Cyborg

Two worlds tear at me,
each with their own
places and faces and milestones.

To my left, little greenlings grow,
and though they live in different
little pots and little huts,

they sway all the same
with the winds that forewarn
of the coming war, creeping—

To my right, an earful of content
and an eyeful of binary air
that spares neither digit nor point
from its cunning cloud.

It counts and foretells aloud;
it kneads light into forecasts
and commands an army
of gratis corpses.

I use both to stand;
to extend my hand,
to earn my bread
and to feed my head.

How long will either last?

An Acute Hyperbole: Gabriel’s Horn

I hunger for the next
before I'm even
finished with this
one.

I make another;
another one follows.
Each is only half
of its predecessor,
and diminishing.
They fill and comfort me,
from here to infinity.

They fill, yes,
but they do not hold
nor suffice to enfold.

Sam Zamrik is a queer Syrian poet, translator, and political educator in exile in Berlin, Germany. Zamrik is co-founder of Damascus University’s first-ever poetry club and has taken part and given performances in several panel discussions on poetry, language, and politics at key Berlin venues and universities such as Humboldt University, Bard College Berlin, Literature House Berlin, House of World Cultures, and the Volk’s Theater Berlin. Zamrik’s debut poetry collection I Am Not published by Hanser Berlin Publishing House has received the inaugural Wunderblock Award by the Wunderblock Foundation.