Free Verse # 449 (listening to the silence)

With my mouth
I lean down to where
the sun kissed her skin,
and I feel the warmth
caressing my lips,
fragrant, succulent,
the sun rays turned to a wine
filled with her essence,
and I drink slowly
as I feel it in my heart,
a love too big
for the earth and sky.

~

Around us
the world turned
like a mad vortex
as we kissed,
filled with noise yet still,
covered with endless veils
yet transparent
as we kissed
and kissed
until the end of the world.

~

I heard her words, but I listened to her silence

استمعت الى كلماتها، ولكن أنصتّ الى صمتها.

~

ان أصبحت شاعراً
فذلك لكي أتمكن، يوماً ما،
من قراءة المجرات والنجوم
وهي تدور في فلك بشرتها.

~

Like a vast kiss the rain fell
as we stood in the river
clasped against one another,
gazing into the distance
as the riverflow went on
disappearing into the fog;
we kissed, then closed our eyes,
listening to the silence
making us one
with the river, the fog
and the falling rain.

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Free Verse # 447 (What does the poet do?)

What does the poet do?—He listens to the silence.

~

Sealed in a kiss
this gift of longing
I received from you
is an ever aching thorn
burning in my heart

~

His kisses on her skin
grains of incense
left to smolder
and cover her
in a sharp fragrance
of jasmine and lust,
filling her lungs
with a slow fire
burning up to her mind,
spreading through her blood,
maddening her senses
with an ever growing yearning
to be claimed by their bond.

~

A lifetime is too short
for me to say what I see
when I look in her eyes

~

What helps you live prepares you to die.

~

With poetry I long
to photograph her soul

~

With you, my unknown women
always seated next to me,
I long for an earth-shattering connection,
deeper than the sea,
wider than the sky.

~

Dressed in the form
of the woman I love
God came to me,
and our union was His prayer,
and our kiss His holy wine.

~

Drinking her lips
I slowly take in
whatever God had meant
by blessing the wine,
by giving existence
His breath of life.

Tanka # 202

Relished slowly
with yearning lips
the wine I poured
into the hollows
of her collarbones

~

Today the wind
comes to tell me
of her deep longing,
the woman whose breath
I feel in my bones.

Free Verse # 444 (with his touch he fuels her fire)

To love her
is to touch her heart
where a hidden world
lives silently
waiting to be known
and be filled with light

~

Je t’aime, il lui dit,
non pas avec ses mots,
mais avec sa présence,
avec son attention,
avec ses yeux.

~

With his touch
he fuels her fire,
clothing her
in the silk of kisses
and tender words,
listening to the heartbeats
pulsating in her skin,
uncovering the love
in her yearning eyes,
feeling through her
to her depth
that is wider than the sky.

~

Self-sufficient
or so I thought
until I felt her presence
and learned what it means
to be alive

~

في صدريَ ملاكٌ اسمُهُ حُبُكِ.

~

Love, my silent tormentor.

~

Not over her skin
but into her soul
his gaze glides
rushing and frothing
in seas and rivers
and reaching deep down
into an endless sky

~

He breathes out
and she aches
to breathe him in,
cradle his breath,
a fire growing
inside of her.

~

Every day
I start it with a poem,
my own way of looking
into your eyes
and telling you I love you,
you who is not here but lives
in the beatings of my heart.

~

Each dawn this ache in my chest
with your soft voice says –
‘here, I am inside of you,
wherever you go
you always carry me
in your heart’

Free Verse # 443 (if not a person, then what is she?)

Shaded in red and gold
my life is a book of poems
haunted by your specter,
you who was lost from the beginning,
you who was never mine
and will never be.

~

ان الله، عند خلقها، وجد نفسه شاعرا.

