Zakaria Mohammed, Palestine
Por: Zakaria Mohammed
Plate
In the morning I strip of the pea pods of my life in a plate
Every by passer takes his share of peas
Every one gets a handful and leaves.
In the evening I crawl between chairs on my knees
Looking for a pea that could have slipped off their hands
A pea that could give me a taste of my life.
Return
The Bamboo tree shoots its stem
mounting up to space
It doesn’t care about leaves, roots or even rain
It cares about height
Its soul is a column heading up to the sky
If I were a tree I would choose the circle rather than the line
I will send my shoot forward as if it is going in a no return trip
but then bend it to return back again
Without coming back
life is no more than a stupid bamboo tree
a tree that shoots empty pipes into the sky.
Suicide
Plastic bags have no wings to fly
but they insist to try
Flying is the dream of all creatures
It is despair rather than hope which pushes these bags high into the sky
They stuff their lungs with air like mail frogs
and leap into space
Most of them will fall down to be captured by thorny plants
"leave me alone", the bag cries.
"I want to die. I want to throw my self from the highest building in Ramallah".
But people do not stop throwing bags
They throw them like dice, watching them by the edge of their eyes
Fearing that those who succeeded to fly will soon fall over their heads
like suicidal crows .
Home
Many birds fly swiftly over my head
Their sticks in their beaks to build their homes
My home hasn’t been built yet
I am still living in the land of sun and rain
The birds keep passing with their sticks
While I, like a little child my lips are failing to pronounce "m -y h- o- m- e"
Matches
My days are used match sticks
Every day I take a stick to write with its burnt head a letter of my name
and throw it
I envy them those who have live matches in their boxes
Catching the fire in their hands they are able to threaten the world with a blaze.
Priest
What is the meaning of my life?
What is the meaning of what I have done?
My foot didn’t pave a road in the land of the unknown
My shovel hits haven't been able to uncover the hidden treasures
My hands weren't that of a midwife's receiving lives from the darkness of the wombs
I was an aged priest whose work is to hear the first cry of the new born child to give it a name
I am not more than a names giver
I give names to the cries
I stamp them like trade labels on their backs
The name of every cry name in this universe is the craft of my hands.
Hailstones
In the morning I gather the tissues of my flu in a plastic bag
I throw them in the garbage
Tomorrow I will throw another bag
and after tomorrow too
Hence after the flu tissues, come the white tissues of tears
Then the fading white carnation flowers
Then, the spring hailstones will harshly sweep the almond flower buds from their branches.
Zakaria Mohammed was born in 1950 in the suburb of Nablus, Palestine. He Studied the Arabic literature at the university of Baghdad in Iraq. As soon as he finished his studies in 1975, he started working as a freelance journalist in Beirut, Amman and Damascus. In his career life he worked as an editor-in-chief for many political, cultural and literature magazines. Currently he lives in Rammallah where he works as a journalist and and editor as well as a trainer for creative writing. Besides writing poems and novels, Zakaria Muhammad wrote story books and theatre plays for children.
