Ahmed Bakheet glows

In a beautiful piece by Hamdy Reda currently exposed in Art-el-Lewa, Gize, Egypt, one reads in the gorgeous calligraphy crafted by Sameh Ishmaeil (rumours have that the traditional calligraphy schools in Egypt are to get no new student anymore, no more Ishmaeils, is it acceptable?):

Take it easy
It is not here
It is not there

There is an eerie pun there in the Arabic original tells me Monica Udler. It is a sufi poem. It glows. By Ahmed Bakheet.

A plog and the spiders

quickly, type something in this plog
a poetry log needs to be reinvented everyday
even when the computers fail, the world disconects wide and wild
or the web is taken over by immortal spiders

they are beyond any straight line, those spiders,
beyond the straight lines of the Peruvian government
and even the bent lines of the Egyptian government.
they have no deadlines
they're never dead
because this would be a straight line

they make me stratch from scratch

Around Umayad

so there were those colours of Syria haunting me?
predicted, hidden
my guts never at ease in Damascus

around Ard-Al-Lewa in a toktok

It's a small four wheeled car, enough for the maze
in Ard-Al-Lewa, toktok
the sound of Cairo
but then again all the cars play the Noise (beep beep fon fon).
In the neighborhood, car come out any hole
and advertise themselves
streets full of people
smells full of people
there is a gallery in number 19. houses
of Hamdi
Big bottles of colourful cleaning fluids stand out in small parlours
they clean everything with their bright secondary colours.

To a magic carpet (going east)

December in, a year almost out
Me in Hackney Central Library where
there is a wifi connection and a crowded study area
i flirt with discipline.
The crisis reported in the other post in this blog?
Well, I met a person who gives poems for free in the Embankment
they all come in different colours
and the crawl in the floor like a magic carpet
indeed the set up is itself described as a magic carpet
and it is indeed a magic carpet.

It took those moods away - send them westwards
and i'm going east.
Ah, and, my friends, my scaphoid is now allegedly in one piece...

Relatório da Crise

Biblioteca local de Homerton
Novembro, antes da neve
11 horas, passam as horas,
passam desconhecidos na rua,
vivo esta vida porque nao há outra,
este dia sombrio porque nao há outro que passa

minhas colegas de biblioteca, a negra gorda beija a cambojana recatada
elas inspiram
mas os mediadores entre elas e eu
paralisaram
– galopo esta tristeza, nao tenho outro cavalo.
Todas as minhas estruturas derreteram
queria procurar vagalumes