Long Arab Poems
Long Arab Poems. Below are the most popular long Arab by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Arab poems by poem length and keyword.
This aspect is succinctly told by, W.Somerset Maugham from an Arab tale:
The speaker is Death:
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, "Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw Death had jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me". The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, "Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?" "That was not a threatening gesture," I said, "It was only a state of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra".
(A far older version forms part of the Babylonian Talmud)
Seven Mossad Agents came to Norway a winter day
when a snow drowns the needs of the homeless
asleep in a shop's doorway absorbing the sarcastic smell
of coffee and the aroma of a Napoleon cream cake.
Their mission was to assassinate a man called a terrorist
by them, but freedom fighters by others.
The target had been located, a man of 47 bearded, with
prematurely gray hair, Semitic features, and a nose somewhat bigger than what is the norm in a Nordic land
He works as a waiter at a cafe, and take the bus home
a quarter past ten in the evening, to his bed-sit, about ten minutes ride from the town.
The group needed two taxis to take them to a hotel called, “Larsen's ski lodge” a pleasant little place with
modern IKEA furniture, giving rooms an airy ambiance
the group went to work at once, the leader carrying a
heavy mobile phone, trying to make contact to base, one presumes an embassy, but failed.
One of the women donned a blond wig, walked to the cafe to be sure their target was there
a quarter past ten two men entered the bus, one of them
who spoke a few word in Swedish, asked for two ticket to Husly which was the lat stop before the bur turned around and back to town
when the “terrorist” alighted the bus the two assassins followed.
No point going into details here, but they got their man
and hid his body in a snow drift.
Cooley, they stood by the stop to catch the bus on its return trip, smoking cigarettes of a foreign brand oblivious eyes saw them at the bus stop
The assassins had overlooked one thing, the man had a girlfriend and when he didn't appeared as usual she went out looking for him with the help of neighbors
Her boyfriend was found in the snowdrift
the police quickly knew what they were dealing with
but since they, the local police were not armed, they waited for reinforcement, when in the morning the assassin group came out to go to the railways station
the group were arrested.
Then the bomb dropped, they had murdered the wrong man, another Arab, they quickly insinuated was a terrorist too, what else was he doing in Norway
The court case took a long time, one of the prosecutors
fell in love with the woman with a fake wig, tried to
say she was an innocent bystander, it didn't wash
the case dragged on, in the end, and since the holocaust
was invoked, the guilty only got a few years.
Tonight I stayed at work until 7:00.
It was dark when I locked the front doors.
Winter approaches again, soon the great coat
huddled like a rug around me. The streets
were active as usual, block residents
hanging out front steps. I said goodnight
to Nydian Figueroa, after school counselor.
I bought a beer at the deli on Third Ave.
from the Arab owner. He’s a bit upset about
the bottle bill.
Collecting bottles from small groceries
could be a useful youth employment enterprise.
I walked down Fifth along the park in the dark
drinking my beer and looking at women. I need
a good badly. I tried to decide whether
to go to the movies, a Hopi film Howard recommended,
or just go home, watch tv and light a candle.
Maybe I’d meet someone at the film.
Can I handle
the malady of going home tonight? If I die,
I die alone.
I turned west toward the subway
past the museum, through the park.
I can’t look at the myriad lights in buildings
large enough to hold a small town. It increases
my anxiety and anonymity to the breaking point.
I hoped to be mugged, for the human contact.
Two big guys looked me over, but I lowered
my center of gravity and they passed quietly.
Survival proves I am alive.
The white pines
in this corner of the park hold a cool, earthy air
reminding me of coming winter, that mortality
is restful, of the black bear and swollen river I saw
500 miles away and only one day ago.
The charnel houses roar like famished beasts,
And I walk among their desecrated cemeteries.
The scent of ruin clings to my charred lungs,
My journey in this dimension is sold at the price of blood and iron.
My tainted hands tremble as I explore the memory of my ancestors' scars,
Their hatred of those *****-phobes shaped me.
I chase vertigoes of independence that other Blacks flee,
Pleasures that burn hotter than fear.
I know the value of gold, of pain,
I measure injustice through the hypocrisy of their human rights.
Survival is learned in grime and fire,
And forgiveness has never found a place in my grief-pierced heart.
