'Tis the Season

For a while now
I haven't written a thing
I've been dry
Like my mouth in the morning
Perched open for seven hours
With a NightGuard while asleep.
I've been dry
Like the latter part of winter
When the Holidays are no more
Than a hangover and a credit card bill
And the New Year's resolutions
Have already begun to dissolve.

It was my birthday recently
Blissfully ignored by most of humanity
And systematically forgotten by
Even more people than the year before.
And yet I managed to get
Enough gifts I don't need,
Enough books I'll never read,
And blank pages I'll never fill
To make me thankful that I weren't
Any more memorable still.
All I can say is
Thank god for Borders' no-gift-receipt
Return policy.

And so, that's where I headed
To scratch off some items from my Wish List,
A list that seems to function more as a
Please-Ignore-List
This-Really-Is-Just-A-Reminder-To-Myself-
Of-All-The-Things-I'd-Like-To-Plug-That-Void-With.
I got me a couple of books
So stale and overdue
They were already covered with dust.
I stacked them by my bed
To ward off the evil spirits
Brewing inside my head,
Hoping that in my sleep
I would somehow
Osmotically absorb them.

See, in my spree, I go for those titles
That seem to be just as ignored as I am
(Except, of course, that they're not).
I place Special Orders for them
And then never buy them
Just as a Holiday Gift
To the poor authors I'll never become.

I feel sorry for myself this time of year
(More so that I do the rest of the year),
I feel homesick and cook
Wax ornaments of family pictures and songs
That I proceed to ridicule
Before somebody else does.

I know I am petty
And most of my poems begin with me
And end with me
And don't waver much in between;
I know I am jealous of a cat
And... Well, I'll spare myself the rest.
And I know this is the part where
The Poet imparts her Big Revelation,
Her rancid Pearl of Wisdom;
But I have none.
I am lazy,
And have Christmas Shopping to do still
And I don't even have a smart way to end this.

Cuts from the Inside

My friend, Nadine Khoury, has recently released her new album, Cuts from the Inside. It has been called "generous, thoughtful, and honorable". You can listen to samples from it, read reviews, and order your own copy either on the on her website, www.nadinekhouri.net , or on CDbaby.com

Alkaline

You flayed me open
And hung up.

Talking to you left me
With an alkaline aftertaste.
For days I had been thinking
How my capacity for joy
Comes from you,
How when I laugh
Your throttle bounces
Off the walls of the room
And sinks in me,
How I jab at life
With your jokes,
And how my voice echoes
With your cough.

But just as you bestow the sun
You absorb the sea.

You refuse to hear my laughter
If it doesn't ring in your fields;
You only see a mouth open wide, a yawn,
A hole muted in anticipation.
Your skin doesn't shiver from its chuckles.
You suspend me, you know,
An orphan in a cold cloud.

But I will paint you
My absence in pink and green;
I will hold the moon
Fixed in the sky
For you to see my shadow.
I will pull my veils
Colored and wilting
Across your brow
Until you smell the heat,
The fresh laundry and the snow,
The leaves staining the windshield
And smoothing under our feet.
I will hold you until you miss
Yourself like I do you
And then rest your case in mine
And your head in my lap
That I can braid your thoughts again.

The Reading

Thanks for everyone who came to the reading!

Here is a list (with links) of what I read (with edits):

1. The Coming
2. I Write
3. Unravelled (Life)
4. Tired
5. Life on a Beautiful Day
6. Here
7. Ghosts
8. Eclipse
9. Revelations
10. Piece of Damascus
11. A Nation Amputated
12. Exit
13. Remnant of You
14. Tragedy
15. Tomorrow
16. Anymore
17. Some Day
    

Emerging Writers Series

Hello all,

I will be reading at the Book Corner next Saturday, November 5th at 4pm. I hope to see you there!

“Hear Philadelphia's sharpest new voices reading from their latest work, this month featuring Arlene Bernstein, Alexandria Levin and Ashraf Osman.”

Emerging Writers Series
Saturday, November 5th at 4pm
The Book Corner
Friends of the Free Library of Philadelphia
1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103
http://www.libraryfriends.info/cgi-bin/index.pl?item=book_corner

Easy Corpses

Why do some people Make
easy to imagine corpses?
Is it the skin Stretched
by age thin and dry
over the knuckles?
Or is it the breath Threatening
to expire Before
the next pause?
Or the hair Whispering
lightly Like an empty frame?
Or just the eyes Looking
endlessly Beyond
the wall Beyond
the night Beyond
the closed eyelids.

