calculating cab fare
Haggling with merchants in the souk
With their rusty weights on broken scales
Flowers. Fruits. Traffic light bargains
Selling headlines by the bushel
Sparing change for the street beggars
That the policemen give chase to

I want a view of the city from a tall stained window
Where a chorus of minarets casts echoes across the valleys
Bellowing at sixes and sevens
Through the symmetry of tongues
And checkered monochrome stones
Mouthing dialects twisted in long division
The city accumulates over time:
1902 + 1921 + 1948 + 1967 + 1991 + 2003

“Bayader?” says a soliciting bus boy
“Where are you going?,” asks the taxi driver
“Sweileh? Sahab? Badr? I won’t go there.”

So where are you going?
Which hilltop is your canvas?
Which summit is your stage?
Where do you go to bellow your immigrant songs?
The verses of displacement
Choruses laced with resilient blues
The pursuit of new dreams
Abandoned at the river banks of a dry Seil Amman

I want a view of the city from a luminous stage
From a rooftop
From a hillside
From a tall stained window
Where second thoughts are second nature
Where calculating poets write half-measured words
Where the length of an evening spreads across the width of a horizon
Where the lowest common denominator is the least common multiple

Where the whole of a poem
Is greater than the sum of its parts

Or a fraction

Of a story

Of a city

Run

In the heart of this chaos
With the maddening crowd below
You flee behind my overcoat
And it is in this moment
Where dilated pupils meet palpitating hearts
Like sea shores meet wandering tides
Like the moon and Sun dance circles around the Earth
Like two passing strangers whose hands graze each other innocently
Amidst the concrete jungles of Amman
Flirting with the white surf like brown eyes fluttering
Like two tongues stuttering
Like my words
Spin your mind
Like your reason
Spins my rhyme

And.

We .

Run.

Through the clutter of angry chants and vocal fists
Flying through the air towards the barricade of riot police
Who chase us through the naked streets of dawn
With the cling and clatter of batons on shields
And the tear gas drawing wetness from our gathering eyes
Till we scatter like crows on a wire
Like the January winds catching fire
Like the mechanical parts of broken hearts
And the constant promises of false starts
Like my words
Chase the ghosts of your past
Like your fingers
Weave my place in this world

And.

We.

Run.

Through the winters of confusion and the shores of spring
Where your hypotheticals turn honest
And our hands are no longer those of two passing strangers
No longer searching for each other amidst the panicking masses
No longer shunning this moment until it passes
These are no longer the hands that stagger through
The alleys of doubts
Through the doorways of bewildered thoughts and paper poems
That no longer fold the way they used to
The way they were written
Bloody and candid
Beautiful and broken
No longer two hearts sounding their retreats on the battle field
Like the armies of dissent that beg us to run
Through these wilds streets
Where our eyes first meet
And I see your heart stand still for what would be the first time
No longer wanting to remember what it’s like to be stung
No longer wanting to end these beginnings before they’ve begun
No longer wanting to run
No longer wanting

To.

Run.

Alone.

Because our worried minds grow tired sometimes
And our nervous smiles fade from our faces sometimes
Sometimes our reason gives chase to our whims
And fate demands we surrender our arms at the door
Like the ocean of rocks hurled by once furious crowds
We careened through
From the refuge of ghosts that we'd cling to
To the quiet of places that we’d run to
And you point out, weeks later
That really
We’ve all hidden behind each other’s coats
At one time or another
As if to say:
Great things happen
When people collide

Awakening

I have long danced
Around the memory of you
Reciting your poems to the constellations
I've traced along these barren walls
The ceiling cracks that I have painted crimson
With my exploding color
But in the absence of valor; I am cowardly

And I confess:
I make mountains out of molehills
It's just my way
Really
I build skyscrapers of impossibilities
Of fear and an alternate reality
Where you spin around
At the mere sight of me
And
Just
Leave

For months I have awoken
Reciting the words that I would tell you
The very story that I would say
With honesty pouring from every corner
Of my trembling flesh
And you'd believe me
Because you knew me to be true
And you'd forgive me
Because you knew me to be true

For months I crafted the spear
That I would cast in to the belly
Of the demon that brought terror to my skies
That laid before me an impossible choice
An impossible whisper of a secret

And I confess:
There are times
When I keep searching for signs
Amongst the rubble
Of your wandering brown eyes
Something that breathes the way you do
Something that moves the way you do
That still feels the way you do
Something that fills the empty canvas
Of all the dreams that I succumb to

Just a hint
Of a chance
To restart
To rebuild
To remain

Till This City Mumbles

The drought that strikes my bitter tongue
Sends me scavenging through the darkness
Jonesing for a fix in the alleys of my confusion
Through the staircases of this city
The metropolitan of my youth
We lay siege to our imaginations
Like self-righteous warriors
We draw battle lines in the concrete
Clotheslines crisscross rooftops
Where the thunder and the lightening
No longer strike fear in our hearts
The starlight no longer burns brightly in our eyes
And we are not as in love (with the ocean) as we used to be
Not in this silence
Not in this hush
Not in these dark corridors
Let the vocabulary of parched lips
Have their moment
And if my words
Could still resurrect memories for you
Still carry any source of meaning for you
I would hum the traffic down
Till the city mumbles:
“wait”
Till the ebb and flow of tides slowed
As the oceans paused to listen

