Sunday 24 November 2013

MOHAMED MAHMOUD STREET
















She walks across the ticket hall
draped in black, clutching a framed photograph
Llke a shield.

The son who  never came home
smiles at strangers as if from a window
shut in her heart.

She ascends to the light,
bearing her mausoleum of silence,
walks to where the mourners stand.

There’s a place somewhere near the kerb
where he stood - guns with
the small dark mouths of birds, aiming.

Every day she sees the hand that held the gun,
severed and alone
smaller than her son’s, perhaps

Buttoning a shirt, turning a lock,
steering a wheel, lifting a cup,
holding a hand, waving.

She imagines fingers unhinging,
selecting a spoon.
The injustice of stirring tea. 




Thursday 7 November 2013

EID AL ADHA, CAIRO 2013





































Below me, the sheep fits the balcony like a shoe in a box,
He strains on rope, horns uncoiling, head lowered.
I hear him all night, bleating - a baby in a crib.
He knows these are the blood days.
I dream I set  him free, watch him float from the sixth floor, 
hover over the city. He  turns and turns in the scum of air,
serenades the fat belly of the moon,
his hooves click like knitting needles. 

In the morning, I hear the lift slam shut, its metal slide
the sound of  steel on whetstone.  His   dainty legs
clatter over marble  like dancing girls,
children lose  hands in his wool, 
flies gather like prophets
He is mechanical now,
head high, haunches shifting like a rowed  boat,
each step as if rehearsed, a king whose
noose is a slipped crown. Eye on the gibbet.

This is the last I see of him:
led past soldiers and barbed wire,
turning the corner, dignity mocking slaughter,
his silence a call to prayers. 



  




More of my poetry can be read on http://www.odyssey.com, http://www.chanticleer-press.com/, http://www.vivimusmag.com/poetry.html