Tomorrow

Tomorrow
I shall pack my bags and leave.
I don’t know where.
I don’t know why.
But I know that I shall not be here any longer.
Tomorrow
I pile new absences atop my old ones;
I shall sniff them one more time, and disappear.
The terrazzo shall feel cold beneath my feet,
and the stale smell of the peeling blue walls shall
part ahead of my sadness. The flaps of the doorway
shall embrace me one last time.
And you, you shall not be there.

Tomorrow,
I tear myself out of my life,
and seek myself anew.
Tomorrow,
I shall renounce myself.
Tomorrow
I shall hone my solitude.

(originally posted on October 11, 2003)

Tragic

No compromise.

When the final curtain falls,
I will come down in flames.
No half exits,
No hesitant escapes.

When the call comes around,
I’ll stay rooted in my place.
No hasty excuses,
No clinging to the earth.

I will take it as I find it,
I will gulp it as it is.
No syrup for me, thanks;
No god with a sweet face.

Tomorrow when I falter,
I will shatter with despair.
I will tell you where I have been,
I will leave without a face.

Tomorrow in the gallows,
When the sirens lose their voices,
When they tell you it will linger,
I will—enough!

Someday there will be none,
When tomorrow doesn’t come.

(Originally posted on January 24, 2006)

I’m still not ready to leave

I’m still not ready to leave, but dare not say it to anyone. There are words behind my eyes still maturing, still not ripe for utterance. I have made a habit of keeping things to myself, but every now and again they weigh on me. Sadness is like that, it begs to be shared, to be spread like a cold. But I am resisting the decadent temptation, this once.

My throat is ready to leave; it is charred with exhaust. But something in me lingers, not wanting to pack just yet. More things to fold within: these congested streets, my backache, unwrapped endings, and the hesitation of what’s to come—I’ll have to pack them all. But I’ll have to unpack them first: lay them on the bed, fold them one by one—I don’t have much room.

But what to tell the dust coating everything and our lungs? What to tell the tired dust?

I shall return. Every now and then I breathe from a different nostril, and always gasp for air.

(Originally posted on April 14, 2007)

"War" by Naomi Shihab Nye

"If this is what we studied for, 

heads bent over books in wooden desks 

engraved with the names of the dead, 

then I have a new feeling for subtraction.   

Olive trees, three acres slashed 

equals zero zero zero. 

That’s my address. The grade on my page.   

If this is the spectrum of pronouns— 

you kill, he or she kills, anyone might kill— 

then I speak a new language without them. 

Words rinse into one another recklessly— 

morning, wishes, windows, paste 

of kisses on a child’s warm scalp.   

If this is why we bow our heads to pray 

in the corner, by the iron stove 

so many years, forgive me. 

Forget words, posture, time of day. 

Blood aches inside my veins. 

Where did we bury Sitti? 

I will wait beside her stone, 

telling the same story she told 

of the river of waiting, how some of us 

fall into it and are not seen again. 

How some end up in another paradox 

with a changed name, Mahmoud to Mo, 

lost in small shops making change 

for gasoline. If this is persistence, 

who knows? I’m stuck in the corner of war 

that’s not even called war, pressed like a pigeon 

into a twig cage, my dry eyes flaming."

-from Transfer (American Poets Continuum)