control = cunt-roll

It is crazy how people can be so cunt-rolling and never be conscious of their behaviors, and the most  beautiful and climaxing moment for me, myself, and Sana is when I can find an example, context, or moment to mirror their behaviors unto themselves and voila you see that priceless look of indignation on their faces — and you let them know — okay so this is how you were making me feel – now your turn, enjoy. In the mean while I am going to munch on some popcorn and drink my ice tea.

the irrational

sometimes happiness comes from the most irrational things…or situations..and life takes me by surprise.

Le trio joubran – Masâr

Stupid famous issues that will never die out in the United States

Some really stupid issues (to list a few) that are consistently debated in the American politics by politicians who want to play tug of war for the sole purpose of distracting the public:

a) Gender/Sexuality (homosexuality, gay marriages, etc)

b) Education  (broadly speaking: our kids are not learning anything in schools)

c) Joblessness or layoffs

d) Healthcare

–

Now let us simply with a clear mind look at these four issues. The most famous catch-phrase is gay-marriage or homosexuality among politicians to gain voters’ votes, by either condemning or supporting gay people and their right to live equally. The very stupidity is that it is an oft repeated ritual, homosexuality has existed and will continue to exist because we all have male and female genitalia coupled with inquiring and creative minds, which results in ? Yes it results in experimentation, personal choice, mental gender being different from physical gender and what not. Let us not forget homosexuality has existed a lot longer than religions have been around. Religions – yes man made concepts. Like Gucci purses and GMC’s, you have religions and followers of those religions.

Moving on to distraction number 2: Education. People (whether young or old) can learn or possess the ability to learn where ever and whenever, given that their personal willingness to learn is involved in the process. However, education or decline of learning in students in America is an inflated problem. Are we looking at the people contributing to the decline in learning?? Such as parents, mothers, fathers, siblings, media, technology distractions, a lot of freedom or side-effects of democracy, etc? All these are a cause of decline in students learning ability because they have distractions. Simple. Our problem is that we tend to compartmentalize our thinking and focus on specific things instead of maintaining an abstract view of the situation. Oh the child has a learning disability? Really? Not really, maybe it is something else? Have you as a parent or adult traumatized your child or the young people, has society, politics, and other exposures negatively influenced the child’s development? The question to ask is how are we part of the problem before we begin heated and prolonged self-masturbatory discussions on the issues existing in the United States. Teen-pregnancy is on a rise; oh gee! That’s swell, how did you make that happen now? Let’s see now, lack of adult supervision, unsupervised internet time, giving excess technological tools to teens, not spending enough time with them — fostering an environment conducive to start sleeping together early with no protection, that’s what you and I do – that resulted in this. Democracy is great, but not all rights are well-intended if they do not have wisdom embedded in them. We chose to opt the easy way out, quick-fixes, like microwave dinners, and voila! There is our solution. The quicker the solution is come up with the more highly I would doubt its ability to succeed.

The 3rd issue pertaining to lack of jobs or layoffs is discussed, talked about, causes are presented, reasons identified yet no progress occurs, what really happens is the people who make money on the higher end of the pay scale continue to make that money and that’s it. Simple. We will just ignore that social inequality exists, that you need to wear designer shit to feel accepted in social situations, or else you are the outsider who does not fit. Of course who set the stage for such a crappy mentality, why us of course : ) We are the problem. Essentially we created this shitload of a bubble of what we call economic failure, sociological failure, decline of family structure in the U.S. and misinterpretation of feminism that has resulted in a rise of single -females with inflated and unrealistic demands from the males. Hurray Women! You have your freedom but it is irresponsible freedom, because you continue to have children with random men and make your children suffer from growing up in dysfunctional households.  We are all accountable for our actions because the actions affect everyone around us. So much for feminism. Feminism is just an example of a great idea that has been executed very badly.

The 4th issue, healthcare is like being placed in a room full of people talking loudly in multiple languages, arguing and trying to be right at the same time yet failing to comprehend anything uttered except what they are speaking. Healthcare is and will continue to be used as a common catch-phrase in politics, debates will continue and no positive influence or impact will be witnessed by people who really need help. As always we created the problem, too much mechanics, paper-work, structure, and less and less of human comprehension. We are truly losing or have lost touch with humanity and our essence. Dehumanization begins when people no longer live in the present moment and continue to impose their beliefs on each other. All major disasters owe their conception to an absence of accountability, empathy, wisdom, and of course self-gratification.

Women and lies

I think women lie their way through life. They lie to themselves about what they want, who they are, and continue to play these theatrically accomodating roles for others. Some women lie because they just want to get through a situation or issue, while others do it because they do not have the time, energy or right perspective to explain to others where they are coming from or why they are not conforming. I could blame this world. Religion, culture, society, the men, the gender responsibilities and roles assigned to us, but I will call them as possible influential factors not the sole issue. The problem is the woman herself and her big deciet. That she deceives and cheats on her truth is undermining of her strength and beauty. Women love to conform. First to their ideals, then to their loves, eventually to children and then much more domestic and menial things which should be a by product of their being as opposed to defining them.

Where did the woman go wrong? Why does she play dumb, weak, use her body and sex to buy her way through life? In some primitive cultures women were considered goddeses and respected for their ability to procreate and further human civilization, but somewhere along the way females began to be viewed through a crass lens. Sex sells, and sure as hell it is sold everywhere to everyone. No product is launched in the market without some sexual or female innuendo attached. But women are content to have their gender raped and disrespected. They prefer to lie and live a lie than face themselves just so they dont lose their current status, positions, or relationships. Authenticity is so rare among contemporary women that it is a shame.

toc toc toc

in a few words

I can love you without resorting to
the corny cliches of
sweet utterances,
holding hands
or clinging to your manly strength,

I can close my eyes
and sleep
in your night
while you deconstruct the stars,

to contemplate upon this
endearment
such a love that is not loving
but holds me close
to your heart.

Mandh Waai by The Sketches

untitled

the endlessness of humanity
her outstretched hands calling;
the voice of want, love, and wretched sorrow
forever diabolical and draped in naïveté
such is the plight of her dispossession
but my heart is in your palm
like the yogi in a state of ascension,

the tremors of a disturbed heart
that lies awake when sleeping
in whose terror does it seek freedom
this endlessness of existence
when it cannot fathom the color of this season
such is the music of this hour
wayward and lost like a beautiful poem,

for words are not what they mean to be
the intent arises from a deeper need
like that of hunger when the body pleads
its strength to decipher a logic of an ever gnawing
cry, behold her consummation – the hour of love
when the lover and the beloved unites.

 

McAlmont & Nyman

things that come for free

ok. so i didn’t have to format my computer because there are actually nice people on the cyber world who have the generosity to put up tech support forums and help random strangers for free. i am going to write this blog in lower-case and pretend i am e.e. cummings voicing my musings (heh those -ings rhyme). anyway the moral is – shit can be fixed.

let me count on my fingers and toes, the good things that come for free (yeah we need to remember them in these moments of economic crisis).

how about smiling when nice thoughts cross your mind, loving (the one or two people who can actually manage to get through all that debris of what you are not), helping without any selfish intent, appreciating something because it just is, cleaning the loo (no one pays you for that), cooking? oui, making love (unless you’re a hooker or a manwhore), dancing to your favorite music when your family is out, singing in the shower because there’s that nice echo+privacy, playing with soap suds, a pleasant breeze (you don’t have to swipe a credit card then click on the nature-send-some-refreshing-air-this-way button), walking past two lesbians holding each other in a close embrace (that you think, oh God! there is so much love in the world that it transcends gender),

…ok and many more.

obviously i am not out to create an encyclopedia of such examples.

but you get the idea.

The Absurd

It’s 4 am, I’m a little buzzed and all I want to do is write some before I crash in bed. There’s no better foreplay to sleep than a downright honest rant (like a confession, except our lives are so absurd that a confession at 4 am would sound false and exaggerated by noon). No wonder they say the past is gone, the future unknown, and all you got is the present which simlutaneous to its being lived – disappears or embellishes itself. All that we are left with are interpretations. That makes us the translators of our lives. And if your vocabulary sucks or you’re not good at re-interpreting, which is a downer because the lack of expression will render you incapable of delivering to others what mattered and moved you, you will most likely end up an unknown, a loser, a bum, unable to do any good to the world that ‘shat’ you out in its polluted maggoty sphere.

Ok so I am on bum status currently. Because I sleep at odd hours, prefer tasteless food, possess zero desire to go out and impress people, find myself a little incapable of taking orders for the sake of authority when it doesn’t make any sense, wonder where exactly superficiality ends because I see people lying constantly to each other and themselves about what they want and how they pursue the contrary, because I want to live as I feel (each moment as I go my way) and not be a LIE. ALso because I am a little slow (earthworm?) tending to process and think what people say to me, why they say it, and how I can respond best unlike an automated machine.

Alright. So life is random. strange. meaningless. a little fucked up. twisted. mean.  It does not have a beginging and obviously no end. However I have a begining, I know what fucks me up, makes me mean, strange, meaningless and random. Thus upon the palm of immortality, the human soul breathes, subsists on nothingness, yet shackled and imprisoned by the merciless demands of Time, often chokes, sputters, and cries. Dillusioned that the end is near.

The Death of Lovers

Death of Lovers

We shall have beds full of subtle perfumes,
Divans as deep as graves, and on the shelves
Will be strange flowers that blossomed for us
Under more beautiful heavens.

Using their dying flames emulously,
Our two hearts will be two immense torches
Which will reflect their double light
In our two souls, those twin mirrors.

Some evening made of rose and of mystical blue
A single flash will pass between us
Like a long sob, charged with farewells;

And later an Angel, setting the doors ajar,
Faithful and joyous, will come to revive
The tarnished mirrors, the extinguished flames.

