Pieta

My life lays dripping in my lap
Like a deflated blow-up doll
I gently stroke its sticky wiry hair
But with every stroke
It sheds a lock
Its stench fills my lungs
With a sulfuric tinge
Of empty roads
And myriad intersections
It stinks of punctured dreams
And a quagmire of choices
And a sweet nausea
Of apathy
At each bend
I can care less
I return to my starting point
And with each turn
I ever seek
Oh so futilely
My starting point

Pieces of Me

Your absence is scattered around the house

Like pieces of me
And I miss you
Every time
In spite of myself
Maybe I’m just bored
With my own company
Maybe I just like yours
In any case
Won’t you remember
Next time
To pack your absence along with you?

My mother told me
My hands grew larger
As she bid me farewell
My mother told me
She strung herself
A laundry line for my dreams.
How could I let them blow away?

© Copyright 2003 Obeida Sidani

Iodine

Like loneliness isn’t enough,
I have you.

You rush in
Even before I realize
How much I need you,
And rush away
Before I realize
I’m over you.

The smell of your scalp
As I inhaled you good-bye
Still fills my lungs
With the tinge of iodine.
I miss the longing.

The place is huge without you.
I lose myself in its empty corners.
I have the couch all for myself
But that is not what I want.
A breath wafts by my side
And echoes of you;
A hollow voice
A resonance of your whining.

And then there is my life,
In a heap on the floor,
Ready to be swept, too, under the rug.

How many times must the same wound bleed
Before it heals?
How many times must I hit rock-bottom
Before I rise again?

I tumble down from grace
Won’t you hold out a hand for me
And let me drag you down
To my lacy black abyss?

I break the ground beneath my feet
And descend at you.
I drink you like my soul
That I miss so much.
I soar above you
And break into pieces,
And shimmer while falling
Like our end.

I scatter the stars
Over your voice
That I may hear it again.

Again and again
I break your silence,
I break into song
Over your wound.

Smile,
That I may find my words again.
Smile,
That I may shatter my gagged self
And weep again.

Won’t you hold me now
While I fade away?
Won’t you hold me
And I’ll dissolve into you?

Hold me for when their eyes sweep over me
Like refined dust,
Hold me for when I crumble before the indifference,
Before the sweeping blasé of their yawn.

And on their faces
Frozen smiles
Fissured skin
And sadistic dreams.

I write you now
That I may erase myself,
I write you now
That I may be born again.

The Memory of Me

I stop and look back;

There is nothing anymore ahead of me.

I stoop into the abyss of my memory,
Out of boredom.

I repeat myself, in endless tautologies,
I talk, but am tired of hearing my voice.

And they rush onto me
In heaps of illusion
Of a semblance of a reality that was.

And they hurl onto me
Their perfumed corpses
And seduce me with my own name.

And I cry.

It is not me that cries,
For I, too, have died.
It is the memory of me.

© Copyright 2003 Obeida Sidani

Absence Materialized

From the corners of nothing

I snatch my existence,
I, the man who has everything.

The void thickens around me,
It relinquishes its absence,
It is bored into being.

I want to speak,
Say nothing,
But cannot even begin to articulate it.

I reach within,
For faces and thoughts
That quickly dissolve;

I reach for my self
That has already granulated.
I reach for where I am no longer.

I speak their names,
And, after the delay,
they echo back;

They tell me of how it went,
How it goes,
Without me.

They tell me of a life
Where I am not,
Of my world not missing me.

They tell me of my laughter
Ringing hollow in other ears,
Of words that have forsaken me.

For I am not, no longer,
I am Being folded on itself;
I am my absence materialized.

© Copyright 2003 Obeida Sidani

We Will Not Be Silent

ABSOLUT DAHIEH

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