Desert Lights Parting

"Jekyll"

You sit cross-legged on the sands
while your fingers run gently
across the strings
of your semsemiya
planted firmly on your lap
as if it’s your precocious upspring;
you play lyrical love tunes
and tender moaning songs
extolling the desert
and your chant touches my ears
with mesmeric fingers.

When arid images come to you,
you fill them with fantasies
and your enraptured fans go into trance
listening to single notes,
minor scales, and monochromatic tones
of your lyrics
written on gazelle skins.

Hearing your music
and your sorrows dripping,
camels have come to a halt,
maidens in Bedouin tents
have stopped their weaving
and even Orpheus has silenced his harp.

Now, only you can charm the moon
to come out at night
and the sun to shine even brighter,
so love can be nourished.


"Hyde"

What is this? Why did you change so abruptly?
When did you exchange
your instrument of sweet music
with horror and dread?
Since when domination
of naked corpses in unmarked graves became
a metaphor for love?

See...
your departure from compassion
makes the moon
slip behind clouds and stars shiver with fear.

Still,
You keep serving us bad news
on a plate of rockets and bombs
like spices that burn, demolish, and destroy
so you can become the martyr
of a nightmarish fantasy.

Do you think
you can keep trembling with ecstasy
in dark nights
at the sight of blood and tears,
forever?
What made you forget about
gentle desires,
adoration,
and true worship
so beautiful at dawn?

Why, why,
you’ve become
an addict of sudden strikes?

You don’t answer
and you don’t look at me
but you gaze upon your carpet,
counting beads.
Yet, beads can’t soothe sorrows
and carpets don’t return gazes.

Come back from rage,
come back from pain,
come back from your swelling tumors,
so your beloved desert doesn’t curse you, too.
Come again to peace,
to listen to songbirds at night
and feel closer to life,
for your own good.