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)

“The Only Democracy in the Middle East”

Please leave your house immediately. 

Do not call it a home. 

This is our home not yours. 

Security demands it. 

Always, always, security. 

Our security. 

Take nothing, ask nothing. 

Stand over there, against the rubble, where 

you belong. All young men, come with us. 

You may not see your families again. 

No saying goodbye or hugging. 

We have suffered too much 

thanks to everyone 

but you are the only ones we can touch. 

Don’t give us any trouble.

-from Transfer (American Poets Continuum) by Naomi Shihab Nye

Lament

Tired of defending them like they were my own,
Tired of grieving them as if they were my kin;
I too am tired of seeing their bloodied faces on my screen.
They're not mine. I thought they were humanity's,
But there is no such thing. They're noone's.
Alone they passed through that gate,
Alone they moved beyond...
Beyond this world, beyond its ugliness,
And beyond ours.
May we never be forgiven; we unworthy of clemency.
May their wretched ghosts haunt us, we who watched on.
May their truncated lives curse ours; we deserve no better,
We who live on, as if they never happened.

It Goes...

Song (Re)Cycle 2014: Of Hope II

And so it goes…

Wayward it goes,
Forward it goes,
It goes…

Stumbling it goes,
Hurtling it goes,
It all goes…

And we remain,
Seated in our skins
Picking the remains of the sea from our teeth
Sipping the horizon like it never changes

And humming.

(Originally posted on May 6, 2005; re-posted on July 24, 2006)

Verso Books

Following suit of Verso Books, in response to what's happening in Gaza, I am offering my friends free downloads of e-books I got from Verso, as long as you promise to buy from Verso at some point something equivalent to the download's value to support this great publisher: http://wel.ly/verso

The e-books offered are the following:

The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein
Controversial indictment of those who exploit the tragedy of the Holocaust for their own gain

Reflections on Anti-Semitism by Alain Badiou, Eric Hazan, et al.
Dissecting how facile accusations of "anti-Semitism" are used to stifle dissent.

Hollow Land by Eyal Weizman
Acclaimed exploration of the political space created by Israel's colonial occupation

The Case for Sanctions Against Israel Edited by Audrea Lim
Ebook now available for download for free.

Breathe

Song (Re)Cycle 2014: Of Hope I

Take a deep breath.

Hold it
Until you can feel its green lime
Bite at the edges of your being.

Now release it
So far that you cannot tell
It was ever yours.

Repeat,
As required.

(Originally posted on May 8, 2005; re-posted on July 24, 2006)

SONG (re)CYCLE

Here we go again...

Since I haven't been able to write much poetry since this whole nightmare started, I have been mostly translating/posting other people's words: old songs, e-mails, other bloggers' posts... Which made me think of recycling some of my older poetry, much of which was written after the death of my grandmother and around the beginning of the Iraq War, and which uncannily expresses much of the emotion I am choking on these days. Maybe it's because Iraq was a more distant subject for me than Lebanon/Palestine that I was able to voice it then... For the longest time afterwards I hated those poems; I thought they were too angry, too raw, too... But after reading them again today, I felt they voice this cry stuck in my throat quite satisfactorily. So, I have decided to post them again; some unedited, some quite revised...

(Posted originally on Monday, July 24, 2006)

Mahmoud Darwish: "On This Earth" محمود درويش: "على هذه الأرض

على هذه الأرض

:علَى هَذِهِ الأَرْض مَا يَسْتَحِقُّ الحَياةْ
تَرَدُّدُ إبريلَ
رَائِحَةُ الخُبْزِ فِي الفجْر
آراءُ امْرأَةٍ فِي الرِّجالِ
كِتَابَاتُ أَسْخِيْلِيوس
أوَّلُ الحُبِّ
عشبٌ عَلَى حجرٍ
أُمَّهاتٌ تَقِفْنَ عَلَى خَيْطِ نايٍ
وخوفُ الغُزَاةِ مِنَ الذِّكْرياتْ