(To my boss, on National Boss Day.)

On the Stage

In the darkness we are all alone.
Turn off the light;
I am tired of tentative company.

Under the ochre glow
Their shadows are heightened
Along the patterned wood of the stage.
Their glances weave a trance
Off the slither of the music.
Comfortable awkwardness
Beams in their eyes,
And in the spill of the stand I lurk,
Lost in the spotlight.

In the silence we are all alone.
Stretch my skin
Taught and resonant
That I may fill the dark
With my noise.

In their tapping I let my poisons thaw;
In their sways I found my jealousy.
In their smiles I abandoned my family
To a stream of applause,
To a nod, a clap across the face.
In their smiles I could pretend
That life doesn't crush me
Under my weight.
In their smiles, for a while,
I found solace in the dark.

Ten Years

To Obe

Ten years is what it takes
For us to turn into weed;
Ten years is what it takes
For the white roses to shed,
For an oud to rot and a flute rust.
Ten years is what it takes
For the humid nights to yawn
And collapse on the sidewalk in hazy slumber;
Ten years for all the winding stairs
to lose their stones,
For the spruce to grow dusty,
And for bright eyes to tire of the light.

Ten years, and we're no longer there.

The curve of the road,
The cliff and how it hangs,
The cypress that lined the broken pavement
And swayed like they could read our minds;

Your room still fragrant
with fragments of my breath
plastering its innards
like dank wallpaper
held by song;

And the worn leather couch
Where I first believed in God
Still dimples under my ghost.

Ten years is what it takes
For the waves to take root on my shore,
Ten years for the promise to let go;
Ten years to return
To the first syllable,
The fuzzy hair, the freckled cheek,
The shoes flayed at the outset.

And somewhere in the hallways
Ten years before
A boy peers from around the corner
And goes...

© Copyright 2005 Obeida Sidani

Go Ahead

To Roland

Go ahead
Suck the air
And leave me nothing To breathe.

Go ahead
Take it all back
And dunk it in the sea--
Fish need magic, too.

Go ahead
Tear it apart
And stuff it Into the sky
Until it drapes, Like shards of us,
Over the clouds.

Go ahead,
For a hand can never break
Its own fingers.

Windows

I open the windows, Heat spilling bright onto jaded floors, A tree swaying with warmth, And air burning the nose with freshness. I open the windows, I hear life spilling in Over thresholds and terrazzo, And yellow glow. A cage of thin black wire Missing its bird, Cards spread on a chaffing table With the chaos of fate. A scream, a chuckle, A wrinkled grin, And graying hair Brimming with age. An old stone bench awaits them, A feeling so new it tingles. All spread beyond, like hope Of another life, another tomorrow, Another place.

Homeward bound

Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought’s escaping
Home, where my music’s playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me...
I’m sittin’ in the railway station
Got a ticket for my destination
On a tour of one night stands
My suitcase and guitar in hand
And every stop is neatly planned
For a poet and a one man band

Homeward bound...

Everyday’s an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines
And each town looks the same to me
The movies and the factories
And every stranger’s face I see
Reminds me that I long to be

Homeward bound...

Tonight I’ll sing my songs again
I’ll play the game and pretend
But all my words come back to me
In shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me

Homeward bound...

Eclipse

To Obe

Every few years,
Like an eclipse,
I see you once.
And every time,
Just like the moon,
You sink in me.

---

I blur the edges of your name
And watch her fake a smile,
And with my anger, proceed to bury them all.
The vastness of the hall, the resonance of empty chairs,
The grimace just before her voice breaks,
And in the hollow of her black you peek,
A punctured soul billowing in the light.

---

You come and load me with the guilt of the jasmine
And leave like an empty street with no name.

---

Flattened I sat in front of you
Picking my slivers from between your teeth,
Putting out the fire for the last time
Before you leave.

Flattened I sat against the sky
Scraping my smile off smeared walls,
Piecing it for you, upside down.

Flattened I faded before your eyes
A hundred years in one,
And in every year I invented myself,
Again, just for your pride.

Flattened, from beneath the table,
I looked up at you soaring above your skin
Claiming the stars like you just spat them;
And I wondered why, while crunching the moon,
You sounded like an angel choking
On broken glass?

The Answer / Life

The answer is not the answer;
The answer is losing track of the question.

How can you reduce Life to such banalities?
I am not reducing Life; I am calling it by its name.