Ghosts

And so it fades.
Slowly it fades.
Quickly it fades.
Immediately.
It dissipates into thin air,
Into empty fridges
And emptier faces.
It shrinks,
It bows,
And it exits backwards,
Its fragile being wrapped
Into a tight ball.
Ephemral,
And volatile,
And brittle
It drips onto the floor
As I walk,
And leaves me as before,
Empty and pale.
I fall back into my former self,
My lack of one.
I fall back into… silence.
I don’t reach out,
I don’t cry out after it.
I just watch it go,
Like a thousand times before.
I almost even bid it adieu.

Its tight upward streets
And whitewashed walls,
Its afternoon still
And dizzying sun.
Its unabashed sense of contentment.
They all leave me
Like a dream.
And I don’t like what I wake up to.
I want to go back to sleep
But the alarm keeps ringing.
The coffee tastes bitter and hollow
As before,
And as before
It gives me a dull heartburn.
And yet I swallow.

Somewhere ahead
They will all meet again,
And I’ll be there.
Somewhere ahead
I’ll be once again where I were,
Where I want to be.
Somewhere ahead,
Even if only in our permanent absence.
I will dance with ghosts
If ghosts are all I love.
A ghost amongst ghosts.

Trickle

I trickle down
Between four walls
Is the room half empty
or half full?

The silence drowns
In loneliness
And darkness hugs the dust

I want to say
Something different
But everything is all the same

I want to smile
To sleep… To sleep…
I want to breathe
Where dreams cease

I am sick of myself
Of my company
Of sentences that start with me
And end where they begin

Remnant of You

Remnants of you around the house
Your stubble speckled over the sink
And the cat’s incessant whining
I curl myself into a cold ball
And pray for unconsciousness

You vanished
Like you never happened
Like a memory of a memory
Like a banal dream
You erased yourself
Off my consciousness
And I became
In my vacancy
The only remnant of you

I write

I write to set you ablaze,
like I couldn’t do with my self.
I write to scorch the earth,
to set your world afire.
I write to make your gods shudder,
with disgust and with awe.
I write because my story has not been written.

I write and you shall read,
because you have a choice.
I write and you shall read,
because you have none.
You are spellbound,
and I am falling from grace.
I write because my tale needs to be told.

I write because my memories are fading,
and gelling,
and losing their taste.
I write because I fear dissipating with them.
I write because I need to,
not because I want to.
I write…

I write a tale of two souls,
of one soul,
of many souls,
of none.
I write of sepia,
and dawn-colored flesh,
and the fading image of the folds of skin around your mouth when it broke into a smile.
I write because it shall never be again.

I write because I am forgetting the smell of the aged skin of her bosom,
the taste of the lapel of her dress,
and the way his coarse hair felt against my cheek.
I write to capture life,
because I am losing it.
And I just found out I am not getting it again.

I write a swirl,
the swelling of a yearning waltz,
of the black dust underground,
the screech of a candle burning an unfaced wall.
I write of clichés that make up my life,
and a life that made the clichés.
I write of a realm beyond,
beyond the clichés,
beyond you,
and more so every passing day,
beyond me.

Con Brio

Tonight
I will burn the night
I will scorch the earth
Beneath your feet

Tonight
I will bring you alive
I will bring you down
I will set you free

Tonight
I shall give you
What you never knew existed
I shall shatter your soul
And chew on its shards

Tonight
Like every night
I will crumble
And you
Like every night
Shall sweep me beneath your wing

Vomit

it’s funny how
you can get used to
the rhythm of the vomit
until it lulls you
into a most silent apathy

today i took the day off
to watch my cat
throw his life up
but instead
he threw mine

The Silence

I opened up my heart
And I waited
And then I heard it
The silence was deafening
But I could not understand it
I thought I spoke it well now
Maybe I was just scared of what it said
Maybe it said nothing

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