Let us assume Marx was an incomplete
man: a half-spilled bottle of ink. In this way,
we liberate the mouth, summon back
a voice that has made a home out of rust:

إلخ، إلخ، إالخ

والله

I never needed a beard to save me,
certainly not a moustache. So let us
regroup and assume that Nasser, too, was
an incomplete man: heart no bigger than
a barracks.

يابني، مصر أم الدنيا

Would you give your mama sloppy seconds?
A jammed rifle? Go buy your mama
a tank, an Air Force. Mama my معلم

طيارة شوية عليها

my mama knows her history, needed
neither a man in uniform nor his
cowardly bullets. After prayer we will break
bread and assume that Guevara,
too, was an incomplete man: a face of fire
extinguished too early to light
anything proper here. Don’t take that poster down
unless you want to, we all make do with what little
space we get: look what our fathers built with
bleeding hands. Sooner or later you will
traverse this majestic travesty. Don’t cry
for bleached pharaohs, we still have the real
deal, dirt cheap.

أوكازيون غير كده ما فيش

Ramses had chubby knees, I saw myself.

التفتكره ما بيفتكرش

What do you know of harvests? Never reap
what a foreigner has sowed unless they
did it with open palms, a face towards
the sky. If you’ve ever seen a field of wheat,
you know Cromer was a complete white
man, not strictly, but professionally; a polished medal
drenched in rain, a truly exquisite
shine. Seek out that metal which does
the same for you. We all want to be
remembered, either in stone or by name – hence the oath
we swear to paper, hence the incompleteness of life
with incomplete papers, hence people
are so ungrateful

والله

Someday we will forget the sun.