Poetry

By

Raed Anis Al-Jishi

BEIRUT NIGHTS

I am gambling

in Beirut nights.

I need two numbers.

to melt together.

Never asked any die

about its color,

Where he was made,

and its birthday

In gambling

some gambling is

the red line of revolutions,

a dot of enlightenment,

and a calendar of life.

IMAM HUSSAIN

Like a stem cell,

the infant universe

grows inside you

like a martyr star.

You will get killed,

but your lights

will live forever.

And like a sumer cup,

you will die thirsty

while the rivers of life

will always rise

from your hand.

AN INFANT LIGHT

My pulses’ steps became tears,

The tears tore my body apart.

Oh Prometheus don’t sneak through heaven gates,

You can steal fire from my heart

With my passion, I sewed my skin

To all The butterflies I made a nest

The valley of Al-Tuf is right here

Where God called Moses, is on my chest

Seventy commandments of love I wrote

Seventy martyrs by love I held

And in Ashura as they fell down,

Seventy times my soul was killed.

I didn’t mind as a chosen infant,

When I jumped from the Quran’s hand.

Hugging an arrow defending Husain,

drawing my sacred painting on my sand.

Like the Messiah, my blood rose up,

Like the Messiah, they thought I would die.

But now they know,

That the truth is born and death does lie

Enemies can kill a star at night.

But they will vanish,

By a thought of light.

Raed Anis Al-Jishi

Raed Anis Al-Jishi a feminist and human rights poet was born and still lives in Qateef, Saudi Arabia, a city that breathes poetry, where he regularly attends poetry readings as a member of ‘Tmaem adbia’.  He has a novel, ‘Bleeding Gull: Look, Feel, Fly‘, eight books of Arabic poems, and ‘Genèse de la mémoire passionnée’ a book about the Arab Spring published.