By Charles Baudelaire

The Sadness of the Moon

Ce soir, la lune rêve avec plus de paresse;
Ainsi qu’une beauté, sur de nombreux coussins,
Qui d’une main distraite et légère caresse
Avant de s’endormir le contour de ses seins,

Sur le dos satiné des molles avalanches,
Mourante, elle se livre aux longues pâmoisons,
Et promène ses yeux sur les visions blanches
Qui montent dans l’azur comme des floraisons.

Quand parfois sur ce globe, en sa langueur oisive,
Elle laisse filer une larme furtive,
Un poète pieux, ennemi du sommeil,

Dans le creux de sa main prend cette larme pâle,
Aux reflets irisés comme un fragment d’opale,
Et la met dans son coeur loin des yeux du soleil

****

The Moon more indolently dreams tonight
Than a fair women on her couch at rest,
Carressing, with a hand distraught and light,
Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast,

Upon her silken avalanche of down,
Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;
And watches the white visions past her flown,
Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.

And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep,
Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,
Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,

Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow
Whence gleams of iris and of opal start,
And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.

Charles Baudelaire

Paroles Usé – Saez

les condamnés – saez

It takes an empty sheet

It takes an empty sheet

for the fingers

to let go,

and the heart surrender,

A crazed attempt

before the storm,

to suddenly hide

and seek a shelter.

Bab’Aziz – The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul

Trailer 1

Trailer 2

Full Movie

Islam, Modernity & Science by Prof. Michael Lessnoff

Child Djembe Drummer

For more on Isaiah Chevrier visit http://www.rootsyrecords.com/HtmlFiles/LittleDjembefola.htm

Jadal Third Movement Oud and Piano Marcel Khalifeh

Marcel Khalifeh – أحن إلى خبز أمي

There is a light that never goes out by The Smiths

Ode by David Darling

Oregon－The silence of a candle

David Darling – Dawn

Ketil Bjornstad – Pianology

The Violin by Vladimir Mayakovskiy

The violin got all worked up, imploring
then suddenly burst into sobs,
so child-like
that the drum couldn’t stand it:
“All right, all right, all right!”
But then he got tired, couldn’t wait till the violin ended,
slipped out on the burning Kuznetsky
and took flight.
The orchestra looked on, chilly,
while the violin wept itself out
without reason
or rhyme,
and only somewhere,
a cymbal, silly,
kept clashing:
“What is it,
what’s all the racket about?”
And when the helicon,
brass-faced, sweaty,
hollared:
“Crazy!
Crybaby!
Be still!”
I staggered,
on to my feet getting,
and lumbered
over the horror-stuck music stands,
yelling,
“Good God”
why, I myself couldn’t tell;
then dashed, my arms round the wooden neck to fling:
“You know what, violin,
we’re awfully alike;
I too
always yell,
but can’t prove a thing!”
The musicains commented,
contemptuously smiling:
“Look at him-
come to his wooden-bride-
tee-hee!”
But I don’t care-
I’m a good guy-
“You know, what, violin,
let’s live together,
eh?”

Karsh Kale – Home

Talvin Singh – Light

Celestial Sitar Sojourn

Talvin Singh – Devotion –

Stravinsky Conducts Firebird

Life

The human being so often like a plant dies out of neglect.

Aphex Twin – flim

The Ballad of the Existentialist by Kris Rowley

salvation

There are two kinds of salvation in this world:

 

The first one is where individuals

tormented by certain truths

seek the silent refuge 

of a religious haven,

 

The second one is a little different,

here too the man bares his soul

not in the name of religion or truth

but rather to find a reason

for his indefinable existence.

 

In my map both these ways

lead to no particular destination

and the road besides being crooked

is based on false hopes,

 

The former immortalizes us in tombs

while the latter serves to cherish us in books,

Neverthless we are in both ways duped.

some talk about their children

some talk about their children

some about their boyfriend or husband,

 

they discuss the weather

politics and fashion,

 

even the five-year-old knows the difference

between a democrat and a republican,

 

not three years ago i remember

i tore all the newspapers

swearing to never

bother with this shit again.

 

people and places will probably

never mean a thing,

 

i was born with nothing but my

skin,

 

and yet the impassive excesses of

men, women, children and dreams,

 

the tongues wag for more
and more

saliva drips.

sacrifice

That day when my mother lost herself

to the impassioned embrace of a man

who by virtue of the vows of marriage

possessed her body

in exchange of his resolute presence,

 

she relinquished herself

for the child who slowly grew

inside her womb

 

and prayed

to the God

who did not let her down.

booyah!

Brrrrrrrr I am hungry

But why am I writing that here …..!!?

Yah. No poems for today. I am learning all the words under the A alphabet from the thesaurus. And some French grammar.

and downloading music

scratching my head

biting my lip.

John Donne (Ketil Bjornstad) – The Anniversary

LiteraryMary Journal

LiteraryMary, journal of the beautiful, unusual and eclectic, is now available for pre-order through this link.

Myth, Illusion, Joy & Wretchedness

I once knew someone who for some strange reason had a profound impact on me at a very young age. Caught betwixt the burden of having discovered I could write and not wanting to write was like denying as well deceiving myself from being who I was. Of course as long as I can remember, I have not only been a pain in my own ass but in others as well. Family can bear your faults tenderly and call you different and special, whereas society will reject you as the byproduct, and stamp your ass with incompetent, socially inept or mentally screwed. Or maybe you simply were unfortunate to have been conceived under a bad moon. Oh, how I both hate and love the moon! God knows what a useless empty piece of land that is, and yet, for some utterly incomprehensible reason humanity has worshipped it, poets have idolized it in innumerable ways alluding to it the symbolism of their beloved’s beauty etc, or some other far-fetched analogy.  We cannot help but worship that which is beyond our reach, and the means to experience it becomes the axis of our life’s journey. The nuclei being ‘the’ desire.

 

This particular individual had a strange philosophy towards life, he said, since life was so vulgar, meaningless and pathetic, one could either cry incessantly or laugh hilariously on the very stupidity of the divine creator’s intelligent design, which at the end of our frustratingly-maddening lives did not seem so intelligent after all. And I wholeheartedly agreed to his wisdom; a dimwit myself, but my not-so-dimwitted alter-ego securely invisible under the cloak of young age, the caustic-opinion-rejecter, refused to hog down her cognitive-sewers such a blatant conclusion of existence.

 

So despite my outward meek, tepid and rational persona, I set up a new front, prepared an army of my own, and lodged them in every nook and cranny of the mental stratosphere whence I could travel to thereby forfeiting any external claims on my thought-factory. My so-called friend had chosen to laugh on the world and laugh he did. Everyday, in every conversation, he could elicit and discern the mirth from the utterly un-laughable, which riled my pensive temperament. I did not believe that it was possible or even an easy alternative, to see the funny, to be safe, always from the bullets and torpedoes fate so amorously targeted at us. He often told me the necessity of positive thinking, (I said yes, and agreed) but I could not make myself practice it. The preacher preached and practiced his doctrine exceptionally well, but did he never stumble upon any holes, loose ends, or even shallow ditches? Did he never think twice, before making up his mind about a certain thing, was he so cocksure? One day we had an argument about food. His field being medicine made him a nutrition obsessed freak. He could talk for two hours about what vegetable or fruit could cure eyesight, or strengthen the bones. And I thought to myself back then, how could a man, so goddamned educated, intelligent, and well-versed with the nuts-and-bolts of life, seem so stupidly self-centered and obliquely dumb to not realize the ‘separation’ of his being from my being. That I was the cause of my own life, and that <thoughts> were a result of my individual experience, and lastly I may just as well choose to disbelieve him until his method is proven compatible on my system.

 

I raise my objection to a positive approach. Simply because it leaves one with blind spots, insecurely exposed and put out there without going through a test-drive. No I do not adhere to the school of stoics, however if I am to believe in something or proceed in a certain direction hitherto un-trodden, I cannot merely do it from one happy-lotus leaf, like a carefree toad, and hop onto another one. I begin my alphabet from A – the problem. The issue, the chaos: the confronted self doubting the questioner, to the actual genesis of the very intent. Step one, from shit-tunnel of wretchedness and doom to step two, acquiesce of a possible solution. He preached the positive, I was gloom. He said light, I refused its brightness. I’d rather acquaint myself with darkness. It is impossible to build a skyscraper or a minaret (of the mosque) unless the constructer has dug deep into the earth, his measurements equaling the heights he proposes to which the building will stand erect at. My philosophy is I do not have a philosophy and refuse to have one. Philosophies are formed in one spurious moment of concrete thought, hence imprisoning the dynamic shift of both impulse and life.

I enjoy food as long as it fills my belly and gives me strength to move from one day to another. I do not like to sit dwelling on seasonal tastes, the coarse or subtle, cooked or over-cooked palate. There are more serious issues that concern man besides his food. No longer content with my friend’s assertions over life or his ideology, I was restless to move on and find my non-space which would prove a thousand times more creative, productive and enchanting to my senses.

 

I admit to having fancied the moon myself though not out of idealization but a curiosity of its very bare and empty elemental existence, the randomness, the no-purpose, the void which proceeded from God, his scattered meteorology. God was no Van Gough, but he certainly was the gamer, the programmer, the player and the virus.

bugge wesseltoft – you might say

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

 

I was skeptical about reading this book, firstly because of its over-used theme of Asian immigrants trying to discover or re-invent their identities in western countries, secondly, literature balanced solely on cultural precepts does not sit well with me. It’s like cheating the reader. However to get on with it, The Namesake begins with a young man in his early twenties, who is of a Bengali (Indian) descent. He is very fond of books and one day while traveling on a train to visit his grandfather, he meets with a tragic accident. He is miraculously saved, when someone discovers him moving among the debris and rubble of the aftermath, and his hand clutching a copy of The Raincoat by Nikolai Gogol. The presence of this author’s book at that particular junction of Ashoke’s rescue leaves a deep impact on his psyche that eventually ends up shaping the rest of the novel.

