Life suicided, Life sentenced
I expect you recently read
that more American soldiers
—men and women both—
killed themselves
in Afghanistan last year
than were killed in physical
combat in the war there.
Though Mohammad
al-Ajami will never kill
himself for writing words
in Qatar that’ve landed him
a life sentence in prison
for publicly attacking
the regime in a poem,
we, his comrade poets,
aren’t taking any chances.
We know the murderers
of every atom of humanity
and the truths of life have
a hundred ways of making
a man or woman want
to end it, jump out of it,
slit the wrist of it, fire a
bullet into it. So we’re
going to liberate
Mohammad al-Ajami
from the nauseating
injustice as soon as possible. Ayibobo!
—Jack Hirschman
