Idris El Asha

Idris El Asha Poems

A musician
At a military check point
Is composing a song
For a child somewhere:
...

Poetry should be said by a confessor
On his way to be a professor
Unapproved by the priest
Banned by the government
...

Something came between you and me
And I had to sail far from the lee
Toward a high and mad sea…
...

Pray god, for your enemy not to be a coward.

Soldiers of the world …. Desert.
...

Sorrow;
Is a mill
Going round and round
With a lot of blood.
...

To Buizize, whom if you don't know, burned himself in protest against the
Tunisian government, and started revolutions in the Arab World, which still in the making, even tried in China.

The fire in your heart
...

Lapped out by the sea
no lap to protect you.
Lying on the sand of the shore.
Alone.
...

In memory of my niece whose laughter was never to cease

And I say we are alike, light-headed, because we've taken to laughter.
...

A scream on a pons
From Norway to the whole world
Inside a skull
Full of meat
...

12.

I lapped all the laps
in one lap
to the nine
all at once
...

In memory of my younger brother, Basset Elasha, one of our K.I.A.

lads nipped in bloom.
Who should've gone in a joyride
...

Poetry should be said by a confessor
On his way to be a professor
Unapproved by the priest
Banned by the government
...

Love and life begin and end with the same letter

From now on
At every nightfall
...

16.

To Sandra Dodd; ask for more poetry

You can't define life
As left or right
...

18.

Honey! ...You were the first
And I was washed with thirst

I live under the sway of the oil well
...

19.

Truth makes cuckolds of us all
It's unbelievable.
It’s like finding a man with your
Faithful wife …in your own bed.
...

Inside my mind
Deep
Like a wish.
...

Idris El Asha Biography

As a biography this poem I once wrote may well do: In Praise Of Reading An Advertisement, Autobiography & Biography of Reading of Sorts Action is the consumption of life. thought is the ordering of life. And thought leads to action. ******************************************** I got sick A schizophrenic With plenty of time And no work. Monotony and boredom led me to the college library in my little town, which I seldom visited when I was studying there when I was young and enjoying life in a wrong way, but boredom made me frequent it. So, thanks to boredom To lead me to action I was looking for I forced myself to sweat, going and coming to that library I frequented it And I read: I read about libraries been burnt, and books thrown into the river till the water turned the color of ink, and about many who had been persecuted for having written. I read Took a peek at the beginning of time, with a big bang in my head Hunted an picked: Here something of the meditating Yogi There a little chat with the conversationalist whose pupil taught to differ. Got into Troy by a ticket from Homer Cried with Oedipus and sailed with Sinbad to the high seas My imagination shuddered at the hell of Dante I ate the forbidden fruit in a lost paradise Sometimes spent sometime in the Globe accompanied by the Dane Under the portrait of Mona Liza, I with Freud tried to fathom its creator. In my Jallabia and on a praying rug that were a gift from Makah from my late uncle who memorized the Quran I found in Sartor Resartus 'My inarticulate cries and sobbing like a dumb creature, which in the ear of heaven are prayers.' Then I smelled some flowers of evil. I stayed with the maudit a season in hell Then wondered at the Illuminations Peacefully I saw people acting war and peace In Petersburg with Dostoyevsky I delved into the heart of a young man so dark that it shone Heart of darkness. Then it happened that I visited the waste land in the west from the west bank listening to Isadole and Trestian, and saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness leaving an Ariel behind. Mice And Men got a hold on the back of my mind like the hole the shot made in the back of Lenny's head. The old man went so far into the sea inside me while the sun also shining saying farewell to arms, thinking to me the bells toll. I lost my memory in one hundred years of solitude, forgetting to write to the colonel, and my love in the time of cholera foretelling my death. In Tropic of Cancer I nearly smashed my head on the wall screaming, 'I'll confess…I'll confess'. Afterwards, with much cudgeling of my brains and a little deciphering, I could glean from Kant what seemed the big picture, until the publication of 'Conversation With God'. ***** ***** Now to all the tribe of storytellers and the clan of poets in my country, who wrote what I'd like to write but couldn't. To my big brother and his friends who were writing and panting on broken pavements, who never been read but by a few elite of readers while the ignorant troglodytes never noticed them, till the corrupt government bribed them with pork barrels, and they had to accept to get far from the maddening crowd. To them I express respect. To that prolific giant, Elkoni. I read what I could read. Who is known here to some because he conquered the western world with a pen and not a gun. And to that great writer and thinker, Elneihom, whose books were banned in Lebanon, one of the most liberal countries in the Arab World, known here for its beautiful women. And here thanks to Bill Gates, I've got a window on my expatriate, Khalid Muttawa, whom I envy because he carpe diem before me and published in America, which is my dream. I express my admiration, who showed me that death may come riding the coattails of a breeze. A breeze that brought me to believe what Yeats believed 'In the practices and philosophy of what we have to agree to call magic…in the vision of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe in three doctrines, which have, as I think, been handed down from early times, and been the foundation of nearly all magical practices. These doctrines are: 1) That the borders of the mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy. 2) That the borders of our memories are a part of one great memory, the memory of nature itself. 3) That this great memory can be evoked by symbols…' ** ** ** At last now, when I could, I take a walk in the beach with Ulysses on the beach. Waves Waves Waves Words Words Words A world of words. And now, I'm tiresomely reading. I walk to that library, and talk to Asma, it's beautiful female attendant. I walk and talk. To write and read in blood without shedding blood. And then to make up for the time lost in hospitals in libraries. So, thanks to that library That little town in which I got bigger. Thanks to Asma Thanks to the first hand that wrote And the eyes that deciphered That appealed to my freedom, and accepted my freedom. Thanks for the print Words, words, words And it was there The action I looked for was there To say: 'I didn't waste my life in vain' And to know: 'The word is a deed' And here I am. Waiting with Becket, who made me wonder that Lucky could be me. Reading, Waiting for Godot, an anticlimax for all time. One hundred years of solitude Waiting for Godot… Estragon: (gestures toward the universe) .This one is enough for you? (silence) it's not nice of you, Didi. Whom I to tell My private nightmares to if I can't tell them to you? Vladimir: Let them remain private. You knew I can't bear it. Estragon: (coldly) .There are times when I wonder if it wouldn't Be better for us to part. Vladimir: You wouldn't go far. Estragon: That would be too bad, really too bad? (pause.) Wouldn't it Didi, really too bad? (pause) When you Think of the beauty of the way.(pause.) And the Goodness of the wayfarers.(pause. Wheedling.) Wouldn't it Didi? ** ** ** Last but not least, please read me with, Fires, of Raymond Carver, which a lovely ignorant bitch borrowed from me and never returned, and lost forever, which I would've memorized if I ever got it again. Read some of the poems I translated into Arabic and published with it; ا س ك ر )

The Best Poem Of Idris El Asha

An Explosion And A Song

A musician
At a military check point
Is composing a song
For a child somewhere:

'A farm woman works on the soil
Mixing vinegar and olive oil
Have many hens on a row
Wakes at every dawn flick
On the sound of a cockcrow'

A fighter jet on the other side
Drops a bomb.

The child can hear no more
The woman works no more
And no more sound of a cockcrow.

On another part of the world
A TV viewer
Switches on a news channel
And sees an explosion.
He changes to a music channel
Hears a song
Relieving the explosion in his head.








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