 

After the accident he decides to leave the country and settle as far away as possible from all things that might be reminiscent of the incident which left him mentally and emotionally scarred. His parents and the many siblings, devastated by his decision, reluctantly bid him farewell, as he leaves with his newly wed bride (a union made possible through a formal arrangement by his family) and we find Ashoke, a doctoral student at MIT settling down in a tiny apartment with his wife, Ashima in America. This brings about a shift in Ashima’s experiences as well as the birth of their first son, whom they end up naming as Gogol. This young man grows up, ok, to make a long story short, he has a sister, and both of them struggle to fit in the society, schools and friends, as second generation American-Indians, rebelling against their heritage. The book follows through Gogol’s initial dislike of his name and so forth. But, I’d rather not spoil it for you, so go read the book!

 

The Book of my Life

the grouch and the tease

i cannot count how many days i spent
in unruly discontent that somehow
the art i longed to perfect mistook my
intent. the gracious muse who came and went
as his highness pleased, goddamn such freedom,
did he like to play hide and seek? or some
other silly game to startle and tease
nervous poets who struggled to graft their
thoughts on a frightening old man’s hull also
known as history. crumbling yellow skin,
the perennial stubble, accusative of
our insipid philanthropy, the muse
loved to dance upon the throne of time thus
challenging my creative feats. a cow with
no teats, or a violin minus the string,
synonymous to my frustration a
window overlooking desperation.
what am i? but valueless currency 
wherewith the trader falls bartering his
dreams. the poet; ever shallow, wooden
-legged corpse, patch-eyed, a caribbean
pirate in search of fresh meat. woe to these
elegies. but afore i scatter the soil
and close the book shall i not utter those
farewell words? readers to whom we write with-
-out a cause possessed by invisible
demons and wars, this thankless employment
that doesn’t feed the belly nor pay bills of 
habitation, whatever in this world,
did induce us fools to such detraction?     

Et si tu n’existais pas – Joe Dassin

Ren Yuan – Gnossienne No.4 Erik Satie

sleepless

 

In the middle of the night

I push away the blanket covering my body

Run a hand through my tangled hair

And get out of bed.

 

It is late enough for me to be myself

Prowl around the dark house,

 

I turn on the light in the kitchen

And heat myself a glass of milk,

 

I am hungry,

But not enough to want to eat

Just one of those days…

/or nights.

 

I can see a constellation of stars outside

In the dim darkness,

The snow is frozen everywhere

Some days it rains and that makes it dirtier

And messier to go out,

 

One hand under the chin

I stare at my reflection a little sleepily

The window already fogged with the warm

breath.

 

I turn to God

As I have many days

To talk about things

I wouldn’t with anyone.

 

Candlefire – Michael Nyman

A Winter’s Night

The ice expands the wood

Congesting the door to its frame

And I have to pull harder

To get it to open.

 

A treacherous draft hits my face

And I gasp with the impact,

 

There are chores to be done,

But my mind is already elsewhere,

 

I dig my heels into the snow tentatively

Re-checking my pocket for the grocery list

Things I write down because I occasionally

Forget where I am and what I am supposed

To be doing.

 

There is an unhappiness that surrounds

People with things;

Material, immobile to their consciousness,

The noose around the neck

Tightening its grip,

 

I have stopped counting days

By man-made calendars

Or watches that tick out of semblance,

For I refuse the dominion of a life

That will end with death,

 

My brother drives

Lost in thoughts somewhere,

 

I look at him

And think of the escape

We all attempt at least once or twice

No matter how shoddy the plan.

Pitter Pat – Erin McCarley

snow

snow
breaking apart
descending upon us
crystal powder, floating butterfly
flurries

 

dancing

dancing
midnight dreamer
behold halting elegance
breathing desire convulse under
motion

 

Haiku 1

A deep flood enters there.
Unfolding petal stirs,
This dream into the light.

Haiku 2

A loud bell resounds.
Laughter is heard in the streets,
It is half-past nine.

spare parts

With my singular vision, I should like to overtake the world. Except my energy levels are occasionally low and need to be recharged like an expired battery, which is prone to dying on the user before its estimated time that I think perhaps NOT.

Yet, human batteries cannot be replaced, unless you have auto-part shops where God’s messengers sit and wait upon us tired servants, wary of retardom and excessive verbose, preferring the martyrdom of dumbness to the much exploited and misused lingual facility.

Some days everything fails but the quiet darkness of my room.

Mozart Flute Concerto No.2 K.314 – 2nd Mov, Emmanuel Pahud

The Rainbow

It is funny when I see teenagers act like they know the shit. Times have changed. Or must I say we have. Since my antipathy towards this entity that requires clocks and hands, or the crutch of the sun’s shadow to measure its effluence upon our progress or decline, has been an arbitrary ass-wipe concept in which I have refused to believe in. I simply do not understand why we function the way we do. Where must we go to that we aren’t in that place already? Adults ride their children’s assess as soon as the poor innocent creatures begin to develop their comprehension abilities, to be someone, go somewhere, whereas I who lack the necessary spatial skills for figuring out my way through these geographical nuisances see no point in the stupid discussion. I am going to sit here, (maybe under a tree in my backyard) and stay there until the next tsunami arrives. Will that satisfy our stupid mortal dilemma of existence?

 

Our world has been crippled by some menacing disease that has spread its malignant influence from the mere physicality of life into the deepest recesses of our essence flushing out any hopes of reiterating what has been dispossessed. Our lost paradise. We struck the first match and now cry, fire, fire.

 

Maybe it is intellectual laziness that causes me to think so, but what can cure a snake bite if not its own poison? Gandhi was wrong when he said, an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. He was a chicken, a hermaphrodite, who chose stupid tactics and slithered his way out of imperialism. Now the entire country is living off his name, what a rip-off, but saves them the hard work of establishing their own identities huh? What happened to the world was, a couple of dope-heads made their way to the top of the human assembly of intelligence and power and began to advocate/dispose off their mental diarrhea on the lower-half of the populace, rendering us incapable of fresh air as well as the existential mobility to which we were entitled to as our birthright. So we stink, reek of polluted remnants not of our own doing, and yet they burden the shoulders of men, women and children, who think they are of sin. Whereas the original sin was the conception of ideas, the duplicity of our illusory sight, when man thought he was the almighty God, and began making offerings on the altar of his deranged brain.

Bach Prelude flute guitar BWV 999 Premiere Fuchs Bagger

Björk – Venus As A Boy

Mending Walls

For some impenetrable reason, when I awakened today morning, and was in the process of making myself some hot cocoa, the begining verses of Robert Frost’s Mending Walls, began playing through my head. It’s been ages since I read that poet, neverthless to honor his work in this cold winter that chills the marrow of my bones, it would do him justice to share that poem here as well. So dear readers bear with me as I navigate once more through ‘Mending Walls; metaphorical and literal.

@#!& enjoy this music from my favorite movie ^-^

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen ground swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair,
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
Stay where you are until our backs have turned!”
We wear our fingers rough handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before  I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down. I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But its not elves exactly and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Binging a stone firmly grasped by the top
In each hand, like an old stone-savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only the shade of trees,
He will not go behind his father’s saying
And he likes having thought of it so well,
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Feist – When I Was A Young Girl

“Je réalise” by Sinik feat. James Blunt

Omar Faruk Tekbikel – Moment of Doubt

Famous Last Words – A Musical starring Death

Marcel Proust – Swann’s Way

The first couple of pages of Swann’s Way can be very aggravating to a reader. Proust begins by recounting the early impressions of the boy-narrator at Combray, where his family usually spent their summer holidays away from the city life. The reader comprehends an unusual amount of affection and clinginess of the narrator towards his mother, whose love he vies but is afraid to be found out by his father and his grandmother, all of whom are over-protective of him, choosing to confine him indoors with some book for most days rather than letting him venture out and mingle with others.

 

As I continued reading, I observed how the recapitulation of the senses, metaphorically and literally, continues to be a recurring theme of Proust’s work, which in a quiet semblance fogs over the reader as well, and one begins to feel like they are re-living someone’s life by observing them from their own sitting room or lawn. You do not feel like an outsider yet there exists a camouflage of unreality dividing the past and the present.

 

Proust has a way of being excessive in his narration, that is from the magnanimity of his descriptive sentences to their very length, which induces the reader to consider how serious could such an author have been about his craft. What do I think? I think he was very serious. Perhaps up to a degree to have disregarded a normal lifestyle.

 

Another observation the reader might glean would be about Proust’s badly structured storyline. It is not so much a book about characters and their lives, as much as about portraying the narrator’s experiences, memories and their dynamics. As a fiction writer he most likely fails, but as a linguist, recorder of history and lives, he succeeds. It might be an absolute waste of time to ever attempt reading the entire seven volumes of The Remembrance of Things Past, and you are most likely to curse the author midway through the process, yet ironically after completing Swann’s Way, I came to the conclusion that the experience had been worthwhile. It had been a feast of the senses no doubt.  

Bernhard Schlink – The Reader

One must not be decieved by the size of this book, despite its two hundred something pages, there are several themes that are interwoven throughout. The story unfolds as straight forwardly as someone would go on to describe the weather. Fifteen year old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna Schmitz, a woman in her mid-thirties, who finds him sick on the street and whom she takes to her apartment to clean and tend to. This marks the begining of an unconventional year-long affair between the teenager and the young woman, who is particularly interested in hearing Michael read to her. However here is the catch, Hanna is illiterate, she cannot read or write and this is a very important aspect of the story because it determines almost all of her life’s decisions and their implications that she eventually comes to bear. The story takes place during and after the Holocaust period.

The book is simply not one which would revolve around a love affair that ensued between these two, it is much more than that. The issues raised here concern the legitimacy of morality, it’s accountability on human actions and whether a person should be considered responsible for things done or acted upon in ignorance of their actual consequences. Do we live inside the box and ignore all that exists outside or let go of conventions? It was not a book that I would read on random and enjoy because the language is translated, secondly prose loses it’s orignal intended effect when clothed in another tongue, thirdly the narration is at times clinical; lacking richness. Like the white-washed walls of an empty house the words are often stark and devoid of warmth. The Reader reads like a holocaust report, by a living corpse, that was burned by the consequences of an unconventional love affair and swallowed by the vaccume of moral guilt.

