some poems by Ali

Something nice has come out of the Craig & Miriam project. It has brought me back in contact with an old friend, Ali Hamoudi, and his poetry. After graduation, Ali headed off to Iraq, where part of his family was. Every so often I would get poems from him.

I knew I wanted Miriam to be in touch with social issues, but the truth is I have been lucky enough to have no direct experience of domestic or global violence. Perhaps this is true for many of us in the Western world, who have the luxury of hearing about “events somewhere else” on the TV or the newspaper. Deaths in Baghdad might can feel as fantastical as Craig's computer game world.

How to stay connected? There are no easy answers.
Here are two poems of Ali's that I like.

Dedicated to the Guy Who Was Crushed by a Tank

I'm writing you this letter because tomorrow I might be dead.
I can hear you snickering in the background
“he thought it had a hand break.”
I can hear you sigh in sorrow
“another life wasted.”
I can hear you justify your reactions
“he was a poor man, small man, worthless man.
He had no job, no life.”
And I can't help but wonder if you’re right.
To think I could do something so noble
as to sit in front of a tank
for a humanity as hopeless as this
and then to realize
There is no McDonald's* in the afterlife.

ali hamoudi 5/Apr 2004

*McDonald's is a registered trademark of the McDonald's corporation.

Tree's Creation

There was a time when I looked at a tree
I said this is beautiful God's creation.
Now all I can see
is resource for the purposes of continuing
endless cycles of oppression.

Though somebody told me the tree would be happy
sacrificed for the sake of God,
thick black bellowing smoke, impenitrable to light,
covered all possibilty
to see/be
creation.

ali hamoudi 9/Aug 2003