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14th Anniversary Edition, Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Seven Nov-Dec 2023.
Three poems, poems by Ashraf Amer.
1
They consume death in life
If death approaches, hungry
They shout out
The cry of life
Random people
Let each of us go to his project
The gods hunt free birds
And punishing those who break the
International law
And collecting treasury from the house of money
Nights
To the military barracks
And the houses of the rulers
And many of them
Let them go to the
League of Arab States Street
In Summer days
Let the simple people go
To their simplicity…
And the tired
To double fatigue
According to cosmic systems
And the results of the C.I.A.’s research
Let each of us go to his project
Or does not go
But
Do not make the women of a dilapidated country
Lose their enthusiasm for extracting the seed from the ear of wheat!
2
When he watches an emotional scene
On TV
His eyes well up
And he feels the pain of the years
In a near space
Emotional scenes
Takes the soul to a past time
And the continuation of life
Sometimes necessities
Searching in the bombed corridors of memory
(He became in constant need
For those who wake up the sleepers with him)
The end justifies the means!
Who said it?
Why did he object to it?!
Did he have goals?
He seeks
Or was it
Pure play?
And the toys he hid
At the bottom of the wooden cupboard
Did he take them out from under the duvets?
And returned them to his sister later?!
Was it Nahid
Angry with him all the time?!
He is sure of things:
Too many dreams killed time
And postponed the joy of the heart
All friends were
The most beautiful.
And all the women who knew him
Did not pick from his heart
A grain of wheat
No
Not all women
He is sure of things:
Friends are no longer
The most beautiful
And the salt of the homeland
No longer stimulates his children’s appetite!
He is almost
Sure!
3
I called her
And at the utmost
She left me!
She sentenced me
“The Final report”
My mom
The one I love
Woke me up in my sleep
While I am dreaming about her inside the dream
I made her understand that
I did not intentionally neglect her
But
They are the concerns of life!
She gave me a look
That I did not understand
And I did not specify precisely
Did she hear me?
Did she really mean
To wake me up
Or was my passing through the first dream
And the second dream
Came at an inappropriate time
As usual with her
When we were out of dreams?
We met in the final nightmare
She was in a white room overlooking the Nile
And I was
On the way to her
Doctors advised her things
She did the opposite
But
She postponed going to my father
Until she sees me
And it was
The last time
To be late for my appointment with her!
She ate a piece of cooked cheese from my hand
And she drank a sip of water…
And she looked at the walls around her
And Her eyes are fixed
She gave me a look
That I did not understand
I did not specify precisely
Whether she heard me
Did she
Mean actually
To leave me…!
© Ashraf Amer
Ashraf Amer (1985-2023) is an Egyptian poet, writer, and journalist, and the former president of the General Authority for Cultural Palaces. He has published a number of poetry collections, including: “Windows”, “Butterfly Discoveries”, “As if he were Living”, “He is almost Certain”. In 2022, he won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity for his collection “Several Other Verses.