What do we need to know about the MENA region today?

Two-Hundred and Thirty Three

What can I say
In order to be vigilant?
How do I organize pessimism
Into surviving fireflies?
What and where are these images,
Like germs germinating,
Gestating in the belly of some vowel
That lingers after all horizons are
Gone?
Knock on an O and you get anachrOnism
And a stOrm.
Step into the O and you get
An eye
Not for an eye,
But for an O.
The O not of nOvelty or of nO
But of nOise.
Interfere with it and you sabotage
Information
Step in front of it and you get a
TempO
Not like a meter reading,
Like a contemporary.
Not the other one,
With time,
Not, not with.
With the hole of an O like
Outside.
But we are out of time,
Not as in anachronism,
As in particles in parallel lines
Sewing the last threads
As we sit on a boat in the direction
Of a firefly sunset that is bound to fall,
And us with it.
But trace, mark and tease
Stay behind
For posterity like eternity, but real,
Like a loop around my neck,
They stay because the dead's
Word is the last.
Or the first.
Like the O in surprise
In redeem, in listen.
There is no O in listen
There isn't an O in sight
I mean in sight.
There is no O in nod
Only emptiness spiralled out
By too much nodding.