Storytellers

In past lives
We grazed sheep
Across desert plains
Till winds chased us
Northwards

The heavy lush of gravity
Our dreams envisioned
On Hebron-blue glass;
We engineered the city
Reciting poems
In the Hashemite Square

Our fathers weave tales
From winter wool
To describe the rarity of warmth
Checkered hands weathered
From the lentil fields at dusk light
The staggering stalks of barley
At dawn
Woven in the backbone
Of a nation

Recite these words:
We are an oral history
Twice removed
Inherited by muted lips

We are a generation of poets
Romanticizing the contemporary
Discomfited by a past
We shall
Never
Ever
Know

Recycled

careful!
these summer streets
have ways
of passing lies
that lie awake
like satellite moons observing
and the strong ambivalence
that this has all been done before
that this has all been said before
yes
we are ghost ships
sailing through the neon
of the cityscape
with asphalt ways
and caffeinated eyes
we read kafka and jibran
in a single breath
we sing lines to songs
about an unrequited love
hope and death
till we are out of breath
because
this is how we make amends
and this is how we start again
so
start
again

careful!
these summer streets
have ways
of passing lies
so come
light the water
when the tide comes in
destructive and rapturesque
to float away; I float away
but you are the constant
when everything in me
begs to orbit away
on slighter tangents
on brighter days
when this has all been done before
when this has all been said before
this
has
all
been
said
before

Night Dreams

content to hear
that frivolous pursuits
could still move the mountain sides
the poet remained perplexed
he is persuasive
and careless with words
sending scattered thoughts into
a frenzy of superstition
and applause
he is a vigil of morbid hallucinations
in an adolescent night
yes
he's found a solitary way
yes
it's trite
but it suites him

and on slick summer nights
he goes dancing with his confusion
the abstractions
and the fast-approaching footsteps
of middle age;
grimaces of a past life
paint a landscape of whispers and melancholy
circassian rhythms
around Bedouin fires
as priest and sheik argue
over the love of Christ
with fervor
and he is carving
these imperfections
in a sandbox of reason
because words
just don't do it anymore

yes
it's summer
the pulse of air, the beat of ear drums
and that sweet, sweet hummingbird
catapulting purple halos
into night dreams
this is the part
where the city bursts
into a million pieces
and the oceans feed crazy rivers
palpitations of a home life
that suggest
trying to change the world
is a task better left
for another night

for in this hour
he is a sentimental tourist
taking mental pictures
of artifacts and the unbearable scenery
recording and archiving
the song of hurrying rivers
and the streams that carry
rare fish
galloping through his curiosities
yes
we are born in the tide of a memory
yes
we are born in a cathedral of similes
in the labyrinth of color we call love
but we grow old
yes
we grow, only to be swallowed whole
in the strangest of landscapes
finding solace in returning nightmares
in new dreams
that culminate new scenes
not vanquished
not silent
not torn
not your creature
bewildered

just a poet
trying to find his voice in this world

Say

You keep waiting
And I keep waiting
And things
We
Want to
Need to
Say;
Never get said

So let me
Just say
Once
And
For
All
.
.
.
.
.

Stairways

We breach the silence with batted eyelashes
Beneath a sky riddled with stars
Too hesitant to shine
Beneath roman ruins and an unhurried flag
Beneath the striking call of the muezzin
Who reminds us of who we are
We conquer this city with unbridled conversation
Wrap it delicately with makeshift words
From atop these grey and burdened stairs
Built way before our time

We breach the silence with diligence
As daylight fades from an Amman sky
And shadows find the contours and curves
Of every hill and valley
We watch
We listen
To car horns conducting a symphony of cacophony
And we imagine the voice of this city without them

We breach the silence with our persuasions
Beneath the concave cluster of stone homes
Beneath the bending trees
Beneath the nightingale's song
Beneath the cobblestone and asphalt
Beneath the purple skies and rolling clouds
Beneath the satellites and rooftops
Beneath the vanity of patrons
Beneath the neon green light of the minaret
Beneath the creeping darkness of nightfall
That waits for a summer Sun to be distracted
As it turns its attention to our staircase conversations
Breaching the silence
Until the cosmos descend
To listen

Other People

There is
An unavoidable
Glimpse of dusk
And in it
I imagine your face
Plastered in the foreground
Nestled quietly between a frame
On a nightstand
Comfortably;
Disappearing into the interrogation
Of light and brick and glass
And water rings that bring
This room together like constellations

And you speak
And I listen
For a change
The gentle migration of heartbeats
That slip between tongue-tied lips
We are static
For the moment
Like white angels
Riding the airwaves
Our confidence
Wavering metaphorically in the wind

We are other people
We have Spanish names
And read dead Russian poets
To survive the heat front
From the East
We grow old
Like memories
Slightly forgetting
Our unfortunate years
Alone