~

أما هي فابتسمت
عندما نظر اليها
كحديقة لم تزهر
منذ زمن طويل

~

بجانبنا تمرّ الحياة،
أنا وهي جالسين
على مقعدٍ في مقهى،
متقاسمين نفس نرجيلةٍ
وأطراف حديث،
نفسي يعبق برائحتها
ونفسها برائحة حنينٍ
أغرقه في كأسي،
في صحني،
في قلبي،
وأرفعه، محترقاً،
الى شفتيها.

~

All that I know about poetry I learned from gazing at her face.

~

As she sleeps
my breath travels
along her skin,
planting in her curves
the seeds of a fire
older than the stars.

~

Inhaling it deeply
his breath settles
amid her ribs
and flowers
on her skin
on her lips
in her eyes
a silent language
meant only for his eyes.

~

His breath
she yearns to feel it
filling up her lungs
seeping through her veins
rising to her head,
intoxicated, dizzy
in this connection,
this bond,
this poetry.

~

In her black hair
I dip my pen
and on the sheets
of her skin
I write my poems,
line after line,
kiss after kiss.

~

If not a person,
then what is she?
A long journey
with no place to rest,
an empty road
with flowers on its sides,
a hike into the forest
of no return.
Not a person to hold,
she is home
in the form of a fire
burning silently
in my chest.
She lives in my vision
of this world.

Tanka # 197

Hamatoura, Lebanon, November 23, 2019

Filled with longing
my heart cracked open,
its many jeweled chambers
crimson with the fire
of my beloved’s lips.

Tanka # 196

Bathed in moonlight
her naked body
a landscape of fire
pierced by the red
of autumn leaves

Free Verse # 441 (what is love?)

What is love?—the inwardness of a relation that, to the lovers, is greater than the earth and sky.

~

A kiss that is more
than a kiss;
a fusion of two bodies,
two souls,
two hearts,
two poetries…

~

Day and night
I journey to you,
an invisible thread
tying our hearts…

~

We are nameless, except in those moments when we are touched by love.

~

I am a poet; when I love a woman, I write to her; she lives in my soul, and becomes my poetry.

~

By your mere presence
you filled my life
with a beauty
I could not imagine,
with a light
I could not understand.

~

I sip my morning coffee
and listen to the autumn rain,
the quiet hush of her breath
wrapped around my neck
like a brown shawl,
and my fingers ache
to caress her hair,
to touch her face.

~

As I kiss her
all the wounds of the past
rise up to my mouth
and I feel them melting
between our lips

Tangled & Merging

Night falls,
her dark hair in rivulets
fills its lonesome corners;
the candle of her breath
ignites somewhere
inside the vast darkness,
casting a play of shadows
against the spinning walls;
a cloistered world,
an intimate world
of poetry and wine
and our lips
and our naked bodies
tangled and merging
somewhere deep inside.

Tanka # 193 | Haiku 652

بعد اللقاء
في منتصف الليل
أشمّها في شعري وثيابي…
رائحة البخور
المحترق في فمها

~

الدخان في فمها
بخورٌ يناجي
معبد الاله

What It Means To Touch Her

My thoughts
my breath
my words
melt into her
and I touch her
silently
where she has never
been touched;
I touch her heart
I touch her soul
I light a fire in her blood;
I welcome her darkness,
I embrace her light
and I feel her in my heart
growing deeper than the earth
shining brighter than the sun;
I take her everything,
her past, present, and I future,
and I give her the gift
of my masculine heart:
I open her to God,
I open her to life,
and in that connection
I become a man
living his days
to the fullness of his heart.

Haiku # 649 | Tanka# 191

Her flowering skin…
The moon unfolding
midnight stories

~

من الفسخ الموجع في قلبي
أتلمّس بأنامل مرتجفة
الضوء الذي يأتيني من وجهها

~

This poetry –
with every verse
I attempt to say
the intimate language
of her eyes.

Cette poésie –
avec chaque verset
j’essaie de le dire,
le langage intime des yeux
de la femme que j’aime.

