I’m doing this before I even have my morning coffee, something must be wrong here…or I am taking this poetry thing way too seriously. I have been thinking of a funny (not so funny actually) thing that happened on this blog…ever since I started it, a few comments from nice random readers have come in, but nothing too overwhelming or serious. Then I posted a poem by Laurel Harig and the title of the blog post included the words ‘Israeli Apartheid”…a few days later some strange comments began trickling on, only on that post…then even weirder ones…then ones in a language i didn’t even recognize, until they started appearing every hour or so, no exaggeration…now why in the world would I get spammed on only ONE post in this blog, and the ONLY ONE that mentions Israeli Apartheid? Who wants to bet this current post I’m writing sans coffee will also get spammed? I’ll keep you updated, and you Zionist Internet Spammers, you don’t scare me!! 🙂

I leave you with a lovely poem by Chris Chamoun, one of our Beirut Poeticians.

The First Singer.
(Slight background info: It is believed that human beings began the practice of singing, and hence the first musical practice, about 80000 years ago)

I – I envy the first singer
First savior of my life
Eighty thousand years behind me
Barely speaking
Possessed of a laughably tiny
Vocabulary

I fancy it happened at nightfall
Under a glance from the
Immortal cold face
Of her
Concealing herself in earth’s shadow
To look like a floating smile
And the first singer –
Unshaven
Squatting nude, poised
At the end of the past, or
The beginning of the future
Whose only desires were raw food
And sex –

Felt the first human tone
And a throb in the diaphragm
A quiver moving through
The bones
As though it were choosing to
Move as such

The sound started and stopped
In a flicker
Under her floating smile

II – It was cold
And the first singer
Sought shelter

Eighty thousand years later
Somewhere else
Sewn black cotton
Stole upward
By a tiny act of will

Beside it there was a glance
And a secretly floating smile
A thought, or two
Of something that has never
Been real

III – Time will dissolve us
All of us
As the first tone
And the first singer
In a flicker

Mankind built great machines
Thus, one or two approached
Her floating smile
That in eighty thousand years
Has not been dissolved

They walked on her skin
Feeling nearly weightless

These secret thoughts
Entail a throb in the diaphragm
A feeling of weightlessness
A quiver moving through the bones

When the first tone
Started and stopped
In a flicker

There was no I
and no you.