The Memory of Me

I stop and look back;

There is nothing anymore ahead of me.

I stoop into the abyss of my memory,
Out of boredom.

I repeat myself, in endless tautologies,
I talk, but am tired of hearing my voice.

And they rush onto me
In heaps of illusion
Of a semblance of a reality that was.

And they hurl onto me
Their perfumed corpses
And seduce me with my own name.

And I cry.

It is not me that cries,
For I, too, have died.
It is the memory of me.

© Copyright 2003 Obeida Sidani

Absence Materialized

From the corners of nothing

I snatch my existence,
I, the man who has everything.

The void thickens around me,
It relinquishes its absence,
It is bored into being.

I want to speak,
Say nothing,
But cannot even begin to articulate it.

I reach within,
For faces and thoughts
That quickly dissolve;

I reach for my self
That has already granulated.
I reach for where I am no longer.

I speak their names,
And, after the delay,
they echo back;

They tell me of how it went,
How it goes,
Without me.

They tell me of a life
Where I am not,
Of my world not missing me.

They tell me of my laughter
Ringing hollow in other ears,
Of words that have forsaken me.

For I am not, no longer,
I am Being folded on itself;
I am my absence materialized.

© Copyright 2003 Obeida Sidani