i am a scholar of renown
and i want you to know
the cost of what i have known…

i have learned the art of telling a lie
so that even i think it’s true;
i know how to turn off all of the pain,
as simple as flipping a switch
merely at the cost of every emotion,
merely at the cost of quietly being insane
shutting it all away for another day
to the point that i cannot recall
if i am masking all the feelings
or if the feelings that come are masks;
i have come to know so many things
but i cannot seem to figure out
how to unlearn it all

i have lost a dear and wondrous thing
pure and golden as the morning sun
but i have forgotten what it was
so long has it been gone from me
that even the shadow it once cast
has vanished in the deep and the dark
and now i am lonesome without reason
left wandering sightless in once familiar lands
vibrating with this blackhole emptiness

איך נראה הסוף

כשאתה לא מכיר את עצמך?

כדור אחר כדור, פצצה אחר פצצה

והארץ הנמחקת היא ברשותה

עם רוחות רפאים מייללות

מתחת לכאפייה מדממת וקרועה

נודדים אבודים ברחובות

כי אין יותר בתים לרדוף.

كيف تبدو النهاية

عندما لا تعرف نفسك؟

رصاصة بعد رصاصة وقنبلة بعد قنبلة

والأرض المطمسة ممسوكة

مع أشباح الأشباح تنتحب

تحت الكوفية الدموية والممزقة

تجول ضائع في الشوارع

لأنه لم يعد هناك المزيد من المنازل التي تطاردها.

What does the end look like

When you don’t know yourself?

Bullet upon bullet, bomb upon bomb

And the obliterated land is possessed

With the ghosts of ghosts wailing

Beneath bloody and torn keffiyeh

Wandering lost in the streets

For there are no more homes to haunt.

We fall in love in our dreams

Again and again and again

In different places

With different ends

With different people

With different friends

Until we wake

In forgetfulness

Lost in a fog

Feeling only

That something valuable was taken

I know

That when the old scream

The scream for death

But when the young scream

They scream against it

I know

That when the old dream

They dream of death

But when the young dream

They dream of love

and the one they would embrace

They dream of hope

And the view from the mountaintop;

It’s evidence of entropy

Infecting like a virus

That years away or child

Leaving us mummified

From the dry and salt stained years