Robert Capa's negatives

OK   whatever I have in this house is yours

            Except for the one I have outside the door

                                                           Agreed?

She did           and laughter fell on a lip sitting outside the lip

I see    where no lips kiss is the lip of the roof

that has fallen very much short of Leily

the smoke’s lot           that night        from the lips I was giving to the cigarette

            was no more than twists and turns

My hands deep in thought on my head

recollecting the day I was shell shocked

remembering the comrades who’ve abandoned me

off to the front so long as it has martyrdom

in their offensive - flocking like pigeons

troops of generals and pishmergas,    the rest all martyrs

post combat conscripts turned           troopers

Karbela[1] goers abandoned pilgrimage and turned    Tehrani

Landlords willy nilly turned              to whores

Where you see a mirror          there our image backward on our face for years

enemies in the house but we sprawled outside the door

we so waved out clenched fist          to the sky

much till it landed,  back on our back caved in

DOWN WITH we said and further the other way we’ve gone from ourself

they closed the road   we ran away round the gird of mountains

the mountain took the load of snow off its head      didn’t get wet

came out of winter     our lot did not improve

never did we open an eye in the trenches or the well

pick a shoe and put the other road on

leg out of the house and toe the sea

put up a fire on the coast of this arid sand

The wave knew

            it was stuck in the margins

The wave knows

            it won’t rest on the shore

The wave        was shell shocked

and died on the beach

The sea floating on the deep

can have drowning

a job that has got out of hand

invites the snake to the sleeve

We kept saying

NO EAST NO WEST

WAR WAR…

DOWN WITH…

whoever is not us

down with their bread and butter

it’s from us unto us

whoever’s tethered… let’s move on while it’s open

I don’t suppose straight prose will do the job

just this very door that’s closed on me is open

I have reached someplace in I Am         where I am not

eventhough I’ve dripped everywhere

one drop of me                        that I have dripped in my vein

They have carried         with once upon a time   once upon another

under this Indigo Dome I imagine          there was none

around me        was only my pigeon                 and my wife

whose wings if she spreads      there on the neighbour’s roof she’d perch over

over here          I am far away from myself

and my wife      from both

around my head           other than me my home pigeon homes in on all the world’s roofs

she wasn’t meant to go head-counting a whole town

of all whose girls          I am not supposed to have a single

It wasn’t fair!

Ali was in the wars        and so Amroas

I am the Amroas of all Tehrani lasses

My bed is still a guest house

where staying single nights is still free

Travel on:

There is a room in this house that has one bed

rooms  that have several

I’ve not a lover to have fought with what

to have slept with who

and to have said nothing

I am carrying my loneliness for the earth which they say turned into woman

I have held onto my beauty tightly in the mirror so it comes little by little     on tiptoe

I have buried the queen of hearts in me

and I’m an emasculated soldier behind sandbags

Hello! Hello! This is Ali! Hello! Holy Smoke!       Boom!

Hello Hello piping through few wired lines

and Satan under my biro

in the passing of the bottom of the alley  tanks were sounding

cars      with no one riding      were running   alone

I’m going!         left the buttons half done          I’m alone

I am trying out my voice on the blower for a woman

who’s just going to ring            Alo!      Hello!   Hi!

me hello and she not waving

me in love and wicked as far as the eye can see

what memories that didn’t go travelling in me

Letting go of my wife and my mum also leaving

and on my hand                       I am!     stale like Sundays getting

for me the wing windlessly lifelong

            they’ve arranged for me            is small isn’t it? I won’t become

I know my lesson twenty out of twenty

I‘ve come to finish with my fear

for good          of a man who the shell’s shrapnel never left

your eyes reflecting the river sank at the sight of our riverside photograph

when I look at these pictures     I’m mirrored      taken in          

and I hate the woman    whose lips whispered

easily in my ears: Smack!         I love you very much

in my our crazy eyes I’m unloosened and shell shocked!

in fear of a city that grows bit by bit the village horse has bolted

and gone behind a mountain to stay like the moon

There was no one with me

There was no one to be with me

there was one with him who was not with it

in the alleys on whose girls’ lips                        they killed laughter

became a prostitute      went away

I’m off! I’m off to buy a wife for my bed

Me!     Am Armenian and give you no daughter to make you a poet laureate

you’ll beat the epic poet out of the poor thing

He threw me out of the window beside a bullet released casing

next to a stream like a fish washed ashore the river Karoon I’ve sorted out

a hand that washed the woman from the body’s stretch of skin like a greasy exfoliate

without coming or going the wave was further away

and the skeletons washed up the pier

were yelling he’s shell shocked

they were crying I’m crazy    I don’t deny it            Me am!

