Walt Whitman House Newyork International Festival of Poetry
I am a Grammarian's Error
My blood I give not
as continuous charity;
Nor as speechless am I as the Sphinx –
though he might be as discrete,
having both witnessed so much.
I have never been carnivorous;
my ten fingers have never been bullets;
my mouth is not a grave for outsiders,
when they take an overdose of hope.
I have no windows, or gateways.
When I have any, they're blind.
I carry above my head two skies,
and give my face –
no black aspects thereon –
to the walls.
The river with its fish rises for me
in the morning, and I step therein
every time the sheikh in me
needs water.
I am the most speechless
of all people,
and the craziest, too.
In other words, when I rise up
I become a madness machine.
My years have not slipped
through my fingers;
in fact, they have been scratched
by my nails,
and brought back
to year Zero.
I have never won a game –
as if I were born to lose.
I went into the maze, though -
could not escape the game.
My beloved never made
a spell for me,
so that I could get
into the song
and walk into the dream.
I have given everything,
has taken nothing,
not even a shadow's names
Like a bronze deity,
rusting in the wilderness
I have sinned.
The passers-by could not forgive
my changing colors,
or the pallor of complexion
caused by their own fingerprints.
No dots or marks were left there
on my face.
A footless spider
looking for sticks to walk with
on a naked face.
The book is filled up so with tears
and the words that only I can see.
I am a grammarian's error
a drawing so unique
of a bird drunk and elated.
.
I am Ahmad Al-Shahawy,
the one who's rearranged eternity
so that calamities of people
who weave spiders
may become useless.
I have no eye in the mirrors,
for no walls are there
in the empty space.
Infinities have no gorgeous bodies,
as if a devil is there hiding in texts
filling the inkpot with bad blood,
quoting things I have never said:
The door is closed,
no exit to the left,
where I left my heart
walking alone all night,
without a compass
or a guide.
San Jose, Costa Rica
November 10, 2014
