confessions p. 10

Please save me from myself

I beg you, I'll break my own feet

so I am always on my knees before you

I beseech you to take up arms against me

conspire with me to betray myself

please, unsheathe your blade

color it in my blood

don't toy with me

stab me through the heart!

Let the fountain of my torn heart write in blood

that poem which no pen can write!

reflections on dust

I don't know what You're doing to me
but You've got me on my knees
kissing the dirt on the ground
because that's all I'll ever be
all I can hope to be
the dirt beneath Your feet.
So step on me, scatter me
kick me up into clouds
Your light brings out my colors.

When it rains, the water collects in my recesses
the more I recede, the deeper the flow.
In my thirst, I drill holes
through the dustmote island of my self
and seep, gently, into the sea.


******


I will plunge up to the neck in self
to implode out of my self.
I will crush the grapes of sorrow
into the laughter of wine.
I will desire my way out of desire.
I will break the forms
and put them back together
after tasting their cores.
My bones are wed to dust
but one day I will divorce
everything destined for dust.

cherry orchards

I remember

sharing glasses of ice water

beneath the shade of the elderberry tree

cool stream bubbling, my aunts chattering

platters of cucumbers, cheese
the smell of fresh bread

and tea, steaming from picnic cups
passed around with a prayer by my grandmother.

I remember

lazy afternoons under the sun

the buzz and drone of grasshoppers

my father’s rhythmic snore

and me, laughing on my back

alongside my cousin and sister

reaching up to twist off cherries of different colors

the way they would burst between my teeth

sweet juices rolling in my mouth

and the sticky feeling of their pits on my fingers.

*

And now, through air conditioned spaces

and the metallic taste of water fountains

where the midday laze is replaced

with Tim Horton’s double doubles

I still look for those red, pink and yellow cherries

in the colored aisles of the grocery store.

"Message"

She doesn’t know how she got to be lying on her back

but she is calm as an empty dead end in Tehran.

Her eyes peer between legs running away from her

as the rip of the gunshot rings in the air.

Hands heavy, palms open, fingers unfurled

she watches the crowd racing, eyes darting, teeth gnashing

and hears them scream and yell as though underwater.

A camera seizes upon her graceful stillness

she sees it, and for a moment

before her last breath like a step without feet

before the lights dim and colors fade so the blood

which pours out her orifices looks no different

than the green of a nearby tree leaf

for a moment, in that tryst of eyes and camera lens

she shares with it her story, her namesake

Neda.

dying season

In these downtown streets there are no half smoked butts
only the erratic heartbeat of cars, vents and traffic lights,
the pallid tone of flesh beneath fluorescent lamps
as we break into quick smiles between hurried bites
along fancy store fronts, foul back alleys and the reek
of second hand smoke, cheap coffee and stale glances.
Old christmas lights hanging expired from branches
with amber brown buds about to bloom at their peak.

I seep into dawn and grow with Spring's first call
I long to taste the colored tones
of newborn life amidst gardens of bones
and soak in the sun like leaves before they fall.
I want to consume every scent as daily bread
and listen to the stories carried in the breeze
I want to be overwhelmed in all the season's senses
for a passing glimpse of that unnameable presence.

***

this is a recycled revision of 3 past pieces.

confessions p. 9

For years I've answered this call and that, played hopscotch
through different ways to understand the world.
I've snorted beliefs, rolled up everyone
who had an answer and smoked them like I wanted cancer.
I speak their languages, I know their words
I've heard the ideologies, and the revolutionary's crescendo
against Orwellian authoritarianism, I've stormed the streets
and thrown stones at the Silencers
I've known fear like a sickening helplessness.
I've listened to the talk of old men
I know time is both linear and circular
I know the face of my enemy and it looks like my own
I know the detachment of objectivity, the sign and symbol
the simulation and the real, the subject and appeal to individuality.