:علَى هَذِهِ الأَرْض مَا يَسْتَحِقُّ الحَياةْ
نِهَايَةُ أَيلُولَ
سَيِّدَةٌ تترُكُ الأَرْبَعِينَ بِكَامِلِ مشْمِشِهَا
 ساعَةُ الشَّمْسِ فِي السَّجْنِ
غَيْمٌ يُقَلِّدُ سِرْباً مِنَ الكَائِنَاتِ
هُتَافَاتُ شَعْبٍ لِمَنْ يَصْعَدُونَ إلى حَتْفِهِمْ بَاسِمينَ
وَخَوْفُ الطُّغَاةِ مِنَ الأُغْنِيَاتْ

:علَى هَذِهِ الأَرْض مَا يَسْتَحِقُّ الحَياةْ
عَلَى هَذِهِ الأرضِ سَيَّدَةُ الأُرْضِ
أُمُّ البِدَايَاتِ أُمَّ النِّهَايَاتِ
كَانَتْ تُسَمَّى فِلِسْطِين
صَارَتْ تُسَمَّى فلسْطِين
 سَيِّدَتي: أَستحِقُّ، لأنَّكِ سيِّدَتِي، أَسْتَحِقُّ الحَيَاةْ

محمود درويش--

”.على هذه الأرض ما يستحق الحياة”

.مقطع  شهير من هذه القصيدة  لمحمود درويش منقوشة على أحد أسوار مخيم البقعة في الأردن

“On this earth there is that which deserves life.” 

The famous opening line of this poem by Mahmoud Darwish 

written on the wall of a Palestinian refugee camp in Baqa’a, Jordan.

On This Earth

"On this earth there is that which deserves life:
the recurrence of April,
the smell of bread at dawn,
the opinion of a woman in men,
the writings of Aeschylus,
the beginning of love,
moss on a stone,
mothers standing on a flute’s string,
and the invaders’ fear of memories.

On this earth there is that which deserves life:
the end of September,
a woman leaving forty in all her prime,
the hour of sun at prison,
clouds mimicking a flock of beings,
a people cheering those who ascend to their fate smiling,
and the tyrants’ fear of songs

On this earth there is that which deserves life:
On this earth there is the lady of the land,
The mother of beginnings, the mother of endings.
It used to be called Palestine, it will be called Palestine.
My lady: I deserve, because you are my lady, I deserve life."

--Mahmoud Darwish
(Translated by Ashraf Osman)

'Tropical Lament'

"It rains so long and hard here, I'm remembering
All the rain of my childhood, the pearls
Of hail I'd hold in my hands
After a storm.

This rain isn't going to stop
Until it's made a moat around me,
A grave the shape of a ring.
______________________This rain
Is falling now wherever she is, who survives me;
It's soaking her clothes through to the skin,
Which used to be all fire.

When will it finally drown me?
Sometimes, remembering her hips, I feel afraid.
Sometimes I'm afraid she's gone—
That memory and music are all that's left of her.

But I'm tired of the rain's dark harmony.
I'm tired of everybody telling me:
Lift yourself up, never go down!
Don't we maybe lift ourselves, going down?

And the rain keeps singing on this coast without a sea."

—Joe Bolton

"The Name of Desire"

The Holiday Inn Vanderbilt, Nashville 

After the many-colored but mostly blue
Seasons of our two solitudes—the hours
Of longing and the flight from longing, the years
Spent remembering as if memory were true—
We stand together on a balcony
Above the city of losses, the city of lights
Bouncing back off a starless sky, the city
Where we'll try to save this night from the death of nights.
Ours has become a life in which the self
And the self's other begin to anticipate the chances
Taken in the name of desire. Desire:
That sweet song the body sings to itself,
Or under the best of circumstances
The song two bodies sing to each other.

--Joe Bolton