Abdul Karim Al-Ahmad: Selected Poems
Illustration: Ana Stjelja AI-assisted Abdul Karim Al-Ahmad I was always The passenger Who made the boat more likely to sink Biography He was a poet and resembled Rome When embers were dropping from the trees in its first great fire He was a poet and before he was a poet He waged war on nature He wiped out a flock of fragile birds He loved the chaos that destroyed the lives of others Just as he loved the hell that was always near them He was a very dangerous poet He wanted to imitate Jesus and Gandhi and Shakespeare He wanted to slit open the veins of frozen waves with knives He was a poet and a historian He left us hot blood from the Cold War era And poems the dictator used to comb with minesweepers And other things including a woman Rocking the sun on her knees Birth I was born A little before my due date On the night when controversy raged About everything A release conditional on obeying the terms I was born deceived and still am de...