I swallowed stars of my destiny,
I plunged into the trash heaps of human history,
To tear out fragments of fury,
To offer them to my oppressors like bolts of truth.
The sirens of negrophobia flail when I smile,
Impervious to the morals of these heirs of slavery,
My choices, an explosion of freedom in the silence of supremacist racists,
My victories, scars I wear with pride.
My ancestors weep through my dilated veins,
Their predatory chains are mine, yet I dance over the cruelty of these Christian slavers, without forgetting all those Arab-Muslim traffickers under a false pedophile prophet.
I expect nothing, regret nothing,
And in this chaos, I invented my own light from the darkness of these racialists’ alienation.
Afro-Arabia Historical Trauma
The sprawling sand sea bridge; a mirage historical overview
Across the red sea, the dhows used to glide,
Where the sand of the desert met the ocean’s wide tide.
From the Horn of the east to the Swahili shores,
They traded in spices, in fabrics, and ores.
Then the seventh-century crescent rose high in the sky,
Bringing faith to the kingdoms as decades rolled by.
A fusion of bloodlines, a blending of speech,
As Arabic phrases reached the Zanzibar beach.
Yet history bleeds through the dirt and the stone,
The Trans-Saharan routes heard the captive man's groan.
An Indian Ocean trade that left a deep scar,
A trauma that echoes from near and from far.
The modern paradox in alliance and in friction
In the halls of Cairo, in the Riyadh sun,
They speak of a future where two worlds are one.
Nasser and comrades, unified in their stand,
To chase the pale empires away from their land.
Nine flags fly together in the Arab League fold,
While Gulf billions venture in infrastructure gold.
Yet a fracture still lingers in the modern day light
Where the border of identity splits black and white.
One without telling their histories?
From the banks of the Nile to the Sahelian sand,
Resource and water divide up the land.
While workers traveling north for a life that is new
Still look for the dignity they are rightly due.
Moving on without hearing their stories?
Historical Trauma; the scar of the slave trade
The desert is vast, the ocean is deep,
They carry the secrets that centuries keep.
Prolonged years, before they trade
West sailed to the Atlantic shore,
The caravans marched through the wilderness door.
For a thousand long years, the footprints were made
The wealth of empires built on a human trade.
Though faith tied the continents, a shadow remained
The memory of ancestors captured and chained.
We speak of alliance, of summits and trade,
Of strategic bonds that our leaders have made.
But the ghost in the ledger, the pain in the bone
Is a trauma of history that must be known.
Arab-African history is a tapestry
Of deep spiritual brotherhood woven alongside
Heavy, painful threads of human bondage.
Tensions of the Arab-African slavery
Historical PTSD relationship trauma.
A dynamics historical trauma
Frigid temperatures filled the square
Rigid opponents chilled the air
Deriding him a radical socialist
Unbridling the race to get him off a ballot list
The city was arm in arm, in protest daily
Whites, Blacks, Arab and Israeli
and what came up to all’s surprise
Mayor elect—Mamdani’s rise
Along came the 112th Mayor elect
Strong spent are the people who'd select
Lines stretched around doters
Awaiting hours were his voters
Indulges in a city reborn it’s bagels and lox
Sworn in over the subway station docks
Hand upon Islam’s holy text
A marvel of a man who’ll govern next
Swearing words of conviction and not of pity
I swear, to bolster and defend this dynamic city
Mayor Mamdani
promises New York City ~
a hopeful journey
New Year's Day
1/1/26
They hunted, captured, deported, raped, flogged, and dehumanized our ancestors for centuries.
With the complicity of some of their own Negrophobic kin.
They were chained in slave plantations and in colonial trading posts.
They were movable property—docile, servile, and submissive—for the glory of that slave-owning empire.
They ended up in the human zoos of the Republic of Negrophile Enlightenment, in the land of human rights.
Alienation, submission, servitude, cowardice, and betrayal poisoned their genetic code.
Their descendants fill the supremacist prisons of the West.
Persecution has become the straitjacket of their identity.
Their victimized lamentations remain inaudible to the heirs of the Code Noir.
Most of them shine in entertainment, which the West capitalizes on.
They embraced the obscurantism of Abrahamic religions with the zeal of those fanatic fundamentalists, descendants of Arab-Muslim slave traders.
