by Walid Bitar
THE UNEMPLOYED
Whether your people dropped out of the sky,
or sailed near the wind from distant atolls
when distance meant more than it does now,
is none of my business. I’m unemployed,
but pay your respects, because I fear
nothing so little it becomes less
than it should – can’t close a raw deal
seguing soon into the hereafter
you underestimate as vermicular,
or look up to, appear ridiculous.
Don’t spare me the superfluous details
I spared you first. I hate imitators,
hammer away until a slight dent
is detectable in the anvil,
and the sun sets in the west, then rises there –
by west I mean, of course, the Far East,
where, in my fantasies, you are dragged,
kicking and screaming. Ronins demand
totem poles your dead ringer was sculpted on
by Abos you could swear you civilized,
their lives, enjoyed to the full by you, over.
Descendants, granted the bar sinister,
bluff that it’s best to go out guns blazing.
Best to go out and get some fresh air.
SHOCK AND AWE
We despise your subtropical accent,
although it’s roughly the same as ours.
Man isn’t rational, boy – boys are.
Coincidentally, eternal youth’s
our final offer. You’ll owe, in return,
shrugs of the shoulders. Won’t teach you manners
I’ve never quite gotten the hang of,
torn from the womb mature, aging badly,
not raised like you were, or as you,
stating the obvious rarely worthwhile,
a second front opening in the war
I’ve been waging against a false friend,
a correct one demanding the floor,
convinced, when tanked up, years spent researching
the forgettable weren’t a waste – he discovered
peasants in a medieval cathedral
for the first time channelled shock and awe
more fluently than either good or evil.
Unrecorded, their dialogue,
as you wish your speechlessness were.
INNER SANCTUM
Tyranny, memories I’ll overthrow.
Luckily, they aren’t brick and mortar
holding me to the word I’ve given,
not to charity, but for free,
my inner sanctum non-habitable,
my favourite sons in the entourage –
fattening them with the calves wasn’t hard.
It’s too late to find a hungry customer;
they’ve matured into capable stalkers,
recapture their humanity in public,
Remains a mystery, if they’re watched
by the ghost I will never surrender,
though I may change my mind, the seat
of relatively high intelligence
I can’t get to touch down a minute
on the throne. No man rules this world –
if mad, he sacrifices at altars
of divinities nobody else worships
live coals walking on wouldn’t purify him.
THE COLLABORATORS
Independence I wouldn’t demand, though
where they’re respected, I’m for my freedoms,
schedule flights of fancy in a crash course
we teach because it has nothing to teach us,
the anti-occupation demo rousing
a lion sleeping inside me. He roars.
I rat him out. Vets put down this paragon
created unequal before the number
system’s invention – I mean its discovery,
your faith misplaced in the infinity
I’d define as completely losing count.
Heaviest boxer here pound for pound,
I could hand-deliver a lecture
on life each calls his; that’s our custom.
There’s no predicting, as we grow older,
how much less possessive we’ll become.
TUNNEL VISION
You’re number one, and so am I – reckoning,
in the nautical sense, won’t help us
get from point A or B to the ecstasy
with which I cross my legs, and bask,
though it’s cloud-capped, brumal at the top,
behaviour here inexplicable,
hence best executed in silence,
a feline you tagged with listening devices
convicted for the ninth life he leads
as if it were his to. Like him, we’re hungry,
but is my appetite yours as well?
Each hunts alone, for the nuclear family,
you the person I expected you were.
You shouldn’t be; we’ve hardly met.
Wouldn’t know where to start, if the end
weren’t visible: a tunnel, my studio’s,
where, unrecognizable, you model
for gouaches I hang abroad in the cyclones
we’re neither saved nor damned by. They cleanse
palates, skeletons also, and vultures
some estimate have been around the block
a billion times before it was built,
a metropolis demonstrably too small
for the two of us – perhaps more than two.
Each dreams he’s primus inter pares,
loves, doesn’t need, any introduction,
an insomniac, restless before birth
and after death – the rest isn’t composure.
