Three Poems : Mosab Abu Toha

Returning to my blog after a long hiatus, even celebration of my blog completing a decade is in preparation and yet to finalise. But when I read these poems, full of tenderness, an urge to humanity, I had to share this here. I hope the war ends soon and may peace prevail.

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"Mosab Abu Toha is an astonishingly gifted young poet from Gaza, almost a seer with his eloquent lyrical vernacular, his visions of life, continuity, time, possibility, and beauty. His poems break my heart and awaken it, at the same time. I feel I have been waiting for his work all my life."
  ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

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A poem is not just words placed on a line.
It's a cloth.
Mahmoud Darwish wanted to build his home,
his exile, from all the words in the world.
I weave my poems with my veins.
I want to build a poem like a solid home, but
hopefully not with my bones.

On July 23, 2014, a friend called and said,
"Ezzat was killed."
I asked which Ezzat.
"Ezzat, your friend."
My phone slipped from my hand, and 
I began to run, not knowing where.

What's your name?
Mosab.
Where are you from?
Palestine.
What's your mother tongue?
Arabic, but she's sick.
What's the colour of your skin?
There is not enough light to help me see.

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A Voice From Beneath

I want to drown myself in the silence of absence,
to fill my pockets with poems
and throw myself in a lazy river.

A distant voice calls upon me to build a room
from straw and clay
to raise black flag in the night,
to play the piano to the crossing owl.

A voice from beneath shakes my desk--
the ink spills on my drowsy pants.
It pummels my fingers and constricts my breath. 
It asks me to stop writing heavy poems,
poems that have bombs and corpses,
destroyed houses and shrapnel-covered streets,
lest the words stumble and slip
into the bloody potholes.

That voice takes away my voice.
It squeezes my poetry pages, tears them from
my head.
Blood showers my curly hair.
My desk becomes crimson red.
Screams fill the cracks in the walls
and the potholes in the nameless roads.

Searching For A New Exit

The curtain,
heavy with fear,
does not rise.

As so often happens,
someone has turned off
the power.

We are powerless.

The oppressive air
tries to move in vain.

There is no light
to help me see
the boundaries of my state:

my nonexistent state.

I cannot find the words
in my Gazan Dictionary,
not even in my American Heritage Dictionary.

I cannot find any words
in my imagination
to fill in the gap.

Everything stolen by tornadoes
from the East and West
battering our theatre again and again:

so many funerals.

The air
stirs suddenly,
making whistling sounds.
My spirits lift-no longer flagging,
searching for a new exit.

No applause.
The drama never ends.
The audience leaves
before I arrive.

~Mosab Abu Toha -From “Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear” Poems from Gaza