Damien Rice – Volcano

Ray Lamontagne – Lessons Learned

thou shalt not mock the lost and confused of the earth

I cannot believe the impunity with which I treat myself in spite of all the incredibly silly failings that I suffer from almost on a daily basis. Counting from the innumerable absent-minded gestures like forgetting what I was saying in the middle of a conversation, walking away from the cashier before paying and/or taking back my change of money, and/or panicking in the face of simple tasks such as operating the laundry machine in my basement, which I did for the first time today.  That bulky contraption seized me with more fear than a sudden ensuing war or major global catastrophe could. The more my thoughts strive on micro-analysis of things and people the lesser the degree of normal social behavior. Methinks the conjecture of normalcy obsolete.

 

Darren Hayes – In Your Eyes

this song brings me back…

Oooh, love…
I get so lost, sometimes
Days pass, and this emptiness fills my heart
When I want to run away
I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

And all my instincts, they return
And this grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, and without my pride
I reach out from the inside, ooh oooh whoah

In your eyes, the light, the heat
I am complete
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
the resolution through all my the fruitless searches
Oh I see the light I see the heat
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light, the heat, I see in your eyes

Love,
I don’t like to see so much pain
So much wasted, and these moments keep slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for my survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

And all my instincts, they return
And this grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, and without my pride
I reach out from the inside, ooh oooh whoah

In your eyes, the light, the heat
I am complete
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
the resolution of all my fruitless searches
Oh, I see the light I see the heat
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes

spring

something beautiful is happening

the snow is changing color

above the earth’s ripening sheen,

and a dew moistened flower bursts

into a myraid colored dream.

pen, paper, stone, scissor

overwhelmed
he held my wrist
and kissed it
with lips shaped
like molten perfume,
and indolent desire 
whispered, “I have been exhumed.”

the afternoon air was suspended
over us with dust like a canopy
intersecting the narrow divide
of wakefulness and thirst,

somewhere echoed the distant
shouts of children playing
and a phone incessantly rang
unanswered,

hellishly bothered,
I tore up the fancy
that I had thereto made up,
child of imagination
what rubbish this boredom
oft infidelity renders.

surviving bad literature

A couple of minutes ago, I was curiously reading Kundera’s Immortality (a book, that my friend passed on to me), and I was struck by how fucked up this writer was. He was describing in a passage, a scene, where people were incessantly in a symphonic manner yawning or stretching open their mouths, and the absurdity of capturing such a moment struck me as inane. Not only did the writer integrate this mundane moment into a paragraph, but managed to write an entire book, disparate in essence, depicting random nonsensical associations of people and situations that an otherwise semi-intelligent individual would perhaps only ponder upon in his feverish reverie. Thus the manifestion of it in an actual bestseller would seem very foolhardy.

I am not sure what merits a bestseller, the intelligence of the judge who picks out the book or the intelligence of the readers who sustain the sales pitch of the market? Let us assume, the judge adores the said novel, he is blown away by the simplified narrative/structure and cannot wait to let the world know about it, so he makes the announcements, and the book is awarded, a pulitzer, booker etcetra. But a certain inquisitve reader out of the million others, happens to get his hands on it, spends an evening trying to invest his concentration to look for that ‘something’ but never finding it, assumes he is perhaps lacking certain neurological functions.

A Hundred Years Of Solitude is another such book, which petrified me, and I was never able to complete it. My father on many an occassion has said to me, and well himself, that if something is incomprehensble, don’t attempt it, don’t go near it. In short, he meant, things should be simple, or they’r not worth your time. Now, he is not a simple man. His kind of simplicity is the highly complicated kind. The mental maze, and puzzels you’d have to navigate in order to stand by his side, and understand his vision. Marquez writes a book, where the character names are beyond difficult to follow through as one continues to read, as well as the story which fails to sustain attention. I am not sure now, whether these writers encompass the greatness that the world professess to, or I lack the intellectual vigor, to amass what they have expounded upon.

The wise men say that if you possess inner clarity, your words, your actions, and your speech will likewise be. In reference to Kundera, or the likes such as Coelho, who attempt to relate to a civilization, that suffers from its own disintegration, elucidating rationalizations of love and life, in an attempt to create cohesion, where none can possibly exist, I can only arrive to the conclusion that we as a people are simply too complicit to fight our own selves. Societies like relationships fail, when efforts are ceased; the act is voluntary, and thus, the reticence to admit otherwise.

comic saviors

The God of Small Things

l’homme et la femme

Insignificant without the other.

Why wander about between two hedges made of stair-rails while the ladders become soft as new-born babes, as zouaves who lose their homeland with their shoes*

ah finally, I have the right title, idea and desire, to write.

i am not sure whether to celebrate or mourn the emotional slogging that lies ahead of me.

–
*(Making Feet and Hands by Benjamin Peret)

(I heard of a man …) from Let Us Compare Mythologies*

I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.

If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips.
it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside the door.

–
*Leonard Cohen

Earth, round, rolling, compact–suns, moons, animals–all these are are words to be said*

i have often realized that a state of despondency comes over me like a dark shadow, during the days when i don’t write. all the horrors that we speak of existing in the world are initially conceived within us, that they will formidably swallow us one day if we do not keep at bay. a swift kick in the butt might initiate movement, or say, some michevious event in the near future, to keep the devil happy and content enough not to severe the suffering individual’s umbilical cord with his beloved muse. speaking of cords, or alexander graham bell (which also reminds me of certain cookies), who invented the so-called telephone, which has been upgraded with the much hip cellular phones, i think back to a time when communication was far more ‘actual’ in the sense that if one wanted to speak to somebody, all they’d do was pick up the phone and call them.

today, however, we have alienated each other in the process of increasing accessibility, through means of text messaging, chating and emailing. speaking on the phone has come down to mere professional or impersonal communication, well i suppose i speak for myself here. i am sure there are many normal folks out there who follow the old school ways. growing up as a chatter box, i used to constantly stay in touch with my friends on the phone, after school. perhaps it has to do with age? a propensity towards the goth-era of self-pity or the fear of putting one’s vulnerable self out there, to people whose kindness you are not sure about, that has reduced the warmth of socialising. the effect is radical, revolutionary, and surprisingly ironic. technology has had its side effects, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. but that follows for everything, every action will have some reaction, barring its nature of course, i.e. positive or negative; an interpretation that rests soley on the individual contemplating the particular topic.

perhaps we are all too prejudiced with our selves, to have any space or time for others. who knows? is it our education? the economy? that’s sucking the blood out of our lives? everyone’s worried about paying bills, making ends meet, that we don’t have time to live for the good things much less appreciate a good laugh, and the days pass by inconsequential. it’s quite idiotic how i look forward to only the certain minimal reduced responsibilities or events, and disregard whether it is morning, noon or night. while i turn my face away from nature and her kindly unwavering continuation of existence, i find myself, reduced, compressed like excess unused data in an old hard drive.

not only has existence become a curse for everyone (and you know what i am talking about), but it has become a burden as well, something which it is not supposed to be. we as a collective humanity, have managed to rape mortality out of its innocence, and today suffer the humiliation, the sin of a mortified decadent civilization, too wary to want to continue forward. so there is nothing new to be done? somebody went to the moon, somebody came up with the religions, the renaissance is over, and mona lisa is overrated, people are so bored that they’re re-making all the classics or mocking the normal movies. it is repetition, my friends, an impotency, which makes me quote tolstoy’s famous words, “where do we go from here?”

–
*Walt Whitman – Carol of Words

Journey into the Interior – Theodore Roethke

In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
– Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.

Eddie Vedder – Society

random shit.

bitch. cunt. I am so mad right now.

family and relatives

sometimes people like me, need a nice grandmother or grandfather, instead of shallow siblings and parents who are too concerned with the present, like a bunch of narcissist good-for nothings, who cannot see anything beyond their every-day superficial needs. who are like rats running nowhere and feeding off the cheese of stupidity that this world defecates.

the elders are dead. those remaining, too intimidated by the modernisitic approach of my siblings and parents, stay away. i was pleasantly surprised to receive a phone call from my uncle, who i haven’t seen in about four years now, and talking to him felt like coming home.

this country is going down the drain, and i am happy it is, it is time people learn what to actually value. the best lessons are learned in times of desperation. cheers to a contemporary age of incessant failures!

of being and non being

i am unaware of my external persona, however we are all beings who communicate what we experience, akin to intelligent mediums, who transpose their acquired knowledge within their social circles. so basically everything is within reach, if it has been understood. like men and women who were born blind and never learned to see the light, will at some point, begin to understand the different facets of this brightness, its warmth, effect, purpose and such, whereas someone who entered this world, and was able to see everything clearly, will take this very light for granted, see it merely as light. the very singularity of his understanding will begin to cripple his growth. he may grow bodily but the essential comprehension will remain undeveloped.

the idea that we were all thrown into our supposedly independent adult lives like a bunch of cannon balls, and that we found everything as it was, came to accept it fatally. i do not shy away from the concept of fatality if it is coupled with a sound sense of questioning ingrained that will so oft raise the skeptic’s proud head from its dark den of habitude, to perform the sacred rites of ablution. to be baptised by the uncertainity of everything around us, our presumptions, truths and beliefs, is by far the only commendable act anyone may ever hope to achieve. why? because it is a neutralizing factor that is capable of extinguishing our prejudices.

everything else is hogwash.

last night i was attempting to clean the kitchen floor, a detestable job no doubt, and everytime i ran the mop in a particular spot, i would turn around to get something, and notice a dirt mark, after a couple of repetitive attempts, it dawned on my rotund brain, that the slippers which encased my feet, were in fact soiled from having gone outside, and they were the guilty culprits. it made me think of how we as men and women, fight all our lives to set rules and morals, attempting to redefine lives and act revolutionary, while utterly failing in the act and wallowing in self-pity and whatnot. we fail to see that perchance it is our feet that are not clean, that the people who attempt to bring change do not sport the very change which they speak of. this hypocrisy and irony thus in a stealthy manner reinstates all our previous failures.