PYRRHIC VICTORY
I was on fire to save you, myself,
and the hoi polloi also if possible,
the house sold out, but narrow aisles
meant the saved were fewer in number
than we might have wished. I lowered the voice
to a lowest common denominator,
finally hollered at my disciples
hanging on words – or were they impaled?
Either way, I had little control
over instincts, least of all mine,
you say you love, and fine then: enjoy,
as you did land we’re occupying
till you sign at the bottom motives
you suspect in us are innocent
of any crime except the importance
you give abstractions, and whose fault is that?
I see right through my own curiosity,
get my kicks watching anyone suffer,
could care less if a donkey or bronco
is the support delivering them.
The further from me or closer the end seems,
the more loyalty I swear to mileage,
last stand against incalculability –
feared as much as extinction at my age.
THE PICTURE OF CONCENTRATION
I’m crouching in the landscape’s tall grass
you sketched while I studied you closely,
snapping pictures of your concentration
I’m probably incapable of,
supremely bored now, out of my mind,
and plotting a triumphant return
tomorrow. The benefit of the doubt
I won’t give you and you can’t earn,
the boy next door, his sister too, watched,
standards either records used against you –
encapsulating exactly how,
the aleatory part of my job.
Untimely, those pre-emptive strikes
with which your labourers dug their own graves.
Next time, you hope forces of nature
do the dirty work. Anthropomorphist
syndrome diagnosed, I fake great pity,
then the greatness goes to my head,
teaching me, since your complexion’s darker
than
it has any human right being,
you’d better behave like an animal –
effectively ending the conversation.
I find, when there’s nothing left to prove,
a man becomes perfectly irrational.
THE BARRICADE AUCTION
I’m old enough to surprise my young
fair-weather messmates on the Riviera
when, at last, a harsh winter comes,
a home-field advantage, and I act my age,
forswear unprofessional heroics,
though I’ll occasionally fall on my sword.
Antique furniture you donated
proved useful on the barricades
I sold off, the highest bidder
our government whose twisted logic
wasn’t vandalized, always looked that way.
Yes, if I recollect correctly,
I was a chair, all but re-elected,
rocking for office. The runners faded,
hadn’t trained for marathons I soothsaid
would punish those in the greatest rush.
You couldn’t bring their endorphins to heel,
some consolation waiting in wings
you mischievously picked up at school,
taught directions the wind was blowing,
fixed your gaze after gaining altitude,
captivated that much of the planet
answers your thirst for money with water,
integral part of human anatomy.
THE ZODIACAL BEASTS
I’ll sign: I misrepresented death,
foamed at its non-existent mouth,
oratory a far cry from knowledge –
the gap in between’s my old stomping ground.
There I developed post-domino theory,
a Svengali behind the sages
telling toppled zodiacal beasts,
scrounging for scraps by the moat, to beat it.
Before my birth, I revered newborn elders,
lost a little faith in childhood, the rest
since coming of age. I watched you grow,
then shrink into a constitutional
monarch, mongrel, your master the crown.
I’m loyal to a fault, spit, wipe it clean –
just had it on. Didn’t hear the bullet
that can’t hear me either; we’re equals.
As for the victim, the killer’s himself,
not much to go on, our population
mushrooming, increasingly desperate
for solid evidence poverty’s shared –
and it is, however imperfectly.
The charities stopped knocking at doors
you, if a foreign aid ship sails in,
will have repaired – till then, they’re open.
GREY MATTER
We’re good and damaged – our voices can’t carry,
bottom of my heart and pit of your stomach
left unbandaged, wounded in action.
You’ve debriefed a cutting-edge psychologist.
Incurably yourself, you were told health
might mean becoming another person,
hatching. There’s neither shell, nor yolk.
Follow the rules: mix yellow and violet
into grey matter. My hypothesis:
life is colourful. We scratch its surfaces,
if I’m right. The day I’m proved wrong,
I’ll run away, rejoin the circus,
where round model Earths were my specialty,
flat varieties a tougher juggle.
The crystal ball’s in my court now – either it’s
buffaloed (impossible), or I am,
poorly positioned near the centre of power
as the regime begins imploding.
