Phillistine

Inspired by the struggle of adjusting to life in France following a thoroughly eventful childhood in Jerusalem.

I was born foolish, blistered by the suns of acrimony.
My city was untamed, and so would I be.

Through my early dawn desertion,
I condemned myself to err 
Like a nationless orphan
Encased in chrysalis of soft aluminium,
Feeding off manganese and salty magnesium.

I morphed into a shadow of myself,
Inside bland European deserts.
Stubbornly searching for the paprika sky
Of a weary, sleepy 
Jerusalem.

I feared I would become someone else,
Soaked with accumulated fallacies, 
Having swapped my fluorite sap for vulgar metals, 
Swollen with amplified apathies.

I often wondered,
Will I ever lose the irony of human absurdity,
And sink in the sometimes-envious stagnation of slow winters…?
And every night give up a little bit more of whatever is left over from the enzymes of 
Silences,
Forget the sweetness of a balloon of light, the waves, the Suns?

I escape to avoid whatever attracts me.

Nothing within me could be more elasticised than the desire to believe  
In order to forget.

It is in the breeze that I escape monotonous flowers.
I cherish escaping in order to reminisce later...

You breathe, in me, the aquatic sands, the desert-like blues, the purple violence of 
Absence.
It is my Philistine origin which decreases from my complexion down to my insurrection.

On the blueish burn of my lips swollen with piquancies, I have the pinch of Absinthe,
And its green juice turns me sad and tipsy.

Underneath the shadows of perished prayers, 
Almost nothing left. 
 
I am but the elsewhere.
In me lazes the enormous absence of smile…

Haunted by the tremors of occupations,
I remember the infernal cadence of malaise, 
The nocturnal affiliation of their pain 
To repulsion. 

Its immensity is my anxiety, 
And under the chaotic laziness of interrogations
Is the nectar of my somber melancholy, 
My slow denigration.  

Tightly wrapped in cellophane, 
Heavy pomelos hide a bitter pith,
Their pulp my only gourmandise.

A few flowers languorously age against my chin,
Orange blossoms and lemon peel.

When I dream,
My hands lock
In the quiet indigo of automatic prayers…

I fight thousands of feverish reels,
Each one collapses against my tympanums.  
The echo of their bile a clumsy hum.

It is the portrait of my nation.
Its giant wave strolling against
Extermination.

Running through the Old City with all the adrenaline of condensed fear,
I rush, tumble and fall
To the sound of raucous walls, 
And the perils I distil. 

Is there a way I can push through and make some sense of labyrinths…?  

Like a jaundiced electrode, unable to entice neurons to connect, 
I stutter in the middle of 
My thoughts.  

I can’t resume the dialogue and so silence the petals of despair.
There. 

I take refuge in the appeal of summer fears… 
The pungent smell of almond shells, 
The sabre of 
Insufferable sunrays, and the 
Raspy 
Thirst I can’t escape…
…
The escapade a nightly haunting 
Replaying gun 
Shots 
Amid 
Fervent 
Interrogations…

Looping every single dusk, it fills me with 
Vitriolic 
Fears.  

The muted 
Scream of the 
Sorrows of an errand tribe 
Can never recover its voice, and so, on its own, it falls…

How can I lose such legacy and, finally, be free? 
Could you,
Show me,

You stroll mindlessly, each step encased in the pace of ska, as placid as a giant Buddha,
And my quest remains my own; some things can only be suffered alone. 

I hope this wasn’t too long! I already hacked away at it as it somehow morphed, over the years, into the longest poem I’ve ever written. Feel free to let me know your thoughts,

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