REFLECTION

Suddenly,  her face in glass,
an old moon rising,
tide tired.
Her eyes, like a child that cannot find her. 





























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

SNOW IN CAIRO

All that is ugly shivers, unprepared for beauty.
Rubbish mounds,  frozen cats, broken chairs 
swell to soft round hips, building sites pose in lace,

pyramids shine, ghostly. Minarets plume the sky
The city is a stranger.
  

People  huddle around  televisions, 
watch snow  flakes herd across the screen.
People hang from windows, drink snow like milk.
It’s unbelievable, they say. A miracle.
They drive  to see the snow, parking where
the city expires in frosted breath,

stand on ledges of forgotten space,
pale mutations of themselves, still and silent,
marvelling  at cold ash drifting - a soft caul
of  something newborn, nameless, voiceless,
a forgotten god, 
 
until, the children run, galaxies riding their backs, 
shoes biting ice, waving  palms
wreathed in crystal, tasting sky - expecting sugar.
The curtain thickens, snowballs fly,
a  snowman stares, stone eyed
at footprints gouging, the caul splitting.
A terrible silence is born.
 

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

IN El FOUAD STREET

Is it you I pass 
in  a cafe in  El Fouad street,
raising a  cup to your lips?
An act of practised charm
assuming beauty, posed 
at a chipped table,
a ghost wearing
whatever memory has 
dragged from its wardrobe.
We are too long apart now, 
for anything to matter,
yet, your eyes looked 
as they always did when 
my back was turned, spiteful -
talons settling on my shoulder.











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

GRAFFITI

Come when the street is silent

and there is no witness.

Park your vans.

Raise your ladders.

Bring out the cans

of  white paint.

Blast your blizzard

over me. That’s right.

Obliterate my wings.

My black-brush words.

My martyrdom. That’s right.

You did it before

with bullets and guns.

My mother takes a knife.

Scratches at my burial.

Turns my shroud to dust

until an eye emerges,

 radiant, a skylight in the wall.

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

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. 

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

COSTA CAIRO

Couples oblivious

Of excessive light

Stir each other’s eyes

With forbidden spoons.

A young man,

Spreads sugar,

Mines diamonds,

Fingers dancing over

An aching sweetness.

Beside him, the eloquence
of an empty chair.

Girls raise their

Mobile phones to snap

 Each other’s laughter.

 Later, cast out

 By outworn love

And life’s drab habit

They’ll recall

The froth of a cappuccino.

In a corner,  a woman

Cradles  a bag of bananas,

Faces the window.

Stares into Cairo’s

Hoarse twilight

Her Americano forgotten,

A lipstick stain

Sealing the rim.

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