YOUSSEF RAKHA
THE REVOLUTION FOR REAL: CAIRO 2011
After Allen Ginsberg’s “The Lion for Real”
34 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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YOUSSEF RAKHA
THE REVOLUTION FOR REAL: CAIRO 2011
After Allen Ginsberg’s “The Lion for Real”
34 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
YOUSSEF RAKHA
O roar of the universe how am I chosen
I come home from Alexandria via Tanta to find the Revolution beneath my bed And with bent torso in bedside lamp light, my face level with the mattress boards I make out millions scurrying and defending themselves with stones, each a cigarette butt still sizzling They raise placards like stamps and carve slogans bigger than their bodies into the parquet, I hear their chants
The last shot of vodka not yet evaporated from my skull after a possible lay never accomplished in Alexandria my drunken bones crackle while I resist weeping, tearing off my clothes in the window: the Revolution has happened, you sons of bitches, the Revolution for real!
I leave the house on Ibn Farid Street above the biggest pickle store in Tanta, my lover letting in condolence-paying Remnants of the Fallen Regime missing neither lay nor sea, neither her mother’s face widowed hours before nor my father dead now for ten years nor beyond the Shrine Café a Saint whose member (among the miracles) was bigger than the batons of the Military Police but only my ear which got wet in Alexandria because her tears dripped from the mobile earpiece
I splash red ink onto my clothes and rush to work, lie down at the manager’s door The Revolution was not with my co-workers nor at the Metro nor even in the throats of martyrs resurrected as thugs of Central Security Drifting through the realm of the Egypt Railway Company, how come I never caught it till it fled to my room?
Ruptured after I sleep my night in the office toilet I whisper to
BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 35
