Poetry by Uppsala City’s new guest writer Mamoun Zaidy
of ICORN network. Poet, short story writer, novelist,
translator and book cover designer from Libya.
He is also a veterinary doctor. He has authored nearly
thirty books on diverse literary genre. Here we are
presenting some of his poems in English version.
Poems
2018-2020
The days of blood oranges
Though, the rusty taste
common to blood,
the profuse sweating and a trembling heart,
sultry days long passed now,
I remember when I planted a seed,
to be a blood orange tree.
I loved the scent of that citrus foliage,
the shiny golden rind,
smells like a sunny morning
in Roman Sicily,
when it matures.
I buried the seed in earth,
watered it carefully,
then forget about it.
--------
Some train of blazing flesh
came across my sight.
a smite of a tantalizing
feminine aroma.
a myth of immortal youth,
I was tethered to chase.
those vivid organs,
colored with hope and desire,
chained to the red taste
of a sidelong glance.
--------
I was not a farmer,
I will never be.
keen and humble,
like a cool breeze,
in a balmy March afternoon.
hail the gladding blades,
of the bounteous harvest.
so faithful to the prophecy of the grape,
the ancient parlance of rain,
glimmering in every gleaming stone.
--------
blood was red,
built in burning red
not in the green
sap of a gluttonous wisdom and acute pain.
it could be wine,
or liquid fire ,
running aimlessly.
as an anathema.
with nothing to do
but to devour
more blood oranges.
the fleshy form
of boundedness.
--------
that seed I remembered now
could it have been turned to ash?
eaten by earthworms?
or consumed by decay.
or would it have managed to grow,
verdant and mature.
pompous with pale green
curled leaves.
opted for senescent odors.
who could know?
birds?
Roving the untouched skies
above us.
or the voracious worm of the lethe
underneath every memory?
--------
what's about..
the color of my blood?
Is it still frightening red?
treading the gory steps
of this grievous life ,
muting Cerberus barking
by doubtful theories and dissonant music,
of every panic day
Is it as claret in taste and color?
as that red wine from Bordeaux?
but with fearsome reputation?.
--------
Citrus trees, fragrant patrons,
Of winter,
guarded by Hesperides,
daughters of Night and Ocean.
with a 100-headed serpent,
named Ladon.
Lemons, mandarins and blood oranges
meet together in a basket
in the gourmet kitchen ,
cuddling each other.
the botanical intimacy not far from this
sensual fruits.
once offered as a wedding gift
to Goddess Hera.
wife of Zeus
the juice of blood oranges .
Though, the rusty taste
common to blood,
the profuse sweating and a trembling heart,
sultry days long passed now,
I remember when I planted a seed,
to be a blood orange tree.
I loved the scent of that citrus foliage,
the shiny golden rind,
smells like a sunny morning
in Roman Sicily,
when it matures.
I buried the seed in earth,
watered it carefully,
then forget about it.
--------
Some train of blazing flesh
came across my sight.
a smite of a tantalizing
feminine aroma.
a myth of immortal youth,
I was tethered to chase.
those vivid organs,
colored with hope and desire,
chained to the red taste
of a sidelong glance.
--------
I was not a farmer,
I will never be.
keen and humble,
like a cool breeze,
in a balmy March afternoon.
hail the gladding blades,
of the bounteous harvest.
so faithful to the prophecy of the grape,
the ancient parlance of rain,
glimmering in every gleaming stone.
--------
blood was red,
built in burning red
not in the green
sap of a gluttonous wisdom and acute pain.
it could be wine,
or liquid fire ,
running aimlessly.
as an anathema.
with nothing to do
but to devour
more blood oranges.
the fleshy form
of boundedness.
--------
that seed I remembered now
could it have been turned to ash?
eaten by earthworms?
or consumed by decay.
or would it have managed to grow,
verdant and mature.
pompous with pale green
curled leaves.
opted for senescent odors.
who could know?
birds?
Roving the untouched skies
above us.
or the voracious worm of the lethe
underneath every memory?
--------
what's about..
the color of my blood?
Is it still frightening red?
treading the gory steps
of this grievous life ,
muting Cerberus barking
by doubtful theories and dissonant music,
of every panic day
Is it as claret in taste and color?
as that red wine from Bordeaux?
but with fearsome reputation?.
--------
Citrus trees, fragrant patrons,
Of winter,
guarded by Hesperides,
daughters of Night and Ocean.
with a 100-headed serpent,
named Ladon.
