Free Alaa

Inspired by Mshairi’s poetry and MentalAcrobatics’ lyric swapping skills and with apologies to Grace Nichols for altering the text of her poem Of Course When They Ask for Poems About the ‘Realities’ of Black Women, I join fellow bloggers in the google-bombing for Alaa campaign.

Of Course When They Ask
for Poems About the ‘Realities’
of Egypt….

What they really want
at times
is a specimen
of an Egyptian king encased in a British museum

Egyptian hieroglyphics
etched on Egyptian pyramids
guarded by Egyptian Sphinxes
they want an Egyptian body
swaddled in white robes and mummified
and validation
for the stereotype
already in their heads

Or else they want
celluloid myths
of a white Cleopatra

I can say I can write
no poem big enough
to hold the essence

of Egypt
or an Egyptian woman
or an Egyptian man

Maybe this poem is to say,
that I like to see
all Egyptians
free and unafraid to blog

Typing away
with each stroke of the keyboard
the twisted self-negating
history
they’ve inherited

Typing away
with each stroke of the keyboard

technorati tag: googlebombingforalaa