mass GRAVES for the DEAD

They hit the chiah area this afternoon during a funeral procession. I watched the thick black smoke rise from Beirut from my balcony up in the mountains. I finished reading Jean Said Makdisi's "Beirut Fragments" today and realised we are reliving the Israeil agression from 1982. My generation could not miss out - could it? I found myself writing the following...





Mass GRAVES for the DEAD
a requiem inside my head.
I recoil as the planes hover overhead
They covet the sky in stealth as we sleep
Barraging the night ad nauseam.
In oblivious sleep, they think we do not see the blood flow,
we do not feel the sky tear,
or smell that brutal smell of insidious warfare.

My head pounds as I think of what to do
I conjure Brave scenarios of myself inflicting resistance and dread to their immanent crusade
Music drowns out their drill and puts me in a short-lived reverie
of untainted clouds where they would never dwell.
Clouds that loom higher than their flying jets
Spaces that Big Brother can not reach or believe –
What is the deal?
You are watching our every move?
As we awake, eat, moan and sleep?
Mr. Bomb can never see inside my head
Or imagine those places I tread.
My private soliloquy
My bequeathed melody
My own night- tune
My din.

I want them Back. I want that dark comfort again. I want to see Beirut again.
I awake every morning with eyes unslept,
With shadow-less dreams half-broken; half dreamt.
Living in a half bemoans my days.
It offends the hours and its movement.
As if it were ripped from me like the rug I was standing on.
and now everything is floating –
uncertain where to land –
in death beds? or in flower-steads?
Or in that strange place we call “home.”
In our creation,
the city is my art and somebody has to come to sell it,
or worse yet, to kill it.