The Postal Service – Sleeping In

Fazil Say-Black Earth

Rohff – Regrette

nor word nor touch nor sight of lover, you shall long through the night but for this: the roll of the full tide to cover you, without question, without kiss*

One fine evening of utter despodency I decided to order the biography of Proust, thinking to myself, how fascinating it would be to read in depth about this wonderful author, and I go ahead and make the purchase. When the book arrived, I was like wtf, it is fatter than a chinese sumo wrestler. So anyways, now that it has graced my presence, I realize what a mission it is going to be to complete it, and I have only traversed about twenty pages of the nine hundred something that it is made of.

Of the many authors I have read, what I most love about Proust is that, as a writer he was pretty pro-active in encompassing all the senses of a human being within the limited and narrow cage of verbosity. Even though his stories were not the stories one would naturally expect, they were scattered bits of moments and recollections captured together and glued with a lot of descriptions of people, geography, the weather and his infinitely strange attachment to his mother, ‘maman’ we all love our mothers, that is an irrefutable truth, however akin to Freud’s oedipal complex theory, here we find Proust initiating his awareness of his surroundings through his mother as the common denominator.

Stories have a strange way of telling themselves, whether through the mouth of a horse, or a relentless branch waving to the sky shamelessly for want of attention. We find how altruistic these attempts are, that they may not appear to fit in with any pre-defined mold, yet each voice seeks to be heard and that is where the slow and silent journey of transcribing begins. We trace our lives back to the root, the seed of conception, and ruminate over our hearts. How, many a times we step on these delicate organs, push them behind our sights in order to have a clearer view of where we are going. All stories have a begining, and they eventually tell us when it is the right time, to put our pen on the paper.

–
*Lethe

distance, let dawn leap the void at last, and a single beam of light make a rainbow on the water

There is a rain
There is the shadow,
You flit between these two
Like a clock hand
In limbo.

–
*Cascade

move the dash before the comma

What kind of fuckery is this?

sometimes writing is difficult :{

Main Entry: nos·tal·gia
Pronunciation: \nä-ˈstal-jə, nə- also nȯ-, nō-; nə-ˈstäl-\
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek nostos return home + New Latin -algia; akin to Greek neisthai to return, Old English genesan to survive, Sanskrit nasate he approaches
Date: 1729

1: the state of being homesick : homesickness
2: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition ; also : something that evokes nostalgia

that light under the green cloak

as mad as mad as
mad can be
the sky
that dips its
hands
into the firmaments.

it breaks the lie
beyond the die
of shadow and dream
like a blue smudge
of an irrediscent flame.

the dance, the step
the whirling
of the dervish
given over by the pain
he walks and talks
unconscious of his name.

The Regiment of the Senses

Speak not of guilt, speak not of responsibility. When the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners; when the senses shiver and shudder, it is only a fool and and an irreverent person that will keep his distance, who will not embrace the good cause, marching towards the conquest of pleasures and passions.
      All of morality’s laws – poorly understood and applied – are nil and cannot stand even for a moment, when the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners.
      Do not permit any shadowy virtue to hold you back. Do not believe that any obligation binds you. Your duty is to give in, to always give in to Desires, these most perfect creatures of the perfect gods. Your duty is to enlist as a faithful footman, with simplicity of heart, when the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners.
      Do not confine yourself at home, misleading yourself with theories of justice, with the preconceptions of reward, held by an imperfect society. Do not say, Such is my toil’s worth and such is my due to savor. Just as life is an inheritance, and you did nothing to earn it as a recompense, so should Sensual Pleasure be. Do not shut yourself at home; but keep the windows open, open wide, so as to hear the first sound of the passing of the soldiers, when the Regiment of the Senses arrives, with music, and with banners.
      Do not be deceived by the blasphemers who tell you that the service is dangerous and laborious. The service of sensual pleasure is a constant joy. It does exhaust you, but it exhausts you with inebriations sublime. And finally, when you collapse in the street, even then your fortune is enviable. When your funeral will pass by, the Forms to which your desires gave shape will shower lilacs and white roses upon your coffin, young Olympian Gods will bear you on their shoulders, and you will be buried in the Cemetery of the Ideal, where the mausoleums of poetry gleam conspicuously white.

(Cavafy)

questions, thoughts, metaphysical dilemmas and more unlikely crap we don’t like pondering upon

I have often wondered how important it is to be honest with people and family, or can honesty be limited between whatever deity we believe in and ourselves?  The relation however being hypothetically non-functional (a dilusional comfort factor for some) or perhaps the deity here is our concience, (I not possessing any will replace that with God).

I don’t know why but I just can’t seem to bring myself to be companionable at times, the mere effort of talking is like attempting to dig a hole in the earth in search of water, and we all know how deep that is going to be. I can think of two reasons why this state of reticence takes effect, the first being, my love for books, for knowledge – since knowledge does not force itself upon me, but rather sits patiently, until I figure it out, assemble, and re-arrange it in my sphere of comprehension, then after we have established connection, we are friends for life. Now compare and contrast that, dear reader, with an actual living, moving, talking person, who comes along with a bunch of preconcieved notions, a personality & mind programmed from birth into the ways of our society, a society used to condemning differences with a hammer bang – bang – bang and you’re flat out reduced to nothing.

The second reason is my need for invisibility or non-being. Invisibility is good because it helps me determine who has night vision, who has the depth and insight to see things without the aid of external help, can you close your eyes and know where you are? If you were trapped in a small box would you have the ability to sustain yourself and figure a way of outdoing your circumstances? People who can generally see are blind in my opinion. They are seeing things which are already there, and hello? I am not even interested in you having to describe and tell me things which I would know, if you cannot detect the subtle changes in the constantly shifting intellectual paradigm of your exsistence, you are as good as an obsolete being. Go get an upgrade.

Like all living things, our world is a breathing, oftentimes hurt, entity that is thrust with the immense weight of our stupidities combined with the physicality of our bodies. We may often times reduce it to a mere piece of land, rocks, stones, and whatnot, and forage her womb until she is on the verge of an irreversable breakdown. Our destructive activities are not only limited to torturing the earth, but we gleefully engage in doing the same with each other. I can picture so many scenarious where siblings, lovers, couples, parents, etc would attempt at picking each other apart and then be driven miles away in hate.

So the patient earth (perhaps she seems patient because she cannot speak the human vernacular and we are too stubborn to learn hers) waits for just this one random day to strike out in anger and cause havoc on the ones hurting her causing mankind to scream, petrified of the disaster. I sit back and smile, happy that she has taken the initiative for revenge. Somethings need to be balanced, who hasn’t learned of equilibrium in economics?

Going back to honesty, how shall we be honest with each other? Let us begin by not trying to be anything in the first place. Second we aim at attempting communication. Which does not mean I ask you how good was dinner last night or whatever you did after that, neither would it be communication in the form of incessant complains. Communication if objectively defined would include, transfer of information, between two people/entities in order to create dialogue, to exchange, learn and grow by an active inter-play of ideas. Oftentimes I cring at having to communicate with members of my own family, knowing what they will ask, say, or confide, because in my length of vision, they are not attempting to move anywhere. I don’t hate circles, but if you love them so much, I’d suggest you join the circus. Lots of circling and trapezing going on there.

The biggest mistake we as human beings make is attaching ourselves to limited entities, then festering with them, like a puss filled pimple, waiting for it to break, which godforbid I should witness, ever. What we should be doing is, attaching ourselves to the unattachable. For then, you have a wide road ahead of you, of infinite possibility. May the Gods we believe in, grant us such a means, to attain what is not seen by sight, to acquire that which is not acquired by force, so we can deserve to be the rightful inheritors of knowledge and wisdom.

coffee anyone?

I think I am ready to start school again, but maybe….after I have some more shit cleared out of the way. Then I shall serve my purpose of being on this earth.

descartes improvised

the first flower of spring smells the sweetest

my blog shall be on a short hiatus. but i will be back here when it begins to rain and i need a roof.

Wasting of a Life

Someday when I am tired of rebelling
I will let my hair grow
And you can play with it
Lying by my side
My head on the pillow
The sun kissing our sleepy eyes,

Someday when I am tired of hiding
I will tell you about the things I love
Unafraid of their lies,
I will stop making holes in my heart
And you can hold your hand up
To stop the wasting of a life.

Someday the leaves will stop falling
When the wind gets tired
Of the big giant trees that cry,
And love will be what it is meant to be
A song, a whisper, a sigh.

The sharper the edge the cleaner the stroke

I love my new kitchen knife. It cuts through the vegetables effortlessly, and I realized this a while ago as I was chopping up the eggplant to cook vegetable stir fry for dinner. My friend often comes over and likes to utilize my unused kitchen apparatus for the purpose of cooking or experimenting as I would call it. Most days I am too laid back to bother concocting recipes to formulate any edible dish, which leaves me in the deplorable hands of bread and whatever I may accomadate between it. Peanut butter, jelly, hotdog, tuna, cheese, or simply lettuce and mayonise with a dash of green olives. Call it sloppy or unseemly, it is food neverthless. And the quickest to prepare when the stomach begins to get louder than one’s mother.

My friend rapidly growing accustomed to my place proclaimed several times how she felt at home and began to notice how I was missing things, she even got down to writing grocery lists because of my apparent lack of domestic concerns, she realized that the knives I often used were not sharp enough, and decided to take me shopping. We bought a set of knives with red handles, that gleamed and looked sharp enough to chop off human limbs. Sharp things do not scare me as much as having anything to do with fire, lighting a match etc.

