Maged Zaher
*
Not with strength
I reached here alone
With sweat
A step before suicide
I am tired
And I don't know what God wants
Why the days of suffering
And the days of joy
I bought Checkov books yesterday
And Pessoa
And Cioran
And one thousand and one nights
I am awaiting
A better translation of Dostoevsky
I am here
And I want to understand love
I will not read the books
I will look at the mirror briefly
And I will breathe
And I won't understand
*
Each is algorithmed
I am not sure about technology
I am not sure about nature either
Lots of young men watching soccer in the coffeeshop
Today is my birthday
I came close to death twice
It was a bad sleep
I had a good chocolate cake
Discussed oppression
And bought books
I decided to continue on living
*
The lighter is empty
I am here
Even the birds don't escape capitalism
*
I belong to my illness
And the few books scattered in my unkempt apartment
Reading them is a thought
Not a reality
And so goes my life
A distance between what others told me matters
And my own being
Where it is mostly about taking a break
From the pursuit of happiness
*
The game starts with a coin toss
Everything that happens, happens, and immediately turns into memory
Even pleasure
The one who rolls her own cigarettes
Smoked normal cigarettes today
She is still beautiful
I wake up everyday and look for language
All is fractured
I look also for water
To see if it can transforms the death within
Into existence
*
God is a bet
Let the mistakes cover us
I am at a distance from hope
One day I was a half-ass mathematician
I was better than my teachers
It doesn't matter
Fear and longing
The world points
You don't matter
I bet on you
In a half-ass matter
*
Looking for words
As an alibi
I jump
Trying to survive
Not knowing
What is the point
The clock
Is malfunctioning
And I can't accept
What goes within
*
Inside me a fear of the world
Nop, a fear that has nothing to do with the world
A fear that is all mine
A fear that is a gift of God
Not just fear of other humans
But an absolute fear that is engrained within my body
I wake up hoping for love
I wake up angry at lovers
I have no tears to back me up
At times death seems like a better choice
I never had the courage to prepare the pills
I am not alive though
To go for death
*
Desire is repetitive it is silly
I am oscillating between fear and life
I am sweating and I am hiding from everything
I lead a studious life
I am an old man now
I am both insulting you and at your feet
I don't understand love well
The sentences we say one after the other I feel though
I can't construct but uncomplicated love
Where you are free and I just witness you
Then suddenly all that covers me is jealousy
I love you softly
Your elegance, and small lies, and sexiness
How I keep you a Virginia and hold you in my arms
*
I sip water with dust
I remember going home and not crying
The books are scattered
I don't know the future
I seem to have wanted to know things including love God etc
I don't want to eat animals
It is impossible not to break few promises to yourself
I am not here I am not there etc
Things are at an early phase
The trick is with acquiring new words
The trick is to cry each now and then
I don't fathom my illness and its suffering
I am far and still don't understand injustice
*
The future is unknown
The future is for us sleeping after we possess the tools of production
The future is for all kind of lovers and immigrants we are all immigrants
The future is where the poets run the corporations and set the budget in words
The future we eliminate money I don't know how but we will
The future is impossible but we will weep and laugh enough for it to happen
In the future the facsists will be president because it doesn't matter and we want them to be happy too
The future is for the backstabbing
*
So many words in my head
I am tired of them
Incoherent and contradictory etc
But I thought that is what I needed to be a poet
I have no idea why it matters to be a poet
We are the monkeys who would write and write
And inadvertently form a few lines of truth
Some argue we are done
It is movies and video games etc
Which might be true
But something about composing music
With as fundamental of a tool as language
Seems to still have a chance at resonance
With something inside many of us
That matches what happens
Outside