Free Verse # 435 (I dreamed of touching her)

My photograph. Tannourine Cedar Trees Reserve, January 2019

Like freshly fallen snow,
its immaculate whiteness
keeping track
of the slightest movement
of animals, trees, and wind,
her skin holds
the traces of my words
as they drip from my pen,
as they stir in my soul.

~

Ma mémoire de toi
est comme l’eau
qui coule toujours
dans le berceau
du rêve océanique
de ta chair

~

For miles and miles
I drove through the night
to find her lying naked
by the chimney
her shimmering skin aching
for a drop of poetry

~

Her perfume,
though softer
than the moon’s light
falling through the clouds,
its billows carry me
to shores unknown
to mankind.

~

I dreamed
of touching her
silently
slowly
completely
so that my touch
would fill her
like the light
gently pours
to fill the sky at dawn

~

Your reply
to the letter
I sent you years ago –
at dawn
a bird singing
on my windowsill.

Free Verse # 434 (she is all the lights)

In your touch
I make transactions
with beauty,
selling each moment
for a veil of your light,
feeling the white
of your perception
shine from my soul.

~

My poetry,
its endless brushstrokes
paint the features
of my face;
look at it,
it has no eyes
but only a silence
with which to gaze
upon the world.

~

When I write
I imagine my fingers
touching her face
the way the moth hovers
around the candle-light,
I feel my hands
dipped in her skin
like oars rowing
in a starlit sea of poetry.

~

Looking at her
the poem tries
with burnings fingers
to describe her beauty,
but then it falls down,
speechless.

~

She is all the lights the city needs.

~

My heart
I feel it connected to yours
by a hidden string,
like night to the day,
like the sky to the earth
and to the rolling sea of stars.

Free Verse # 433 (this moment is but a dream, vanishing)

In my love for you
the profanity of my spirit
once more
touched the hem
of God’s soul

~

This moment
is but a dream,
vanishing;
in the mirror
of its smoke
I behold your face,
ever dancing in the wind,
ever warm with grace.

~

Smoke and mirrors,
in this world
I only care to polish
the image of your face.

~

You wander through me
unchanged for eternities
like the ray of light
that shined from God’s heart
on the dawn
of the very first day

~

The music of your voice
comes back at dawn;
like a dewdrop on the leaf
I sit down and listen.

~

Having her here
sleeping next to me,
in the rhythm of her breath
a window opening
onto an endless sea.

~

Beloved, I only have eyes to see you through the window of my heart.

~

My heart burns for you
with the passion of petals
in a tight bud, unfurling,
with the desire of a seed
in the dark soil
feeling all around it
the heat of spring.

~

I am thinking of your voice
and the way it drifts at dawn,
a ray of warm sunlight
through the dewy cover of fog.

I am thinking of your breath
and the way it fills the sky,
starlight from distant galaxies
like dancing snowflakes falling down.

~

Looking through
the dictionary of the winds
for words to describe her,
I discovered the scent
of the jasmine flower
under the summer moon,
little fires of starlight
wandering the tilting sky
early before the dawn,
the words poets uttered
from a wounded heart,
the heated breaths
exchanged between
the merging lips lovers,
the ineffable presence of things
as they enter
the silence of God.

Free Verse # 431 (a literature of sacred desire)

The moon at dawn,
to look at it I remember
the image of her face,
traveling from age to age
and now coming to wake
in the stillness of my heart.

~

All that ink
flowing along her curves
in rivers,
and I, the only one
able to read its flow;
but reading
is an act of writing,
and as I read
the words catch fire
and burn into her skin,
a literature of sacred desire
bursting
with the flame of poetry.

~

It’s enough
to touch her with my mind
for the cup
from my heart
to overflow

~

Dusk settles;
my breath,
like the silent fall of dew
infiltrates her skin,
gathers at her core.

Between us,
an ineffable dance
of shadow and light,
a poetry greater
than this finite world.