So I decided to enjoy my knives, and used them today with considerable ease. Then it struck me, like a sort of divination, inbetween the smell of burning onions and garlic, that people may unwantingly enter your life and bring about certain changes which we had hitherto been unware of. I am a loner and I do not like being bothered with social concerns, as the dear human populace may wake up in the wee hours to groom themselves, I may be found dragging my blanket around in the kitchen huddled up, clad in a t-shirt and shorts, trying to stay in the cocoon of warmth, and nothing would be more irritating than listening to another person relate tales of their mishaps and adventures expecting cheery responses.

Misanthropic as I have so slowly become, I often encounter instances where it is better to let go trying to understand things and analyse them or worry about how odd I feel in the random sequence of events that surround my life. The beneficient lord may attempt to shower his blessings in innumerable forms, but how can illogic be made to appear logical, and must all beings be fitted into a predefined, preselected role? What if the programer who designed the program gets duped when the program becomes dysfunctional and cracks its own code?

Philip Glass – The Light Came Through the Window

Rose – J’ai

The God who invented Idiots

A feeling of complete randomness often strikes me and I wonder what I am doing here in this country, do I even belong here? Will I ever feel at home? Forever stuck in a long meaningless journey, the likeness of sitting in a train, a train that has been journeying through a tunnel. Of being surrounded by idiots, I will not dispute, nor the difficulty in being so often misunderstood that I fear speech itself. The surprise of discovering infinite digressions of intelligence and character, the truth that no matter how much you try some people do not deserve what they have, that somehow life does not make any sense, and you have been cheated by God, because he had his fun and is probably laughing now.

I know for a fact that I will move on, I do not succumb to meaningless distractions. I make peace with myself before I sleep every day, I forgive myself for not falling down to other people’s shallow levels, I pat my back for following my own conscience, and preserving my sanctity and sanity, but I will move on, and leave everyone and everything behind. The question is, what will this time spent measure up to, an experience or an experiment? Or years lost in extravagance?

more strong than time*

one more step to take and i will be there.

–
*Victor Hugo

eschatology ad verbum

Words are beautiful and when they are fused together coherently to create an image, represent an idea, a thought or a feeling, it becomes language. For as long as I can remember I have been interested in learning and researching the intricate fabric of lingual and cognitive sciences. If my doctoral thesis subject is approved, I will be found scattering my musings on the pages of my blog. Like restless birds in constant search for the skies, I will traverse the infinite shores of my consciousness to observe and collect the hidden pearls of knowledge.

beyond the narrow road, underneath the blue skies lie the giant grasses singing a hymn to life

he was a mystery to me
the boy who would not be.

a secret
sublime.

the ocean fought
the wild tide.

day break
followed my song,
i sat up through the night.

he was a mystery to me
the story of a thousand nights,

and like a bird
love sought her cry,
between the wings of a dove
searching for the answers
earth denied.

if you put the candle out, what remains?

I had nothing

but the cage of mortality

to bind me to death,

to free me

from myself.

song of love

to think of how much they had loved
through the fights
arguments and heated words,

like the aftermath of a holocaust
clinging to the remains
despite the ugliness and hurt,

to think that i might have learned
how not to love
how not to hurt
how not to touch.

but oh like an island
lost in myself
amidst the distant cooing
of birds,

the rain, cloud, and earth.

to think that I might have learned
something from their song of love.

before you sing a lullaby

on a night like this
when the right words won’t
come,

a poem
breaks away from the tree
of silence

and falls down
into an accumulated pile
of unspoken dreams.

the music
of the hour
stains

my fingertips.

a road with no name

if you haven’t learned by doing
if you haven’t burned by touching

by the giving
and the forgiving,

negating
the very means
of your existence,

holding on to that aching piece of flesh
on the left side of your breast
afraid to lose,

you have gone nowhere
nowhere that i know,

irrespective of the distance
traversed by your dusty shoes.

the apocalypse

But nothing is important
when it comes to love,
and neither you
nor I
can ever come between
things that
will
one day
overtake us,
empower
and break
who we are
or
could be.

6 am

Four hours of sleep
and I am
good to go.

the eleventh commandment: be happy

The whole point of existing, of coming into being, in this world – is to be able to do whatever you please. Not to sound too incredulous, the old age rule should however apply i.e. do unto others as you would do unto you. That moral issue cleared from the way, we must all, then like curious children, be happy (& devoid of conscience*).

–
*(this rule does not apply to sadists & masochists)

the empty glass of beer

some days i face the blank in the wall
in my life,
and I smash the shadow
teasing on the glass
smothering the light.

random

someone did something,
someone went somewhere,
and then we all had a good laugh.

sisters of mercy

Like the very gods in my sight is he who sits where he can look in your eyes, who listens close to you, to hear the soft voice*

what are you
when you can do
without love?

–
*Like the very gods

what is bright, yellow, has no matter and is found everywhere?*

Of all the sicknesses that humanity as a whole suffers from, one very repugnant; the root of many evils is reactionary behavior. This force not only initiates impulsive anger, a sense of irritability, instability and threat, but impinges on peoples’ right to be. Most of the folks I come across online in forums or in actual physical presence seem to suffer from this reactionary syndrome. It is as if one has lost his/her intelligence to process what is reflected onto them whether by society, media or simple randomly expressed opinions. A certain element of hostility thus constantly prevails in the air.

In your mind’s eye, you can probably picture a ball being passed back and forth, switching hands, getting dirt from each individual, till it tatters and is shredded beyond recognition. The ball – here being an idea unanimously expressed – eventually declines to a state of abused mutilation. In the early stages of preponderance, I assumed it was a character defect, a personality disorder, some Freudian or Jungian phenomena, that should be left in the hospitals and asylums. However, confining a disease within walls does not imply we sit comfortably on our behinds and overlook its existence out here.

Where does this behavior begin? Homes, schools, or the streets? Everything comes down to instant retorts and remarks. And those who do not respond with the quick speed that our defunct culture functions at, you probably ‘didn’t get it’ – ‘too weird to fit in’ – ‘better left alone’ – or ‘bitch – cunt’ Obviously we have beheaded silence and adopted the crude route of thrash and thrust the finesse of our latent composition. Good people go bad because they are not treated well, the bad go bad(der) because there are no set limits to anything and hence we are happily riding the rollercoaster ride to free will, all the while dehumanizing each other. Welcome to earth 2009.

–
*your jaundiced presence.
–

[bobbing head, weird accent - Thank you, please come again]

The Joker and the Queen

I am sitting in my room. The window is open and the smell of freshly cut grass wafts in. I can hear him, over my earphones, engaged in a meaningless argument with my mother. The neon blue paint on my left index finger is chipping. My dad is arguing about something on the phone as Carla Bruni gets louder. A brainless grey butterfly, the size of my thumb, adds the special effects by hitting herself incessantly from the outside of the window. I look to my left and see him standing at the door. Laughter and pretentious mockery escaping his eyes.

tout le monde – carla bruni

vows

if you were my bootstrap
i’d tie you once
and then twice,
cross you up
make a nice design,

if you were my bootstrap.

we would
stay together
through rain or mud,

and if i lost
the desire to fight
i would give my feet a shake
and we’d pull through
just fine.

ready, get, set, go

it all began with a bet, a game
each of us were blindfolded,
twirled in a dance
and left alone
to chance.

life in technicolor – cold play

I – It – She

sometimes i think that i do not have much to write about. my life revolves around its own fixed axis, narrow and purposeful, with little or no room for spontaneity. stability can be applauded for the assurance it offers one, but it oftentimes assimilates the identities of those involved. certain people can have a knack for multipilicity, they unfold and scatter like a manifold layered spectrum, wild and colorful. others expand within their spheres of comprehension. their knowledge of the common and inconsequential defines their being. they are not spectacular, they do not go the untrodden path, but like stones and pebbles on an oft ill-used road, remain – stoic and irreplaceable. yet they are what makes the road possible.

i have three words to say tonight

allergy
allergy
allergy

Day Dreamer – Adele

If poetry is

If poetry is an eruption
volcanic and unsurpassable
caused by a build-up
of intense heat and
concentrated pressure,

then, it is the duty of the citizens
who guard the prison gates
of love,
to reach for cover
until the smoke clears.

escaping the storm

half-leaning he held the palm
of my left hand,
and with a mock frown
peered into the zigzagging lines
crossing over the hills and valleys

dark
light
spidery,

the life line
and
the love line,

“there will be no children,
at least none that I can see,”
I know a joke
when I hear one,

the rain had stopped beating
on the roof,
I shifted in my chair
crossed and uncrossed my legs,
fiddling with a stray thread
on the hem of my yellow cotton skirt,
nervously chewing my lips.

unsuccessful in the human cacophony
of artifice,
I might have been
an ant or a bird in my past life,

but
who cares?
some of us are better off
on this side of the street.

I laughed
and said good bye,

pretending the tea had not been
so bitter
and the porcelain cup
an ugly red.

the gamble

if you roll the dice
and it’s a two,
if you roll it again
and it’s a four,
we make a hundred today
minus the drinks
and the bets.

constipated

so…

i was about to write something,
but
i have nothing to say.

dichotomy

you know how it is with women,
they say a thing
and mean another,

and you know how it is
with men,
they say
nothing at all.

then there are
some children
wise enough
to stop growing

before the balloon
is stretched out,
in a field of thorns.

mount eden

the woman who longed
for something greater
than herself,
vowed to refrain
from the oblique nature
of sex,
sat upon a throne
of emptiness
ruminating
the earth
from a broken piece
of
an hourglass.

rain from a clear sky

bitter, bitter,
there will be no end to it.

the ant scurries up
the hill,

leaving a trail
of work
unfinished.

the grasshopper rolls
and jumps on the river bank,
“sit up, sit up,
do not frighten the mice,”

and the curious cow
shoo’s a mosquito
then blanches
into death.

Rilke – The Poet

O hour of my muse: why do you leave me,
Wounding me by the wingbeats of your flight?
Alone: what shall I use my mouth to utter?

How shall I pass my days? And how my nights?

