Immortality with a Kiss on the Neck
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In the beginning, I say, “I love you” I In the beginning, I say I love you, and I hate my soul, hiding in the shadows like a child feeling guilty, my soul that have implicated me in love, in the fist of silk and caltrops. My soul that cries shamelessly before a cold-blooded emotion waving its stick. I love you, and I enthusiastically watch the universal theatre, I do not sympathize with the villains, unlike you after each Arabic movie. The villains that hate the protagonists, and plot conspiracies in the middle of the story. What do I do now with all that evil around us? I must be good at hating in order to embody the content of the dramatic complication. It does not suit the likes of me to talk about tolerance, when they are surrounded by disappointment. II I fail to deeply hate those with secondary and primary roles, and to pay attention when the camera moves (Pan Left) Because the director usually gives orders to show the heart-side so that the spectator knows how much time is left before I fall like a loser. Then I will die in a close-up scene My face will fill the screen Looking at the depth of the frame, and muttering a single word. People will guess my last words And curse open-endings It is pointless for you to not know that you are my last words It is pointless for you to be far away When the director claps for the final scene But I will love you even after the movie ends I will love you freely from the requirements of the scenario There in death, away from scenes And away from the roles that we master for nothing. You Come with A Cruelty that I Do Not Deserve I You come with all the deaths that I fear I jump for your whole life Going down the panic of the air I search your wings besides a pavement for my flying corpse You bring the ants crawling on my chest Crying, I watch your creatures Raising their young up to my body Building their houses in the diligence of invaders And secretly talking about what has to be demolished Beneath this deep brownness II You come with scoundrel friends You throw your last perfection To their hybrid rats Not thinking about your maternity And our children that are yet to be born You come with my grandfather, father and sister Those whose prayers were let down Just before the heavens You incite a rural species From dust to dust To shut their doors in my face So that I would go up to you alone To the fire that is you Where you laugh over there With semi-kindness on your back III Early on, I die on your hands I lose all the endings That I secretly prepared for myself All that I planned for Is no longer possible: - Suicide with expired pills In front of the ballet dancer’s painting - Drowning under the sight of naked wives Around the summer pool While they exchange the benefits of quick affairs As a secret stimulant to put up with husbands - Testing the slowness of death by narcotics And watching the delirium that wastes the family tree Before I touch eternity - Sleeping with the desire of not having another morning For it did not bring you to crave “Nescafe” - Falling from a balcony With a view on expatriate single ladies That wash their underwear Three times a week - Sudden heart attack Where there is not time to regret the will IV I am the one-hour man The pleasing of hearts in sixty minutes The margin where you try the desires While you look for a light brownness Outside the house I am the kind man That should have come one day Naïve enough Carrying to you my mother’s drawers Of bread, butter oil, and bracelets Believing the Gypsies’ prophecy When they said: Your soul is on a journey So, cross for it two continents And take it with the power of the delayed V I am your retaliation from all the men Who had punished you with small promises That does not befit half of your soul Kill me then Reclaim your childhood From the lamblike yammering of wolves And smile in retrospect VI I love you as you are, a vampire Poets follow you with their necks As you choose the lucky ones Three times a day And with the venomous kiss That summarizes your talents They realize the nature of their destinies And the game that drained their blood On the ground And for a certain wisdom Sacrifices for love come successively And the beginning repeats tirelessly VII Tell me, what will history say about us? The history will say about us: Two losers who failed in the first line of their book They died with two kisses on the neck Before they dance to the madness of “Zorba” And taste the blessings that I hid for them Behind my back Two losers who did not repeatedly scream in pleasure Behind sound-proof glass They left life without trying The bed honey while blindfolded And discover what the sight limits In the imagination of the senses VIII History could have not repeated itself And made amends for its emotional crimes In the “Mother Books” It was possible for it, with more than two kisses And a music video Maybe with some triviality And lots and lots of classicalism in love, To remove its dress and white beard And write: Now I am born again IX Early on, you come with a cruelty that I do not deserve Your scorpions lick my ear slowly And the shiver is deep to the point of helplessness While you happily reproduce Two steps away You mock the endings of poets And the myths in their long fingers And with one kiss on their necks They die
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About the Book
This book of poetry presents deep questions about the meaning of existence vs. nothingness, love vs. loss, and waiting vs. human uncertainty and confusion. It is a different book, it can be said that this is the poetic Noah’s Ark, constructed by the poet with his soul, heart and questions in the face of the flood of human experiences and pains. In these poetic selections, the poet cannot nullify the power of death, neither physically nor spiritually, but he tries to understand what it means for a man to face, death, losses and disappointment, since his birth. He tries to understand the game of fate and its great deception. It is a book for souls haunted by existential confusion anywhere. Nothingness is fully embodied in these poems, which not only provides readers with the pleasure of cursory reading, but also takes them to their truth–human beings, born to ask about the light that never comes.
About the Author
Kamal Abdulhamid is an Egyptian poet, works as a journalist, and lives in Dubai, UAE for 19 years. He is one of the renowned modernistic poets in Egypt and the Arab world since the 1980s. He has published five books of poetry, both in Cairo and Beirut, through the largest Arab publishing houses. His poetic experience has a distinctive character, and in all his poems, the woman has a strong role, either as a source of joy, or as a reason for regret in the face of the mystery and fluctuations of the unforeseen.