It Would Be a Cold Day in Hell
by Mutasem Amayreh
You heard my story
Tongue-tied
My crowning glory
In a World-wide
Eye-folded
Yet in a cottage
tied
One day
The owner scolded
The bushy eyebrows
Frowned
On the scent of treason
Yelped the hound
During the peak season
Different colored Inks spilled
One iota of sound reason
The Mantle it pilled
What follow that I
detest
While sight-blinded
Began the Rorschach test
The process, long-winded
I didn’t hesitate
That one-sided picture
Of the issue
Started to imitate
Composed a tissue
of lies
Didn’t freak
Cut my ties
Promised Ink won’t leak
Believed the wiseacre
That talent spotter
Never become a risk-taker
But a life-long voter.
This poem speaks of the feudalistic political systems that dominated the Arab World for tens of years and still are! It also sheds a small amount of light on the still prominent atmosphere of a large proportion of intellectuals trying to accommodate to such a humiliating living suppressed by voracious systems.
Having spilled their ink for the first time, they, intellectuals, got confronted by these systems, ‘Began the Rorschach test.’ During this confrontation, they denied what they first thought of as revolutionary ideas, and so started to imitate the systems’ story about what is happening in their societies. Moreover, they isolated themselves from their societies, ‘Cut my ties’ and promised not to allow their ink to spill again. They gave up risking their lives, and pledged allegiance to these systems.