For decades, I stuck to my guns, an outsider,
then compromised when nobody was looking.
OUTER SPACE
Given more choice, I’d certainly take it.
Instead, let’s conclude I’m indecisive –
better that than the ignoble admission
I’m awaiting orders from above,
immediate superiors polytheists
offing requires divine intervention
tricky under the circumstances;
the gladiators who speak in tongues
are outside my circle I drew freehand.
Insiders lost, ages ago,
a sportsmanship they had, or faked,
when our game was serious. It’s still no joke,
and you’re winning, relaxed. The nerve –
you beam, inculcated with grace
I deserve. Unjust, my sentence,
commuted from inner to outer space,
trains of thought laid tracks at a loss –
no paying passengers on board,
man of the people, standing ground
I, their absentee landlord, own.
SABOTAGING THE CALENDAR
Often misleading, the mood you’re in;
one like a pond takes you out of yourself,
invites a dip difficult to resist
when summering – by the winter solstice,
you are better off anyplace else,
wet and cold, need dry clothes, a change,
and so request an audience the doyen
refuses. Arguably, your half-hour
wait in a blizzard for an answer like that
is predestined, and after the next day
disappears into the subsequent fortnight
you’re accused of sabotaging the calendar,
songs you were pencilled in to perform banned
by their composers – ah, to be young again.
But you’re living under surveillance,
unlike the powerless chattering classes
who buy your forced cheerfulness at face value,
judge you naive. They’re flush, wine and dine
on Halloween while you trick or treat
elsewhere, garbed as a wildcat striker,
blood pressure data news fit to print I,
a trained calligrapher, record shorthand.
Humble words – hear them scraping by
on what they mean, worst kind of peer pressure.
THE MINOTAURS
Fellow Minotaurs laid off at labyrinths
Asiatic Maecenases purchased,
let’s contemplate the emerging markets
losing interest in our mythology,
grasp the gravity of the situation,
and the exception that proves the rule:
their reps reached exits before we pounced –
stitch up uniforms; pretend we’re doormen,
me spelling out, and you misreading,
my encephalon’s contents, wasted.
I insist we lock arms, and agree
on a fast poison for the food-taster
whose job you covet, the belly a joy.
Fire in mine may lustrate, may not –
won’t leave ashes bitter in the mouth;
they are all that’s left of my taste buds.
HABEAS CORPUS
I’ve caught traumatic memories experienced
enough to dodge human consciousness
the prime years I was right about everything,
me forgotten now as my predictions
that came true – your media reported
my instincts were down, base, then kicked,
man’s warmest contribution his corpse’s,
if the last heartbeat comes from the right place.
The dead can’t plead ignorance: we record
what happens next even when blows are fatal –
my throat slit during a siesta,
I awoke refreshed in this new world,
captaining ships, pulling strings,
the sailing clear. I’m out of rope,
wasn’t numbered among the prophets
our special ops left swinging back home.
We issued licences to kill or live,
> though the ones you’ve applied for, to die
under mysterious circumstances,
the late admiral hasn’t signed yet,
time passing quickly, slowly as well,
depending on the mood he is in,
sharing it with us a dramatic effort
in which it’s every man for himself.
THE MOBS
Anticlimactic, carting martyrs off
after the bloodbath, former butterflies
I immortalized, flattered also,
when painting was king and I court photographer,
a mere mortal – there’s no other kind
inducted into your re-education camp.
I’m usually for a little of both,
given a choice between two blunders.
Like your fetuses, I can’t behave.
Their excuse: they aren’t fully sentient,
with legal rights of the lab’s Kalashnikovs,
funny in part-time civilian hands,
rawish recruits consulting lawyers
wise, wise to the ways of the world.
And repetition dulls the senses.
Progress, our kids demand – sadly, the art
of slavish imitation they’re against
shares my patron saint, his oath (top secret)
the devil’s eye for an eye, two on a bust
well within an iconoclast’s reach,
this comrade living in a private hell,
till he offers the red-carpet treatment,