Lemons, mandarins and blood oranges
meet together in a basket
in the gourmet kitchen ,
cuddling each other.
the botanical intimacy not far from this
sensual fruits.
once offered as a wedding gift
to Goddess Hera.
wife of Zeus
the juice of blood oranges .
Darkness
It's dark, my friend,
pitch black outside
.. can't see my fingertips..
Dimensions lost relation with others.
Indescribable, they became.
What has happened?
What gouged out this darkness?
What was these loud Shrieks?
What are these drums
That resembled the Tiko
of that feudal times?
Do we make a long pursuit
To dance on a drummed up war?
this Stygian darkness
as if stuffed into a blood soaked coelom
of an extinct creature
warm and visceral .
a suffocation with
bag of wet flesh
what can you see?
in the murk of this caliginous land
it feels like in a cage,
a long somber night.
Tartarean, no doubt.
Ain't no glimmer of hope?
Lands of parasomnia
I get up and start the day.
This is how I convince myself when I see my organs moving.
I eat breakfast, my hands holding a cup of coffee,
Relax a little, as I am terrified at the idea of starting
This (somnambulism) that we call ..(Our life)
In the narrow street that the government
Hardly took the trouble of paving it.
Hastily and without sufficient knowledge,
The sounds of cars and reckless drivers buzzing.
No one cares about anything or sees those around him.
Some trees overlook the owners' holdings
Sad, covered in dust and pests of neglect.
As sleepwalking as the government engineers were when they paved the road,
Each half-awake driver was rushing to what he thought was his destination.
Debris, slag and paper waste
Covers the edges of the road
that these people roam in their metallic shells.
The uproar rises and the day ends,
Nobody sees flour.
Muddled life,
A Nightmare such as caused by a diaspora Curse,
has been hovering over us for centuries.
Waiting for the crow to turn gray,
Or the tar becomes “like milk.”
To get our point.
We keep sensing this huge elephant like the blind Indians
and disagreeing in its description.
Someone stuffs his pipe and says, "Wait."
"It's the ideology"
Another responds by leveling his handsome hat:
"No. It's the mythology,"
No one really cares what they say
Unless he accidentally bumps into it.
and extended his hand to feel what words he could reach
Hastening to pronounce its judgments:
Expatriates. Infidels. People who fill their time with nonsense
miscreants. Conspirators...agents...rogues...
the Dirty ground becomes loose underfoot.
The sticky liquid offensive words,
replete with saliva and curses
covers its face. till it suffocates, blackens and dies.
By stepping above it, we lose the resonance of our existence,
The bell that cuts the somnambulism and overthrows sleep.
We continue to falter and chatter and scatter in every direction,
Grasping the first parts of things, feeling them
Throwing nicknames and unequivocal judgments.
From the womb of that suffocating earth,
We continue to breed and multiply.
And having more sleepwalkers
- lunatics actually-
With their characteristic medical symptoms:
Memory loss and difficulty in concentration,
Difficulty following a simple conversation or finding the right words,
Confusion of time and place,
And the shocking changes in mood.
The Augur
1
I've been born and raised in despotism.
nothing but my mother's prayers
and the obduracy,what kept away
premature death that runs rampant around us.
adamant and Libyan,
always faltering but save,
I became a clairvoyant.
a tyranny teller of some kind,
who could foresee tyranny in anything.
for instance, in coffee, I see
the absolutism of caffeine.
In poetry,
the word "Otiose" is autocratic.
and in love,
time is the sole vanquisher
2
So, what if
roses are nothing but a repudiated kisses,
the more radiant and splendid,
the more eager they were.
what if ..
leaves are eyewitnesses
verdant but silent.
and thorns symbolize the disincentive.
what if
rain were unanswered prayers
disguised and displaced.
what if
springs that run in the north
were tears shed in secret ,
of suffering that heads south.
what if the winds that blew
in gloom were nothing
but the moans of heartache .
Terra firma
Once upon a time
the terra firma sibyl,
That colorful gorgeous forest,
Opened her arms to hug me
in some sense.
Her green hair still wet after a dawn bath,
Her foliaceous robe stretched all around her
floral chypres suddenly overwhelmed me.
So puissant, so plenteous
I thought she whispered in my ear:
"We were meant to be strong and hold up until we perish."