I have no one to love. I have no home.
There is no center to sustain my life.
All things to which I give myself grow rich
and leave me spent, impoverished, alone.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemmin

An Everlasting Once – Theodore Weiss

Suppose your whole life
you went your way, belonging
to no place, no school, using
your wits to gainsay every trace
of influence or imitation, wiping
out anything that reminded you
of anything.
You knew how
browbeating memory, the rule
of the past, can be, how easily
it thrives in wiping out the new
since seen for the first time
only.
So you kept yourself
to yourself, doing only chores
you had to to survive.
Unknown to anyone–almost,
for its engrossment, to yourself–
you gave yourself to your work.

With you gone they found it
something unspeakably, if not
unbearably, your own. No matter
how they tried they could not
digest it into a name, a scheme,
an explanation.
Except for this
they might not have been sure
you’d lived at all. But this,
unblinking, brutal in its
authority, made it impossible
for them to deny it or to call
you a minor this, a crazy that,
eccentric at best for his battle,
rejecting the main stream.
They
might turn away; they could not
altogether still the whispering
fear that, after all, that stream,
notwithstanding its deflections,
its passages long underground,
had gone this way. Daily now
the stream grows louder.

just one of those days when i don’t know where i’m going or what i’m doing

current status: sleep deprived

quote-unquote

“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.”
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

i have a dream

maybe someday i will stop badgering myself. get on wid it…life is too short

spilling the mocha

Love is an old dog,
too loyal to leave
too tired to bark
broken he lies
by my side,
while I think of
the good times.

Serenade – Franz Schubert

Beautiful music from the far east…

the dance of no music

He has afflicted you from every direction

in order to pull you back to the Directionless.

Rumi

LA GRANDE MAISON INHABITABLE by PAUL ÉLUARD

Au milieu d’une île étonnante
Que ses membres traversent
Elle vit d’un monde ébloui.

La chair que l’on montre aux curieux
Attend là comme les récoltes
La chute sur les rives.

En attendant pour voir plus loin
Les yeux plus grands ouverts sous le vent de ses mains
Elle imagine que l’horizon a pour elle denoué sa ceinture.

—

THE BIG UNINHABITABLE HOUSE

In the middle of an astonishing island
That her limbs travel
She is nourished by a dazzled world.

The flesh one shows off to the curious
Waits there like harvests
To fall on the riverbanks.

Knowing she’ll see further
Her eyes wider in the wind of her hands
She imagines the horizon has unbuckled its belt for her.

tr. Nancy Kline

Prettiness incarnate

“ثلاثُ عشرةَ طريقةٍ للنظر الى شَحرور”والاس ستيفن

1

من بين عشرين جبلاً ثلجياً

الشيء الوحيد الذي يتحرّك

عين الشحرور عندما ترمش

2

كان لدي ثلاثة عقول

مثل شجَرةٍ

عليها ثلاثة شحارير

3

حامَ الشحرور في دوامة ريح خريفيّة

كانَ جُزءاً صغيراً من مسرحية صّامتة

4

رجلٌ وامرأة

واحِد

رجَلٌ و امرأةٌ و شحرور

واحِد

5

لا أعرف أيّهما أفضّل

جمال المجاز

أم جمال التوْريَة

الشحرورُ يُصفّر

أم ماً بعد ذلك

6

رُقاقات ثلج على امتداد النّافذةَ الطويلة

تشكّل نقش بربريّ في الزجاج

ظلُّ الشّحرور

يتخلل المشهد جيئة وذهاباً

المَزاجُ

يقتفي في الظّل

سبباً مُبهَماً

7

أوه يارجالَ هادام الناحلين

لماذا تتخيّلون طيوراً ذهبيّة؟

ألا ترونَ كيف أنّ الشّحرور

يحور ويدور حول قدمي

المرأة القريبة منك؟

8

أعرفُ لهجات نيّرة سامية

إيقاعات لايمكن مقاومتها؛

لكنّني أعرفُ أيضاً

أن الشّحرورَ له علاقة بذلك

9

عندَما غاب الشّحرورُ عن النّظر

ترك أثراً على الحافّة

لواحدةٍ من الدوائر العديدة

10

عندَ رؤيةِ الشّحرور

يُحلّقُ في ضوءٍ أخضَر

حتّى الأصوات العذبة

من ماخور الداعِرات

تبكين بحرقة لذلك

11

ركبَ فوق كونّيكتيكت

في مركب زجاجي

بمجرّد

مانفد الى قلبه الخوف

تماماً في تلك اللحظة أخطأ

ظِلّ حاشيته

لكل الشحارير

12

النهرُ يتحرّك

الشّحرورُ لابدّ وأنّه يحلّق

13

كانت أمسية طيلة الظهيرة

الثلوج تتساقط

و كانت تبدو أنها

ستظل تتساقط

الشحرور يقبع

على فرع شجرة الأرز

أريـدُ أن أمـوت – آني سيكستون

بما أنكم تسألون

فلا أتذكّر معظم الأيام

أسير في لباسي

لا أشعرُ بزخم الرّحيل

حينها يعود ذاك الشّبق الذي لا يسمّى

حتّى و إن لم يكن لدي شيءٌ ضد الحياة

فأنا أعرف جيّدا شفير الأعشاب التي تذكرون

ذاك الأثاث الذي وضعتم

تحت حرقة الشمس

غير أنّ الانتحارات لها لغتها الخاصّة

تماماً مثل النجّار

يريد أن يعرف كيف يستخدم الأدوات

لكنّه لم يسأل مطلقاً

لماذا يبني

لمرّتين وبهدوء أعلنتُ نَفْسي

امتلكت العدُوْ, ابتلعت العُدو

وعلى مَرْكبه أخذت معي سِحْره

وفي هذه الطريق، م

مثقلة و مُستغرقة

أدفأ من الزيت أو الماء

أنا قد استرحت

وسال من فوهة فمي

لعاب

لم أفكّر في جسدي عندَ وخزة الإبرة

حتّى قرنيّتي وما بقي في من بَوْل

اختفى

الانتحارات كانت قد خانت الجسَد مسبقاً

اليافعون لا يموتون في العادة

غير أنّهم يُبهرون

لا يستطيعون نسيان لذّة مُخدّر

حتّى أنّهم ينظرون للأطفال

ويبتسمون

أن تَسحَقَ كلّ تلك الحياة

تحت لسانك

ذلك بحد ذاته

يستحيلُ عاطفة

ستقول، موت لعَظْمةٍ

يائسةٍ ومُجرّحة

ومع ذلك ستنتظرني هي

عاماً بعد عام

لأمحو هكذا برقّةٍ جُرْحاً قديماً

لأفرّغ شهقتي من سجنها البائس

نتكافأ هنالك

الانتحارات تلتقي أحياناً

نحتدّ عند فاكهة و قمر مفقوء

تاركين كِسرةَ الخبز

التي أخطأتها قبلاتهم

تاركين صفحةَ كتاب مفتوحة

مُهْملة

و سمّاعة هاتف معلّقَة

لشيء لم يُلفظ بعد

أمّا الحُبْ، أيّاً يكُن ليسَ إلاّ وبـاء

Come Beloved / Hanna Jahanforooz

O come beloved and

for thy lover’s sake

untangle this contorted,

uncertain affair

Fill our cup with wine,

may it be sour or sweet

Before the potter fashion our

ashes and dust into hollow cups

with silent, parched lips

O come beloved and
for thy lover’s sake
untangle this contorted,
uncertain affair

Fill our cup with wine,
may it be sour or sweet

Before the potter fashion our
ashes and dust into hollow cups
with silent, parched lips.

by Omar Khayyam

Friedrich von Schiller – The Circle of Nature

All, thou gentle one, lies embraced in thy kingdom; the graybeard
Back to the days of his youth, childish and child-like, returns.

Abed Azrie And Ana Torroja, Media Luna – Deep Forest

seven steps and sudden leaps, on seven stones for seven leaves

nay, the bird is not a prey
if your eyes can concentrate
along the raspy willowy
unformed branches
of an unbent tree
too tired with age,

or if her feet unbuckle
from the twitch of reason
underneath the curvature of
a sheer black skirt encircling
the motion of earth,

she would turn around and laugh
the sudden sway of her hip
disturbing the momentum
of an ever so still mid-afternoon sojourn,

nay, the bird is a falcon
as it perches on an elevation
and hunts for its prey
in the seven steps and sudden leaps
on seven stones for seven leaves.

he walks among us

the monster collects his debt
he wears a different costume
and a mask to conceal his ugliness,

the monster visits unannounced
he has a limp when he walks,
and a vague stench of inconsiderate
resentment rises from the ground,

but his royal ugliness must accompany
every house,
dawn to daybreak
from the little penniless orphan
to the rich man’s quarters
he knows his way around.

the monster must have his pay
to settle the accounts.

–

catching up on the books

I read Charles Bukowski’s Factotum today. It’s a short little book (which works for me) since I am always running low on time or my attention span is limited to the level of interest which a particular prose style can sustain.

If you haven’t yet picked out your copy, here’s your chance. He’s easy to read.

Merriam-Webster

Pronunciation: \fak-ˈtō-təm\
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, literally, do everything, from Latin fac (imperative of facere do) + totum everything
Date: 1566
1 : a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities
2 : a general servant

poets are like cement mechanics

they try to break the mold.

