A Dozen

To Obe

I bring my arm close to my face
___to take another whiff of you;
it's yet another year
___I don't wish to celebrate.

The sun, as we lay beached
___in the shadow of the tower,
your eyes closed so lightly
___I could read them underneath,
remembered our faces
___from suns before.

And in the humid hum of the afternoon,
we conspired with the sun in our silence.

There was no one else then
___but the two of us,
like a dozen years before,
shedding the lives we accumulated since
___on the side
stashed like overcoats in the heat,
like old chips of paint
___from a room that crumbles still.

But in that moment,
___as you slept with your eyes open,
listening to me watching you,
___as when we used to kiss,
we dropped them,
___the years, the people,
the names we acquired in between.
The sky stood steely above our heads,
___watching us, wishing us,
missing in us the skies of another time,

when love smelled like fresh rain,
and the rain smelled of us.

© Copyright 2010 Obeida Sidani

Excuses

It's the roots that we grow
as we grow older,

It's wishing once again
we were fresher still,

It's the mother that we make
with a new hairdo,

And the noise of us
as we fall to sleep.

Help me pick a card

Since I have been completely uninspired recently, and I am trying to pick a card for my blog, I thought I'd ask for your input, hoping that that would make my decision easier rather than more difficult (though I should know better...). I had asked my brother for a design, and got 6 instead (don't ask me what happened to No. 2; I never saw it!). Which do you prefer?

1 3 4 5 6 7

Tagged

I've been tagged, by Hashem. So, here it goes...

1- Do you like the look and the contents of your blog?
Yes... Sure, it's a template, and the buttons to the right are out of control and the links need reorganizing, and one day I hope to give it a rehaul... But it's kinda like me that way ;)

2- Does your family know about your blog?
Absolutely! Actually, my brother was my first reader and critic. I even made a blog of our correspondence (when we used to write more often) called "Dear Theo,". I also started a blog, "losing3it", of my sister's writings, hoping that she would catch the blogging bug and start writing again... But.

3- Can you tell your friends about your blog? Do you consider it a private thing?
Most certainly (not that many of them care!). I consider my blog, like my poetry, a private/public thing. On the one hand, blogs are as personal as they get, but in a way they are guaranteed anonymity by their sheer volume. Similarly, my poetry is often a way of casting some very personal thoughts in a very public light.

4- Do you just read the blogs of those who comment on your blog? or you try to discover new blogs?
I mostly read the blogs of those who comment on mine, and some of those who comment on those I read. Like most people, I imagine, it reaches a point where there are only so many hours in the day, and even those blogs I enjoy I don't always have the chance to catch up on.

5- Did your blog positively affect your mind? Give an example.
Most definitely! I was in a huge depression when I started writing poetry "seriously" and started my blog. Not to say that that alone got me over it, but it definitely did help.

6- What does the number of visitors to your blog mean? Do you use a traffic counter?
I do use a traffic counter, but I don't check it that frequently. Comments mean more to me, but the counter reassures me that there are more people reading than commenting...

7- Did you imagine how other bloggers look like?
Of course. And boy was I wrong in some of my assumptions! (For some reason, I imagined Eve to wear a hijab, and she didn't...). That's why I appreciate it when people have some semblence of themselves as their avatar.

8- Do you think blogging have any real benefit?
Obviously, or else I wouldn't be doing this, would I? Not that I think it will solve the world's problems, but--as much as I hate the word--it is "fun"!

9- Do you think that the blogsphere is a stand alone community separated from the real world?
Yes, bloggers only exist as figments of the imagination! What sort of a questions is that? A "stand alone community separated from the real world"? Like, whatever... Next!

10- Do some political blogs scare you? Do you avoid them.
I guess I avoid the political blogs that would scare me. But I can certainly imagine their existence out there: right-wing, conservative, bigoted, etc.

11- Do you think that criticizing your blog is useful?
Maybe. If you care to know my more detailed thoughts about the value of criticism, I refer you to "Back-scratching", a post on Poet`ship (a blog of poetic discussions, amongst other digressions, between me and my friend Katy).

12- Have you ever thought about what happen to your blog in case you died.
Yes, since I read this question, in Arabic, at MysteriousEve. Not that anyone can tell, or I'd care much once I'm dead, so I just brushed it aside... "and legion the things I would give to oblivion."

13- Which blogger had the greatest impression on you?
I have to admit, this is easy for me to answer: most definitely Katy.

14- Which blogger you think is the most similar to you.
I'd like to think--even though she writes in Arabic--it's Eve.

15- Name a song you want to listen to?
Fairouz's "Wahdoun".

16- Ask five bloggers to answer these question on their blogs?
Scheherazade
Ziad
Cecilia
Fouad
Katy

RotB XII

This week's Poetry Carnival is in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at Russell Ragsdale's Yuckelbel's Canon; please drop by.

Never Forget

A new e-mail from my brother:

". . . Because in the past five weeks I only lost four, and I still stand poor.

Every story on this planet springs from me, and dies in my arms, Pietà. This story does, too.

I live in a city that is not a city, I live in city that does not love itself, in a city thirsty, hungry, and kissing.

I know everything. I know the dreams and the nightmares that attack you just before sunrise, I know of the sweat at my armpits, shit, and I know of terrorism and globalisation but I will tell you of the rest.