I’m forced      like the street to walk in my middle

night it is not  no one is not…

his singing taller than his height climbs up the wall, fell on the other side, North of this map

fell splat on the ground!

behind the lid of her lips a wailing on the way from Foman to Rasht

                                   went past crying

Go! Go! Me groaning what you do

Me heart ripped and breaking what you do

you can rip me pictures and letters

what you do with me kiss-prints on your cheeks?

please turn the sound down a bit please mister…

The driver in the black and white picture went black

they’d painted him     when he came back from the war

ran like hound dogs

to run out of his memories     didn’t make it!

he took the car off the figure of the alley

and onto the street a couple of turns down

O God                        what’s up with me

like cretins my words are all short

I’m flustered my fingers     unloosed in the front

I’m hurried    why?

in vain did I push my finger into the sky

of all those stars up there  not a single one is mine

and the world           before the sightless eye chemically poisoned

goes on         for what?

I had quite a voice   and didn’t sing

I had quite a god     that I have not

I’m looking for myself         any finders?

the earth is    still      expecting a dug out

that I wouldn’t fill in the war

how can I open the windows blown in the wind

the street up to the last light          has forgotten the night crowds

they look at my enfolded trouser leg[2]

                        as sentries up the lookout post…

Hello!   Pigeon!  Hello!

advance seventy knots

Hello!   You’re asleep?     the bunker!

I once had a lovely bunker

loving a gun on my shoulder

my heart never lacked a lover

no cartridge lacked a bullet.. what was I saying?

then

I was being shot while they were living a boom

now you’re going flat

for my sake have you forgotten

you remember the alleys were filled with wailings and the night

the foreigner launched rockets on our woman and child

I was a boy, tall as the little i                 you get it?!

Gave Leila’s hand - our neighbour’s daughter’s – to god wholesale

I said Haleluja and all a sudden left

for the front      chest ripped open

not a wreck head

nor out to have fun

the rednecks got out on the frontline in attacks

you’re online?   you get it?        now what?

your bro’ was your age when he lept on the mine head to toe

he hit the ground but didn’t workout what happened

what happened?           So you write bro’ like this?

nice name he’s got

these things you go on about

literature!          ay!       ain’t it ridiculous?

I’m a poem gone to print in which a man is always banned

get rid of him in me quick!

They’ve smashed a fist wallop on his nose so

even his tomorrow was afraid of its sound

like an ass fainted on top of a hill

he was snortingly asleep

donkey dreaming

muzzle paired up with nothing but the grazing

Think I’d better stay close to her

so I don’t ruin my chances

in this house, this vast garden

if I were to shout at her

the Turks would hear it with the satellites            sorry, just hold the line!

Let me say it in the receiver

one night as soon as I came…

she rolled over in my dream

and got wasted in some other bed

The sun          was late behind a window in Iraq

I’m far!  I have to     pick up my freightened car

and put tyre marks on some lips

so from the mine field          to have carried my cross

I’ve travelled my youth

and under my travelling feet           my fag end was crushed     

why not rush?

I’m not stupid           the gone years of a war

to count

that of all its tanks    no single bullet          was my lot

why not deny?

Behind the gate of my mouth          swollen I love you

last night        on a nun’s lips I took a walk

tonight                       I picked a few pieces of India

tomorrow…

What schemes he has

like a bullet looking for a heart in this map, he is not

who has revealed his secret in my hand            me?

Don’t look into my lines            irrelevantly       hitting here and there

The soft top of my poems is pulled by pain!

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