Every layer only led to another and yet, beyond these...
I've felt the whispered call of the Unseen
I've heard the echo of footsteps in the winding alleyways of my heart
I've wept and danced beneath its sky. Here is who I am
not in between all those words but in this beating.
My pulse is more honest than my tongue
when it hangs somewhere between desire and fulfillment.
I think the only way I can find expression
is through the language of the heart
I've studied the grammar and words
but bear with me Love, I am only just learning
that speaking of the heart of hearts
is seeing the universe through the alphabet.

full moons

Sleep knocks but tonight
  The moon is like the sun

She creeps in through the blinds
  and caresses the darkness
Like a long lost lover
  with kisses that quench
an insatiable thirst

        I live
To soak in the fullness
of such moments

So when I'm gone
Look for me in the moon

When these words
No longer remember my voice
       Hear me
In the ripe stillness of the night

**

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/19/us-moon-idUSTRE72I3PS20110319

confessions p. 8

It's four thirty in the morning
I have an overdue essay
and so many other tasks to do
but I can't stop writing about you
in words that betray at every turn
I want to turn off this tap
or let it pour without restraint
here, in the stillness of the night
I am unfolding or folding inside
orbiting around a sun I can't see
blind beloved of an enraptured moon

first steps

To be tossed at sea like flotsam

the waves taking you where they will

to be both guest and prisoner

to see with eyes closed in the dark

to become nothing in the forge

then heated and molded to shape

to grind away stones with teardrops

to be like water receding

to laugh like an unfolding rose

to be so empty of yourself

that you can forget how to breath

to be laid out flat on the ground

and be pronounced dead at the scene

to cremate your own heart, and give

ashes and half-loves to the wind

to emerge from your own cocoon

to die and come to life each day

the confinement of words p.5

This is how you came to me
like water receding
your story etched like veins in a fall leaf.
this is how you came to me
when I least expected it
when I didn't know top from bottom
but all I felt were rocks around me.

This is how you came to me
like a reflection
when all I could see were shadows
this is how you came to me
like you were there the whole time
but I only just noticed you.

this is how you come to me
wrapped in veils and veils.
Sometimes you peel one back
and I remember why I am alive.

Black Tea Cafe

In these downtown streets there are no half smoked butts
only the erratic heartbeat of cars, vents, and lights
in the rush hours, quick smiles, eager laughter
in between hurried bites and over stressed words
amidst the red, green, yellow, stop, and go
the gray panorama of sky and asphalt
second hand smoke, cheap coffee and stale glances.
Fancy store fronts and the reek of back alleys
don't loiter, don't solicit, don't stop traffic
blue and red OPEN signs flashing like sirens
sea of uniforms, pale faces, possessed feet
pallid tones of flesh beneath fluorescent lamps
old christmas lights sagging expired from branches
with amber brown buds about to bloom anew.

la petit mort et l'amor

This is how I remember her deathly stare
Frozen mid expression, and so fleeting
Her mouth, the eater of time and moments
Her lips, dark from sucking out all color
Eyes the velvet of the night sky's dark depths
Her tongue, the sword that cuts the throats of words
And her attire, midnight blue breeze
With stars on her ears, the moon on her neck
She smiles; as her teeth grind planets and suns
Yin and yang become one between bites
She is the great desert at the road's end
The one to be walked without steps or feet
Yes, she can choose to be ghastly at times
But I find her wildly beautiful
She is Love's favorite hand to play
And death too requires love
Most often the love of another
For what is each successive death
In a ladder of evolution
Other than an act of love?
Ask the butterfly
Born from the death of the caterpillar
Ask the fetus
Born from the deaths of the fertilized egg and sperm
Ask the human being
Born from the death of the fetus
Death is thus, Love's actualization
Love and death conspired and traded faces
So that they could clean out the whole table
They exchanged masks to collect from everyone
Traded outfits, but death is only Love's night
And Love, the day that follows each night's death




***

http://www.consolatio.com/2005/04/i_died_as_a_min.html