‘Your Tweet Says It All’

Your Tweet Says It All

By Fady Joudah

 

It’s finally 666 revolutions

around itself since the earth

has spun my annihilation.

I acknowledge the land

you’re standing on.

It’s no longer an achievement

 

to have good bedside manners.

Those who are numbers

are also diagnoses,

 

they think their names are special,

their stories and small towns,

what they do or did

for a living to die for. The machine

to save them is what they’re after. Progress

 

the artist at the crossroads. Either you

are the devil, and it becomes you,

or you make it the devil.

And kindness, the customer.

 

It wasn’t always like this,

says the artist to art. That’s why

I deploy you, says art to its practitioner.

And the masses are split in two

 

or four. Like cells. One camp

says it’s resistance

to what the other camp says

is resistance. We, they,

electrified, hold on to light,

cut it off.

Fady Joudah îs a poet for our times & all. He is the author of six collections; most recently, […]. He has translated several collections of poetry from Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.