by Tareq Hajjaj
.
Crooked Paradise
.
When I try to write you,
my fingers turn to stone
a man alone
yet thick with ghosts
of letters never shown.
When I try to touch you
the sky of language breaks
what a rain!
a thousand trees had fallen again.
.
Behind my cloak drunk on longing
drowned in pleas
how did this sorrowful god
root himself at your knees?
He ate his own paradise whole,
broke the beaks of whispering doves…
how dare the birds taste your face,
you, forged of sunlight, sliver, and grace?
.
Laughing Bones
.
The body’s battlefield has blurred
no one remembers which hill
or valley birthed these wars.
The bones emerge laughing
digging themselves up
to do what they never dared
beneath the soil.
.
This flesh was once grass. Here, the kiss of desire took root
Here, he slept. Here, he woke to a spring’s dazzling chime.
Here, he glimpsed the river’s eye.
.
Here, he furnished dreams
and dressed his skin in light.
Here, he fought.
Here, he won.
Here, his legacy became
a tale of all cities.
.
Far down where light is undone
far down in dirt’s sanctum
the seed observes
its only vow:
Abide.
.
A Horse in My Blood
.
A wildflower cracks open
the wall of my grief
and the horse in my veins
stops to graze.
.
One woman’s solitude
spices the cosmos
What a feast!
.
When I write,
my fingers butterfly
each letter a wingbeat.
.
Your hands
a bed
with only one pillow.
.
All this world is mine
and you alone in it
.
A Man with Half a Poem
.
O Sea
my body holds no more secrets,
no seer remains to read
the black dawn pooled in my hands,
just as lost ships
never decipher
your solitude.
.
Here I stand
a man with half a poem:
Salt on the tongue
mud in the mouth.
.
Here I’m
unknown to earth
unknown to sky
Death’s messenger
blinks past
my ghost at your door.
.
In your fog
I was the first star
that read your absence.
.
In your shimmering void
I was the first wave
that bore your torment.
.
I persist
a flaw in the code
too ghost to be gone
too cracked to corrode