O mankind, behold this city! More guileless than Guernica, more brave than Fallujah, more wise than Alexandria, more leveled than Dresden; city bereft of mother and father, of east and west, city without hearth, without ink, without unsullied clothes; here rice is sold by the gram, here mothers still their infants with brine, here life…

Fuck Armageddon. The cops get it on. Writhing and fucking dead on top of the poems, who redden. The poems blush their own blood into Messolonghi Street. The poems: fulsome plankton. Blenderized in the French-kissing maws of the armored Megalodon-shark policemen. Who has his head so far up his asshole the police can’t even fit…

I have no fatherland I live within words That are shrouded in black And held hostage Mustapha Khayati, can you hear me? The seat of power is in language where the police patrol No more poetry circles! No more poet laureates! In my neighborhood virgin poets are sacrificed Rappers with dust-blown eyes and baggy pants…

the Aegean is a disease bomb prostitutes with HIV children with bloated bellies Muslims with TB saltwater groupers with gingivitis or lemon sauce On the Island of International-Foreign-Friend-Processing the mayor is an entrepreneur, the priest is an entrepreneur, the cop is an entrepreneur, the neo-nazi is an entrepreneur, the entrepreneur is an entrepreneur, the grouper…

For Ghayath al-Madhoun and his million Arab poets 1. I decided to leave Syria the day a stray bullet passed in front of my eyes. That day I realized my homeland was not my homeland, my blood not my blood, and my freedom belonged to a freedom fighter who didn’t think to ask my permission…

the light that shines forth from the prime minister’s mouth when he says that slowly but surely law and order are being restored / the light that shines forth from the mouth of the police spokesman when he refers to squatters as trash and to refugees as dirt / the light that shines forth from…