I see you in broad day light, an impossible moon,

and in my night a sun, unreachable.

So I refuse to love you .

In my mirror I see you, the silhouette of a tattered sadness

that my eyes hold captive.

And on my scattered papers I see you,

the traces of tears I have yet to shed.

And I refuse to love you.

I see you as a prohibited dream,

that combs my innocent hair into sinful braids,

and when I awaken,

your luminous kisses drip

on my pillow

one star after another

to put out my shyness.

And I refuse to love you.

Because I love you

I refuse to love you.

Because my thirst for you is fire

and because my heart does not deserve

the fate of a crazed moth.

Because I love, my sir,

and because you love me,

let your pride refuse my ashes

| Joumana Haddad |

IDENTITY

 

This is how I am,

no time for guilt,

playing with fate and quick to bore.

Promises that implode betrayed with neglect.

It’s useless to change me.

Certainty is a stranger to me

because of the panic love causes,

because of imagination,

because I’m only

fit

for laziness.

My time is arranged in the last minute

or in premature withdrawals ,

in a sun that does not suffice

and in night that never ends,

in impetuous leaps between thirst and its slaking.

This how I am—

silence to reassemble my parts ,

a slow terror to shatter me,

silence and terror to heal me from a wicked memory

No hope that light will guide me.

I own nothing except my errors.

JOUMANA HADDAD

WHO IS STEALING MY FOREST?

 

Shlomi Nissim

I light my green leaves

and warm my self .

I exhale

and slip

with the ecstasy of one falling into the enemy ’s embrace

with the delight of one accepts his tortureer ’s judgment

or with the ravenousness of one who shares the murder his guilt

I flee

from innocent weakness to absolute frailty

from sex to a pleasure that sex cannot kill off

from my own wisdom

to the ice of escape.

I find shelter in the land of a brazen angel,

in brimstone growing within its own secrets ,

from my intelligent misery

to a storm of cruelty purified of hope

like the like return of the prodigal daughter to her last escapade

to the wedding that follows the sun

where I will neither live nor vanish .

And my spirit calls me toward a reasonable, foolish kind of madness

that has ebbed and flowed through my life

So I began to sway from rebellion to infatuation

and from ecstasy to dispersion

completely unaware

Here I am returning

Here I am returning to love

like the return of the she-lion to her husband the lion

So who will steal the forest from me now

JOUMANA HADDAD

DEVIL

 

When I sit before you,stranger,

I know how much time you’ll need

to bury the distance between us.

You are exceedingly intelligent

and I am in the midst of my feasting.

You are deliberating how to flirt

and I, under my curtain of modesty,

am already done devouring you 

| Joumana Haddad |

BAD HABITS

 

She said love is like gambling

and she always loses.

She said it’s a bad habit

that she does not dare give up.

She said she’s afraid of light

even though the light she’s spent was

not little

She’s content with her solitude

and she does not care for

companionship.

Still she falls from her cloud

whenever rain guides her to her land.

She said she’s ro bust but futile

and gentle despite herself.

Still she feigns roughness

because affection like love

is a bad habit

and so is silence

which she’ll never quit.

She said she’s bored

not even good enough for sleep

but she sleeps to remain like a fetus

drowned in the waters of oblivion.

She says she’s a tired woman

bleeding from her wound

wishing to never heal.

She said she’s loser by nature,

a loser so that she’ll deserve her

victory.

She said at last that life is a bad habit

which she hopes to maintain

with a little bit of will power

and a great deal of forgetfulness.

| Joumana Haddad |