They resemble every other people, except themselves.
They hate themselves so deeply that they curse their Africanness.
They are compulsive consumers of the West’s waste.
They have Westernized, yet still suffer the plagues of Negrophobia.
To you, the self-hating: you are, and will remain, Black in the eyes of our oppressors, despite the opportunities that may improve your standard of living.
Attributed To Concerned parents
of Traumatized Refugee
Dear Fred and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump...
Posthumous belated tattered letter fragment
recently discovered (liberally sprinkled with
hyperbole (presumed for greater audacious
zealousness), sans accidentally acquired
by yours truly.
Miscellaneous personal item highly valued
when thwarted from auctioneer, whose gently
persuasion collectible merchandise requisitioned,
thence keepsake property perfunctory mandatorily forfeited.
Due compensation from sole male heir (me),
whose long since (resting in eternal
peace) papa suffered degradation,
humiliation and understandable lamentation
as a kid living in Flatbush.
Authorities and expert legal scholars
pieced together what probably comprised
a lengthy epistle rivaling the Epic of
Gilgamesh).
Recollection recounted torturous,
malicious, and flagitious mean spiritedness
visited upon the ambitious, cadaverous, and
timorous body electric high-jinxed introverted male,
whose abstemious, conscientious, and nutritious
dietary regime, could not forestall rigor mortis.
A postscript (purportedly penned prior to
once philosophical pensive poet's papa's passing)
stated that said personage felt bitterness,
disharmonious envious self loathing.
That grownup man known as mine father,
though once upon a time, said recently
anonymous deceased old fogey ironically
registered as an atrocious, cantankerous,
and egregious deplorable high school student.
Also, the author of what constitutes partial
opprobrious litany attests during his
idolatrous, notorious, and semiconscious
Arab zombie school daze.
Distant Light
by Walid Khazindar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Bitterly cold,
winter clings to the naked trees.
If only you would free
the bright sparrows
from your fingertips
and release a smile—that shy, tentative smile—
from the imprisoned anguish I see.
Sing! Can we not sing
as if we were warm, hand-in-hand,
sheltered by shade from a sweltering sun?
Can you not always remain this way,
stoking the fire: more beautiful than expected, in reverie?
Darkness increases and we must remain vigilant
since this distant light is our sole consolation ...
this imperiled flame, which from the beginning
has constantly flickered,
in danger of going out.
Come to me, closer and closer.
I don't want to be able to tell my hand from yours.
And let's stay awake, lest the snow smother us.
Walid Khazindar was born in Gaza City. He is considered to be one of the very best Palestinian poets; his poetry has been said to be "characterized by metaphoric originality and a novel thematic approach unprecedented in Arabic poetry." He was awarded the first Palestine Prize for Poetry in 1997. Keywords/Tags: Arabic, translation, Arab spring, Palestine, Palestinian, Gaza, distant, light, flame, fire, autumn, winter, tree, trees, birds, sparrows, fingertips, smile, sing, shade, sun, fire, darkness, hand, hands, snow
"50 Words for Poe: Seagulls"
He was an Albatross
She taught him Seagulls
Another language
LAX was nothing on
Heathrow, decision made
She had decided to catch
a flight over to old Blighty instead
Haunt the Hell
out of some cross-dressing
poet who had taken a
break for a spell
he’d gone all troppo in his head
Yeah, she’d go ring his door bell
Earl Grey tea and
Spotted Dick puddin' with
some of his yummy custard
Raspberry Jam, clotted cream and
toast some fresh bread
play Scrabble
have a few laughs
in his warm bed
She had research to continue ...
Skipsea
Holderness
Columbus was the name of her dog
he was a real fright
she decided to bring him along
on the journey, the flea bag,
she’d keep him on a tight leash
he’d leave the stewardess in peace
and behave on the flight
Seagulls, another language
Good luck it is said
Albatross caught in mid flight
looking for home
looking for cover
under a nice eiderdown doona
he thought he was cool
alpha ahead of the others
“Woman”, he thought
“I’m cool, I’m way out of sight”
Columbus was the name of her dog
he was a real fright, Bull Arab X
She'd keep him on a tight leash
He’d behave on the flight
(LadyLabyrinth/2019)
Air – La Femme d’Argent
https://youtu.be/U4U19zwFENs