I raised my head in question.
redolent of woody scents
that flooded my nose again,
She moved her arm that witnessed hundreds of ages
and pointed to the adjacent field saying:
"Look at those healthy spikes."
I looked
They were uplifting toward the sky
singing in a course
the whiffs of the breeze.
In that field adjacent to the forest
ears of wheat were bathing in the sun and wind
awaiting for the fertile harvest,
invigorate and liberal.
I passed my hand over
As if on strings in the stupendous lyre of life,
When played ,
I smelled the fresh bread
of Sumer and Babylon,
the taste of my woman lips,
the warm almsgiving hands of my mother,
the benefactress.
such plethora.
I felt like I had it all
since the beginning of life.
Stormed I continued on my way,
The susurrations of spikes,
the aroma of earth and that thrilling breeze
coalesced.
On the "other" side, I turned to see
Half covered in the bushy grass,
blanked out in that eonian place,
a Rusty tin board laying near the fence.
blown away by some wind,
I bent down and lift it.
Underneath I saw some tiny unfortunate seeds,
Making yellow and white threads,
Stuporose, Repressed to reach light,
But strive to stretch out their fragile bodies
to overcome the siege.
and vacate.
Or die trying.
Reflections on ends
both ends
of the night are luminous.
both ends
of the day are gloomy.
there is no way to flee.
that should be true
If wise or sober.
that can only be true,
pretending philosophy
of these earthy cerebrations,
the culmination of hope and peace.
So, let's sing or dance
lets tell some sweet lies
lets mourn and weep
magnify our deepest fears
and secrets to be well-hidden.
as life and death
both fall out
in the same place.
-Farewell old times
Do we still remember?
the recalcitrant skies,
raining only after
the thunderous bangs
rumbling
the exploding prayers,
someone was eagerly sending.
from the damp void
of a cave
the toothed round rocks are
cogs turning
in the mind of the anchorite.
from a stray boat
in overwhelming
surging waters.
so plangent.
Or maybe the olden scene of
indigence :
a hungry poor farmer
In arid soils
cursing everything while
his beloved child's heart
pulsing those abstruse bangs
in fear.
that glorious sky
the pantheon of gods
now a terrifying theater
of hypersonic winged crafts.
I admit it is dethroned.
Do we still remember?
the paper when was white,
servile, and seducing.
the pens of the stray,
their fatal whirls
gravid with
light and pain.
the palms imputed
out of the context.
now what?
cuffs of apps
glass and pixels
ash and dust.
do we still remember?
the embellished doorknobs,
the shiny color of the chairs,
in the guest room.
the fatty smells
of the carpets,
the obsolete cold look,
of that static black and white
portraits of fathers
and grandfathers,
perished a long time ago,
but still dominant.
in the room.
you quiver.
that stagnant plastic air
emanates and prowl
to wipe you out.
do we remember
how they stole the sun?
do we think about it?
I am still wrathful.
how this could happen
In front of our nose.
but that was inevitable
when I think about it.
we were in the dark
in a long despotic umbra,
and that was preordained.
may we had forgotten
its smile, its helical dimples
the warmth of its radiating colors,
the engrossing shades
it makes with things,
the afternoons tranquility.
may we lost quietism
so it was easy to be convinced
with the alteration.
and we accepted the "double".
that's abusive.
we were madly craving
we were lounging
but blind to heed the warning of
infringement.
So, avoid this retribution.
this fake turbid coziness,
made up of crushed skulls
and furious Gods.
Please… libertines,
cease and desist this
silent acquiescence,
and let us reveal
the real sun inside us.
Daily routine
In the morning, I do menial tasks.
I milk greedy cows after I flatter them with infested crops...
Then sell the milk to any urgent midwife
Or exchange it for tobacco for my old pipe.
I do not useful for anything
And very old like the wind..
I hang out with miscreants and pirates...
In the evening, I collect the hedgehogs of my memory
and tell her new failed stories
Until they sleeps with eyes open like the dead..
Then I hear the creeping of their laughing nightmares approaching.
I Leave them and watch my body get torn apart in intimate insomnia..
my life is lame
Crazy idea plundered her leg and ran away.
Doctors said I won't die soon
But I always watch out for strange sands
roam carefully on my street, and around my house.
Putting a veil so that you don't see their features.
to sleep,
I always have to run through water traps and gardens of needles and screams
chasing adorable strange women
fading away quietly and quickly,
I stumble and then fall asleep.