~

From her face
the knowledge of light
came to me,
came to alight like a bird
on the bough of my heart,
inside to make
its burning nest,
weep through my skin
and into the corners of the world
a song of joy and harmony.

Free Verse # 429 (What is the poet?)

What is the poet if not a vampire with a thirst for bitter blood — the fire blood of poetry?

~

My hands move along her skin
like pilgrim birds
with their flight tracing
the eternity of the sky

~

The hidden tangible in her
that with every touch
I aim to invoke,
that I desire to caress
with my mere presence,
the depth of my heart,
the penetrative gaze of my soul;
I dampen her and excite her light
as my focus remains, centered,
on the ground of her being,
her core.

~

I wait for you
on the curve of something infinite
where the sea meets the sky,
in my hand
a flowering branch of jasmine
and a poem I wrote long ago
when my heart was still a child’s;
I wait for you,
my heart the burning pages of a poem
dripping with longing for your smile.

~

Entering my room
through the open window
your breath dishevels
the string of my thoughts
and awakens my longing;
the candle stirs
in her vertical burning
and my palms fill
with the rose-petals of your name.

~

With the night
your ghost comes
to torture me,
a gossamer figure
drawn with a soft fading fire
against the starry sky.

A Little Rest and Idleness

A little rest and idleness
and I discover
that I am still the same man,
the one who writes
and longs to write
with the fire of your name
a world of poetry.

Now let each word sink
like a caress into your skin,
let it sleep there
like an exuberant seed
to wake up and find itself transformed
into a lush forest of flowers
and leaves blowing endlessly,
of lovers meeting
under the shadow of the night
to make love deeply and earnestly.

A little rest
and my heart rises back, buoyant,
and wafts mouthful
in the fragrance of your skin,
my feet, those of a pilgrim
wading word after word after word
to vanish in the world of stillness
sounding at the center of your soul.

A little rest and idleness
and your breath, beloved,
comes to cure me,
balm my wounds and nights of ache
with the refreshing touch of dew
born upon the dawn of your lips.

Free Verse # 427 (the only home I know)

My poem
only gives sound
when a wind blows through,
and the sound it gives
is always a whiff
burning with her name.

~

You are not here
and I do not know your name
but it does not matter,
this love is still my captain,
it is the sea itself
and the ship carrying me,
it is this road itself
and it is the journey,
it is the softly burning fire
and the only home I know.

~

This world is a tavern,
your fragrance its wine;
this world is a sky,
your light its crowning star.

~

I long to know her heart;
I long to open her
to the eternity of the sky.

~

In a single poem
a thousand nights
of longing burn
aching for a touch
from your lips –
you, my tormentor,
you, my muse.

~

The poet’s words
bring me back to myself,
and always
inside the words
the light of her face.

~

What if the poem
is an astrolabe
attempting to measure
what cannot be measured —
the beauty of her face?

~

Walking
the distance between us,
its length a poem
lasting all night.

~

A girl I’ve never known
has her name igniting
the fire in my soul

Free Verse # 411 (mon poème et mon cœur)

If I touched you with my heart, would you be the poem I’ve been aching to write? – the poem that exhausts my life in a sea of mystery?

~

He touched her and her heart, weeping, was a violin that finally found its soul.

~

My poem and my heart are coextensive: the woman who touches one touches the other.

~

Mon poème et mon cœur sont coextensives: la femme qui touche l’un touchera l’autre.

~

We are all in the end unfinished stories.

~

Un jour, même après ma mort, un papillon anonyme trouvera la fleur secrète qui brule dans mon corps.

~

آخر الطرقات بين
قلبي وقلبها
وردة حمراء تذوي
وورقة خريف
هائمة في الريح

~

Clothed by his poem,
every word etched
with the ink of a fire
that burned for ages
on the altar of his heart.

~

Caressant sa peau
avec mon poème
la fleur entre ses jambes
s’en est ouverte
comme une coquille qui m’offrait
l’infini de la mer