Sarah Bardeen
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Turab for Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

speaking live from the center of the lotus flower

            here

                        in a country's final hour

as the endgame has begun and the civilians

remain nameless on the nightly news

you are looking at the journalists with eyes

like gun-barrels

saying noncommittal words

 that even you laugh at slightly

you don’t know how beautiful you are

already i look at you

speaking, live

from the center of the lotus

your words wobble upwards like sparrows

the air around you swims with

the sand of the turab

with burning dinosaur bodies

jurassic compost

with B52 bomber fuel

with the desert exhalations

your death stands just next to you.

your eyes have stopped seeing

your mouth utters absurdities

somewhere you and i are having tea

laughing about this

i am forgiving you

you are forgiving yourself

we play a game in the park

we roll hand-sized silver balls

in a small sandpit

on the outskirts of Nice

we will sit for some of the strong coffee

you like so much

in the late afternoon

you will stir in more sugar

than i could stomach

whatever gripped you when they put that black beret on,

the stars, whatever it was that signaled you

knew something

could say it

people could die maybe

underneath the black scarf of your words

the skulls roll out of white linen bags

they say next to nothing

take my hand now

link arms

let's walk through pink twilight

past vegetable gardens

and dogs

speaking of nothing

important

***

your eyes are still, like reflecting pools

the ghosts already swim there

you never have to brush flies from your face

you are increasingly angry with the men

you command

they can taste the target around your head

they steer well clear of you

i see you before the cameras

you are on a roof made of sand

you smile calmly and say how you

are winning

a man gestures wildly

towards smoke in the distance

the journalists move in obligingly

to obliterate the lone dissenter

there’s no picture to pose for after this

the cameras go dead, they turn dark

their roving eyes wander off elsewhere

you’ll have defended yourself

your land

these loaded words are constantly

pointed, cocked, at our hands

and our feet

they march us out into the turab

we face the duststorm when allah

and everyone else

says go home

we tie white flags to our brooms

no matter who comes lumbering down the street

men like you with your dead eyes

with the weight of hatred on your head

with marksmen adjusting their targets to that soft plate

where brains do fall out

go home now

go home to your wife

touch your children

feel their soft hair with your fingers

forget the men with mustaches

the ancient rifles, those muskets

of mass destruction

stop your game of self-deception

though i admire it

so strangely

glowing pink in the baghdad sunrise

go home

before they kill you, or forget you

eat honey, sip rose water

drink a cup of coffee in your garden

you are as dear to me as thunder

your eyes are hollow like the world

whose brilliance never surrenders


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