Al Ameen Muhammad | Eulogy

Eulogy

—For z

The eyes refuse you again, only the silent night unwinding your body out of its soul,
The edge of the knife macheting your flesh –The fluid chasing away the heat of your body.
The weightlessness of your hands which defines your bones in motion.

you have learnt to slice through the night to survive in my dreams — an unmasked reality unveiled in my veins. To begin the night is to call a ghost by its fourth name.

I have failed to refuse the thin ropes of your dreams seized by night. I idle my body into dust and I’m here learning to gather the tiny bits of your ropes. I didn’t wish to bury them, only learning to plait them as dead lines in my poems.

On days like this I’m twice the weight of the earth.
I’m void; the sun’s sharpness cuts through the stillness of my bones. I refuse to burn. I feel myself drowning in the universe of your loss — witlessly.

I have twice rubbed my body out of fear. My crippled leg crawling to fuel the kinetic energy of my bones to run an athletic of plugging out the silhouette of your face in my veins.

Z, to leave the softness of your hands is a sickness I’m dying of. I didn’t refuse to depart from the shadows of your hijab. But exit has refused to define everything that’s owned by breath.

Z, I know you can hear me: i’m gulped by your emptyness. I am swimming in the river of your grief, my body is dragging me close to the shore but I don’t know if it is dragging me to you, or close to your home. But there’s a gap, wide enough that only your calling can fill in my chest.

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Bearing Witness To Everything

There are different pathways to the doorstep of memories // I have picked one // I can never leave the life I left before // Sorry! I mean the body // my body now fits into the cloth of grief // A body that witnesses blood cannot escape the torture of memories // memories will toast that body into the arms of water // it will invent goosebumps into the skin before it offers the body to its origin // my lips kissed the part of a sad song that has no beats // the beats don’t walk the mind to peace, it runs it east // the only difference between a song and a poem is the presence of lyrics // But a poem heals faster than a song because a song here multiplies the degree of burning memories in the brain // Our hands were fisting inside the yam bowl, harmattan wind blowing before bodies whose day ended on a farm // The song arrives from a distance dizzy in the wild wind before a bullet opens a hole in my father’s bone // He falls broken like cracked egg, like cup thrown to the diabolical face of a mountain, blood caressing his mouth, body having romancing with pain on my palms // I held him like water // it rains, not water but blood like water // it is blood, it is my father’s watery life soaking into the sand // l, bearing witness to everything // Tell me what language a boy should speak when his hands hold his father’s dead body // tell me how a fatherless child whose mother’s spine is tossed with fear and grief of how death grabbed her lover should know of the existence of happiness // Tell me how to unwind the hate I have of this country? // Tell me how not to remember home as water // to describe home as a place of haven // must our eyes hold wa(te)r before we are recognized as the children of our country // do we cross the border our country lay for us // must we be named flock of boys that holds no smile but blood lines in their Poems // must our bodies be diluted by griefs // must we swim in our own salty water // must we hold the heaviness of memories in our chest?

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Poems (c) Al Ameen Muhammad

Image: Copilot remixed