(for the revolutionaries of Tahrir Square)

Melon rinds, chewed sugar cane and greasy chicken bones,
pizza crusts, bagel bags and flattened candy cones,
empty beer cans, drinks cartons, all kinds of bottles too,
cigarette butts, roaches, maybe a works or two,
streamers, confetti, plastic spray-string and gig-flyers,
broken glass and broken dreams and busted party-goers,
discarded masks and costume shreds and other mislaid clothes,
children lost and lovers lost and coppers in their rows,
stones and bricks and scaffold poles and various iron bars,
smashed shop-windows, smoking ruins, remains of burnt-out cars,
cartridge cases, tear-gas shells, blood on the barricade –
these are what we people call the crumbs of masquerade.

rs 29.10.11

Thanks for the kind words to Sabrina Mahfouz; see her work at sabrinamahfouz.com