Of the words written at the margins, and of the margins yet to be discovered, of only the things that I see and feel, of the bad air that I breathe.
. . .
I live in a country that is not loved by anyone, and that is open to everyone's Freudian fantasies (in both senses; sexual and aggressive). It is okay if our civilians are slaughtered, and Israel may block gas, food, and air from us upon any whim. No one shall object, anyway, because we are wléed kalb [sons of dogs].

Shall I tell you of the monsters? The monsters are those who we leave behind once we decide that it is okay if we asked for a decent life, id est a life where we do not need to worry about not having enough water, electricity, units, money, or security to-morrow. The monsters leave once we realise that we do not even have minima, and yet we love this place.

The monsters spring from Mohammad who tells you that you do not need to learn everything from your own bag, and that he cannot live again; all Mohammad had was one life.

The monsters are very simple. When they have (Japanese) tea, the monsters make jokes about the Lebanese not daring to plan for to-morrow, because they know that whatever they plan, it shall not happen.

And I am not mourning here, and I am not sad and not complaining. I am writing to tell you of the monsters that live inside of me . . ."

CEASE FIRE Video

Here is finally a portion of the CEASE FIRE reading/discussion (it took me a while to figure out how to edit the video to less than 10 minutes so I can upload it to YouTube):



(And I still hate to watch or listen to myself...)

The Carnival is Ringing again!

For the 10th time, this time at Ozymandiaz's Paper Tigers.

Open Discussion

I will be reading tomorrow, part of an open discussion on:

CEASE FIRE: The end of the US/Israel War in the Middle East?
Date: Tuesday, August 22nd
Time: 7pm.
Place: 48th & Baltimore Ave. (Calvary Church)
Featuring: Sara Flounders, Co-Director International Action Center

I hope you can make it.

Reading Tonight

I will be reading tonight at 6:30 pm in Center City at the Ethical Society of Philadelphia (2nd floor) on Rittenhouse Square.

Address:
1906 South Rittenhouse Square,
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Phone:
(215) 735-3456

Willing Life Back to Normal

It's been strangely quiet in here, in my mind. I've been trying to will life back to normal, trying to shed the rigorous routines I've acquired in the past month. Exhaustion is evident in those around me, those that have been touched, even from a distance. My words seem trite and packaged to me; I feel like a news agency repeating the same tired script.

There's a strange quiet, a tangible vacuum in here. I want to pretend that this never happened, and it's easier for me to do so here. This is strangely reminding me of when my grandmother died. I wasn't there. Her death was sluggish to materialize. It took my going back home, to my grandparents house, for it to get closer to home. But even then she was simply strangely absent, like she just stepped out to get a bundle of bread and took a bit longer to return. Even seeing her grave didn't help that much in making it any more real. There was a marble slab with her name on it, her first name, which I never used anyhow. Just a name, and dates. But she wasn't there. I couldn't imagine her below, just like it was difficult to believe her to be dead. Her smell wasn't there, nor her ragged day dresses. There was just a strange absence, and nothing could be less tangible.

And here, I have only pictures. And voices. And words. There's the rubble, and here's my adamantly self-protective mind that wants to forget about it. And here's my world that is more than happy to conspire with me on pretending it never happened. Here's the concert in the park we went to last night, the refined string music, and the malevolently oblivious kids running around the pond. Here's this "civilized" culture that pretends it never killed anyone, it never paid for massacres, I never paid for massacres... It is easier to pretend that we're civilized when listening to violins in the night. It is too easy. I keep replaying old stale songs to remind me that this isn't it, that life is happening elsewhere, that life stopped elsewhere. But the songs with faded lyrics can barely compete with Bach. It is too easy to pretend we're civilized with Bach.

Yes, this is peace, this is serenity, this is affluence and plentitude, laying there, on the impeccable grass, pretending that it cost nothing. There's the rich of Chestnut Hill calling for someone to give their "meals on wheels" to. I pretend to forget my sister's message about the 500 or 5,000 that were stuck underground somewhere in the south of Lebanon without food for days, or the report about the people that had to drink from puddles of collected rain water that was closer in consistency to mud, and had started greening already with algae. I pretend this has never happened before, elsewhere, and will never happen again. I pretend that this is all there is, this concert, the good food, and my strangely silent company.

Mazen's mother's birthday was weighing on his mind. And on ours. He was supposed to be with her for it, in that World Before Any Of This Happened. There was the Peace my mother believed in in that World, the Life As It Was Happening Before. There was life as I remember it too vividly, as I try to will it again. The life with its infinite small details that have become strangely irrelevant now. And there's the silence, this unrelenting silence in my mind, that gets quickly filled, at the first thought of words, with old fragments of song, of Fairouz wailing, "Ya natreen el-talj, ma aad badkoun tirja'ou?" You waiting for the snow, don't you want to come back?

(Illustration courtesy of Ben Heine)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Sublime Robert Fisk Pieces

• Paradise Lost: Robert Fisk's elegy for Beirut
• The child lies like a rag doll - a symbol of the latest Lebanon war

San Francisco Chronicle reveals...

A couple of distressing articles in the San Francisco Chronicle reveal that:

• Israel set war plan more than a year ago
  Strategy was put in motion as Hezbollah began gaining military strength in Lebanon
• U.S. OKs rushing bombs to Israel
  Move could mean many targets yet to be hit in Lebanon

(And it is my tax dollars that are paying for it... Just a final stab in the heart!)