Which Flower of These
do You Want?
I'm amaranth-gutted,—
I cross myself
With goats' dung and filth,
I was supposed to meet
My lady in a station,—but
Only the faces there wearing dreamed faces
Told my fortune, with my palms open
for the public's curiosity and notice,—
dripping silver sweat: The pure oil
Of the self's intersections.
A frown upon a frown,
A smile put on an instant coffee machine,
I gazed into the red and yellow of the train
With inbred eyes, as tho'
Self-loath 'nd apprehension bred together, 'nd
Bore my eyes a misery.
I am a man, 'tween a shadow
'nd a horizon — with a machinist heart
Unworthy of the dignity of a woman's smile.
The dignity? Heh!
Little thought, half mine, half foreign,
Controlled, abused.
Where did it begin?
Where will it end?
I'm in my chair, with four mouths
As its own legs, gnawing at the floor,
Rendering my fat 'nd bone,—
Ministering the needs of the madman
'nd the famished within.
—This chair, in which,
I resist being an actor
Wherewith success follows,—
Is the chair of a spectator!
The chair is here,
The fate upon it
is either this or that.
By whose help
Shall I know the thoughts
Of to-morrow?
By whose help
Shall I voice them
Into the cavities of ears?
My dignity?—Heh!
Through which agency
Of angels and demons
Shall I apply for an hour
Or two of lust?
Whence came my sorrow?
Whence will come its twin-born wisdom?
M. Ait Ali was born in 1992 in Agadir, Morocco.
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