Arabic translated to English: a love poem or a poem expressing strong emotion.

Poetry

By Sufiyan Salman | Edited by Bronte Delmonico

I stand before the irreverence of my death, all my living has been split asunder

And my ears don’t hear the blindness of eyes that lips fail to say

Morgues of my sanity lay besieged amidst all this desecration

Ruins of reason; my lovings are lost in lacerations that lilted away

Crimson caterwauls of ambulances, and ghoulish phantoms that pass me by

Make-shift beds of greige cloth that carry the soot and ash of what once was human

The smell of suffocation; dirges of smoke that cry for the weight of their undoing

Wails of dead names echo around, but my mind forsakes all morality

My blindness sees mothers bent over burnt shadows of graves in cribs

Devilish dust moths that dance and defy the epitaphs on fathers’ faces

Bloodied fingernails blackened with residue in the scavenge of oblivions galore

And the nihilistic night birthing a necropolis with its lunar lunacies

But I am still in place, my feet cemented into the tarnished tombs of my children

My hand clutches a paper bag with chocolates; treats for my daughter and her brother

My breaths have resigned their rage and are now reverberations with no remedy

But I am still in place, with no sight, no hearing, no voice, and no living

A man asks me the names of my babies but my memory deceives me

Words vaporize on the skinned skin of my tongue and teeth refuse to testify

I find myself taking steps, one after the other, until I discover the mausoleum of my home

It’s all ashes; it’s all cinders; it’s all calamitous convulsions of my infallible fate

As I look out into the eclipsing voids before me, I remember iridescent images

Penciled numbered indentations on door frames, highlighted hearts etched into walls

Dinner plates adorning midnight musings, multicolored drawings on ringed coffee tables

Polaroids decorating mantelpieces, an existence that has receded to dust within my fingers

And I remember the freckle that constellates the skin underneath my son’s eye

And the wandering little hands that reached for me to fasten together our destinies

And the silhouettes of kisses on windowpanes and raindrops bejeweling eyelashes

And forevers I died for on prayer mats before the devious deities that led me astray

At the hospital they bring me your bodies in two labelled clear plastic bags

Blue ball-point pen lettering that spells out ‘Rajab’ and ‘Ghazal’ on stained yellowish tape

Pink scrunchie knotted in a matted scalp, single ringed finger shriveled in solitude

And all at once, my children are an Andromeda of pacified pieces that sifted away

I sit beside my vilified virtue on the hospital steps now black with the tar of barbarity

Saccharine sin that simplifies the sympathy for all sadistic severity

And as divine bombs beguile the sacred ground around me and the screaming begins

I vow, I pray, I swear, I testify to stand witness to the inevitable decimation of their inhumanity

Kiss all the altars until your lips bruise and bleed pale pus

Call for holy intervention until angels set themselves on fire in your name

Believe and atone your devilry until universes explode with the shame of your doing

But I will kill you, I will kill you, I will kill you, I will kill you, I will kill you, I will kill you.

Muhammad Sufiyan Salman

September 8th, 2024