Philadelphia, 2006..

..the last footage of me before I knew how much could break.

Absolution

To My People 

I absolve myself of you.
I absolve me of the anger
dripping morbidly from turbid eyes;
of the hatred, loud and raucous,
and stupid;
of the ignorance engulfing you
like summer haze:
humid, and sticky, and slowly reeking.
I absolve me of your sins.

I absolve me of your children,
dull and arrogant,
and devoid of hope.
I absolve me of your tongue,
its beautiful words
gone blind.

I absolve me even of myself,
this guilt of being,
this exhaust of writing,
this ball of fury in your throats.
I absolve me even of this,
the need for absolution.

(Originally posted on May 22, 2007)

Exit

Of callous politicians everywhere

It’s time for us to exit
The stage and leave
The animals to shred
Their shadows

It’s time for us to exit
Without looking back
Turn off the light
Set the set on fire
And leave

It’s time for them
To cry our tears
To taste the salt
And the soles of our feet
And lick our spit
Off the floor

We shall burn in their retinas
Like the afterimage of a nightmare
We shall linger
Like the caustic aftertaste
Of regret

It shall burn
And we shall smile
They shall writhe
And we shall smirk
Through their moans

Spill me
Onto their gaping flesh
Like lemon juice
Bitter and bright
Scrape me
Off of their green skins
Like a dead dream

For we shall fester
Wherever they dare to smile
We shall bite
Like a ravenous hunger
They never knew

And we shall recur
Like a hallucination
Like loss
Like life

(Originally posted Aug. 6, 2004)

Comfortably Numb

Song (Re)Cycle: Of Grief IV

To those left behind..

Stuff the slices down your throat
And choke on a smile
The end bounces off of a black screen

The line thins between the zenith and the abyss
He tells me my pain is only resistance
"Grieve!" he says, my agony does not suffice
Grieve loss upon loss until you are unaware of losses

Now it's their turn to fall from grace
From the stars, from above
And my turn to put them back up
Where they belong

My laughter sobs
And I become, I hope
comfortably numb

(Originally posted on Aug. 3, 2004; re-posted on July 24, 2006)

Someday

Song (Re)Cycle 2014: Of Hope III

Someday
when it’s all done
and the white foam pours forth
you’ll be telling me
that song we drew when
the grass was freshly mown
was embroidered into
your mother’s skirt.

I will turn
and absorb your face
like it was the last kite of summer
and together we will drip
like old wounds
at the back of the throat.
There will be nothing that night
but the bees that circled our heads
and a sigh that congealed
with a dream.

(Originally posted on February 25, 2005)

SONG (re)CYCLE 2019: Lebanese Revolution Edition

As Sylvia Plath wrote:

"I have done it again.   

One year in every ten   

I manage it——"

Well, maybe not every ten, but every few years it seems to happen. Something momentous happens (in the Middle East) that I feel the need to respond to. But since my words have not been serving me as well in recent years, I've resorted to this poem recycling.. I resumed this edition without planning, a reaction, a need to borrow words from my past self to respond too current events. Thus Absolution appeared in Kalam Thawra. I'd left the previous cycle unfinished a couple of years ago. So I thought I'd continue where I left off, auspiciously I'd like to think, towards the end of grief and beginning of hope. So let's hope..

Sunset

Song (Re)Cycle: Of Grief III

One more night
tumble from grace:
I abandon my senses,
scatter over the gutters
and pray for sleep...

In corners dank and
pungent I find them,
lurking behind my smile.
Throw them across the horizon
that they may cease to be...

Why don't you come
out of your darkness?
Shine once more
like the dying sun!
I curl into a lie and roll...

They cry, but we never hear.
They recede further
into memory;
and in it we drown
behind them...

Do you hear screaming
when it's hoarse?
Do they still rise
like the moon
bloody and round?

(Originally posted on Aug. 1, 2004; re-posted on July 24, 2006 and July 26, 2014)

Grief

Song (Re)Cycle: Of Grief II

And now I grieve their lives
Like I grieved my grandmother
Piece by piece
I put them to rest
I kill them all over again
Just to make sure
They're no longer breathing. 

And then I go to sleep...

(Originally posted Jul. 14, 2004; re-posted on July 24, 2006 and July 25, 2014)

Cry

Song (Re)Cycle: Of Grief I

(To Ahmad)

Like an autumn tired of the heat

Like a streetlamp bored of its corner

Cry, in every tear, a star, a name, a pair of eyes

Cry, for us, who have dried...

(Originally posted on Aug. 4, 2005; re-posted on July 24, 2006 and July 24, 2014)

Watch Me

 

Watch me dig my hole again
Ever deeper
In it I will bury the whole world.

Watch me tear the sunshine
Once more
And stick it in your heart.

Watch me smear every smile
Off every face
Till nothing remains
But amalgamated lips.

Watch me drown again
And again
Laugh me all the way
To the bottom.

(Originally posted on Sept. 6, 2004; re-posted on July 24, 2006 & July 23, 2014)

Teeth

That day we didn't
Lose our teeth;
You did.
But you don't feel the pain yet;
It only starts when we're gone.

(Originally posted Aug. 27, 2004; re-posted on July 24, 2006 and July 22, 2014, edited)

Spare Me

Spare me your wars
Your naked assent
Spare me your frigid springs
Your empty highways
And irises glazed;
I have pains to last a generation
And I have sorrows galore.

Spare me your whines
Your cheap tragedies
Spare me your miseries
Your children and packaged lies
Spare me your hearts
Stuffed with apathy
Spare me your horrors
Off the clearance shelf.

Spare me my life
Tainted with yours
Spare me a shred of sanity
A word, a tear…
For my tears have dried
And my rage is boiling over.

Spare me a soul
An honest apology
A life filled with regret
For I bring back to your doorsteps
My dreams refunded
My fury stifled
And tantamount.

Spare me a shovel
A helping hand
Spare me the last dignity
Of burying my breathing corpse.

(Originally posted on Apr. 4, 2003; re-posted on July 24, 2006 and July 21, 2014)

Angelic

Song (Re)Cycle: Of Fury I

2006 - Lebanon

My mother said,

They still looked beautiful

while they were picking them up

in pieces,

the children.

2014 - Palestine

2018 - Syria

(Originally posted on August 01, 2006; re-posted on July 20, 2014, re-edited)

SONG (re)CYCLE 2017

Because I know I want to forget about them. 

Because I know I want to pretend that it’s not happening, that I don’t care. 

Because I know I want to look elsewhere, I won’t.

Because it’s the least I could do, again: bear witness.

Sometimes that’s all we could do.

So for the next fortnight or so, like four years before (Palestine), and eight years before that (Lebanon), I will post a photo from Syria, along with an old recycled poem. 

Because they are human. Because we are human.

Because they matter. Because we have become numb.

And apparently sometimes we all need a reminder of that.

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)

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)