Josh Groban

I love this song…

Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won’t be long
Til he opens his eyes, opens his eyes
Where is that simple day
Before colors broke into shades
And how did I ever fade
Into this life, into this life

And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I’ve known is lost and found
I promise you I, I’ll come back to you one day

Morning is waking up
And sometimes it’s more than just enough
When all that you need to love
Is in front of your eyes
It’s in front of your eyes

And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
Sometimes it’s hard to find the ground
Cause I keep on falling as I try to get away
From this crazy world

And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I’ve known is lost and found
I promise you I, I’ll come back to you one day

Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won’t be long
Til he opens his eyes
Opens his eyes..

there is nothing worse than being in exile

i stir my coffee slowly
clockwise and then anti-clockwise.
a newspaper sits on the table like stale crackers
moist from the humid air,

a drop of sweat
hanging precariously
from the tip of my nose
collapses;
suddenly giving up
………..its will

descending below -
to rest upon
an empty page of a diary
dated September 29.

within and outside this un-meddled sphere of my arms

Carla Bruni – Quelqu’un M’a Dit

Le Grand Mauvais Soi

It is a beautiful day but I am sitting and working in my room when I could be outside enjoying the sun! The older I get the more impatient I grow. School is boring, yes, I am wondering what made me go back to it? Our society of course! It has a beautiful habit of rejecting the rejects who don’t conform. So getting back in school was a way to not conform in a scholastic garb. However my scholastic garb seems to be loosening its hold and slipping off of my shoulders, I must need a new one?! I am not sure. I know I function best when I am able to help people, but this has taken a negative turn and I find it impossible to engage in tasks that are meant solely for myself. I hate how people always babble, ‘Me’ ‘I’ “Moi’? These words and the likes of them I’d press delete on my life’s keyboard if I could, however c’est impossible no matter how generous one’s spirit. Yes, not the soul. Soul is something else. Your spirit can be infectious and fill up a room with subtle laughter and fun, but Soul is the heaviness you drag in that shell of a body (it is like a casket actually) quite heavy but you have to drag its weight through out your mortality.

Overcoming the self. The self that is always overcoming itself. And itself is that menace which haunts our sleep, and lately my dreams, resulting in nightmares. I am not sure why I have been experiencing weird disconnected dreams; early childhood, grade school friends, and such. Amassing knowledge can be quite threatening to your already built system of thought and belief. The more information and knowledge one acquires the greater the inner-rearranging required! Oh, the forever disheveled house, always invaded and taken apart. I would not even associate sand castles to this process of dismantling. So my intent of writing this random (I have taken a fancy to this word lately) post is to get something triggered in my subconscious that I may take a plunge in my homework with a better perspective. We have a had a lot of wise men in our world, most are dead, the ones alive are hiding (as usual) I mean who can deal with being wise and social? They just don’t mix (e.g. water and oil). Well anyway, lately my theme has been a personal reorganization of my identity, I am trying to come to terms with who I am, how I can project that self, (or as one of my professors had put, “putting your best self out there”). It’s not easy because somehow what seems to be isn’t and what never seemed to be, is. Which reaffirms my belief that most philosophers don’t know what they’re doing (including the dead ones) and those alive and kicking in this generation go by the thickets, not beating around the bush, but in front of it, very loud and very incoherent. And we eventually come to call them philosophical people who are defined by their incoherences and general ineptitude to grasp the infinite complexity of the self, the I , and the Me.

I hope nothing that I have said above made sense. I am planning to retire within three years of my graduation into a world that is not technical or mechanical, and is not governed by text books, computers and brains. I plan to retire into my heart and close the doors to the big bad wolves*!

(Wolves aka: ego, self)

Everybody knows but nobody really knows

for the dead, dying and the depressed;
there is always another
spring
ahead.

Got Milk?

mooo!

Are you a post-modernist?

The following principles appear elemental to postmodernists:

• There is no absolute truth – Postmodernists believe that the notion of truth is a contrived illusion, misused by people and special interest groups to gain power over others.
• Truth and error are synonymous – Facts, postmodernists claim, are too limiting to determine anything. Changing erratically, what is fact today can be false tomorrow.
• Self-conceptualization and rationalization – Traditional logic and objectivity are spurned by postmodernists. Preferring to rely on opinions rather than embrace facts, postmodernist spurn the scientific method.
• Traditional authority is false and corrupt – Postmodernists speak out against the constraints of religious morals and secular authority. They wage intellectual revolution to voice their concerns about traditional establishment.
• Ownership – They claim that collective ownership would most fairly administrate goods and services.
• Disillusionment with modernism – Postmodernists rue the unfulfilled promises of science, technology, government, and religion.
• Morality is personal – Believing ethics to be relative, postmodernists subject morality to personal opinion. They define morality as each person’s private code of ethics without the need to follow traditional values and rules.
• Globalization – Many postmodernists claim that national boundaries are a hindrance to human communication. Nationalism, they believe, causes wars. Therefore, postmodernists often propose internationalism and uniting separate countries.
• All religions are valid – Valuing inclusive faiths, postmodernists gravitate towards New Age religion. They denounce the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ as being the only way to God.
• Liberal ethics – Postmodernists defend the cause of feminists and homosexuals.
• Pro-environmentalism – Defending “Mother Earth,” postmodernists blame Western society for its destruction.

Weblink

The search for an ideal balance – or does it even exist?

I was just having a conversation with someone about the various complexities surrounding human behavior in the context of relationships (personal, social and/or formal). What preplexes me the most is when I observe people suddenly altered from their actual personalities into some imaginably pretentious individuals to please others. If the basis of social bonding is dependent on self-abnegation, then I would rather forego the experience. If you are willing to lose yourself to attain something on a material level, what  worth would that achievement surmount to without the core (the actual ‘you’) that should be encompassing it’s existence? I told this person that once I had realized I posessed everything (non-material) within reach I did not feel the need to go out of my way to acquire it. You need three things to make it through life;  (a) Love (b) Faith, and (c) Ambition (purpose/desire to engage in a meaningful activity) and once these atributes are self-inherent in your word and deed, you can be counted as a valuable member of the society.

In order to elaborate on the above, I would like to shed some light on the necessity of creating a circle of trust. A circle of trust that will diametrically surround your being and protect your energy from external/unwanted dispersion. This circle is meant for you, and it will protect your inner-resources from depletion and cause further growth in strength. Most of the external attacks be they from people, close relatives, friends (who go bad) or simply anyone who cannot bear to see you grow  and develop transpire when your weak points are located, doors unintentionally left ajar, or windows you forgot existed have been stealthily infiltrated. A good analogy would be a virus infecting the computer because it was vulnerable and unprotected. To reiterate my point, a circle of trust requires your presence in the center, from which point you channel and control your protective gear. This circle will act like a halo and surround you day in and day out, in your personal and professional sphere by allowing you room to be yourself, and yet posess the facility of learning and evolving. Hence, if you have a circle of trust surrounding your presence, you will never find the need to alter your behavior or personality to accomodate anyone, but rather allow YOU to become an agent of postive influence.

Leonard Cohen – Lover, love, lover

in the memory of those who’ve claimed and reclaimed my heart

the square ball that rolled down hill

It is interesting,
when certain experiences
act like a catalyst
for clarity.

as you lay awake in this death

The smell of you
Sun kissed, antiquated
A wooden box
of childhood treasures,

The rugged frame
Plaited into a knot
of troubled gestures,

The taste of you
grappling senses
an overdose that
destructively enamors,

under strings
of a puppet-theater
your little heart of knitted
pleasure,

Sublime majesty from
your dissipated kingdom
ask me not
why I riddle this conscience,

But to know
that
I
give
up.

Utopian Devastation

It’s a utopian devastation o’ mother
they don’t teach no more
how to love my brother

I hide myself in rhyme
oh how grand are these
enchanting times!

The roads are dirty with grime
I can’t breathe simply sometimes,
people turn their air conditions on
can’t bear the sunshine for too long,
it’s a shame to shun nature
some folks have the greens
and they revel in their mansions
oh father, hast thou entangled yourself in greed?

It’s a utopian devastation o’mother
Men want to see her titties uncovered
five bucks in cash, and she would agree,
the star spangled banner is blue and white
think of the children whose innocence has died,
not that i care if you can talk
but noise hurts my ears as much as the words you
say that breaks my heart,

It’s a threadbare cover;
this progressive beat
demolishes the spectre on the street,
so you want to practice what you preach,
turn down that moral chatter
a couple of levels beneath
before you turn cold like a fish in defeat
don’t uphold standards that would
make the devil come alive in deceit
you moral creep,

It’s a utopian devastation o’sister,
they have told us not to love one another
but I gave my heart to her, him, I and it,
So shall we not dance to the %^*@(? (senseless deed)
oh lost joy; humiliation and defeat?

It’s a utopian devastation o’ humanity,
take off those shoes
that burden your feet.

they spoke of it’s coming, some said it was untrue

birds shall soar out of your hearts
in restless numbers,
and a giant tide of white lillies
will wash over the sky,
the falling petals will weave garlands
through their hair…
misty, unpreturbed,
a roar of silence,
this engulfing; a love.

running up the stairs

running up the stairs
a million difficult steps…

somewhere in this breathless race
i stop for a minute
to wonder why
i make these excuses
and hide
from myself.

God

was afraid of rejection
so he decided to hide himself

and out of that
cloak of invisiblity
began to love
the wretched,
mean and happy fuckers.

February Ping Pong with Guy ‘Dhyan’ Traiber & Sana Rafiq

You can read the interview of my friend, Guy ‘Dhyan’ Traiber on LiteraryMary!

We talk about culture, countries, writing, and ourselves!

Dhyan writes on his blog: http://utopianfragments.wordpress.com

haphazard nightmares

crazed monsters
heaving and sighing into the ears;
is it the devil visiting
in sleep?

ever more shall
the peaceful be disturbed
by the uncanny silhouette
of their darker selves.

- –

wicked memories
wrap their tight cords
around her hands,
feet; leave no room to twist and turn
a faint murmur; ash – burnt – smoke like
grey fire.

- –

discussing the anatomy of a stillborn child

I spend my days
thinking…sleeping,
gazing at the stars,

and listening
to my heart
beat.

the night rebels
in darkness
and teases the moon
with shadows,

I hide in the coverlet
of sleep
never to be found
dissolute in this
hyphenated sentence -
whose idea was it; this world?
to brave the seperation
of this unholy descent.

a quiet reverie

the first gleam of warm sunshine
teases the snow to melt her white frosty robe
into an invisible mass of slushy substance

and i can smell rain in the air
i can hear spring
approaching
not quite
but on the road
a few more miles
i would say.

Allegory by Marcel Proust

In the park there was an area of such rich and diverse flowers that it was often referred to as a garden. Every day it bloomed more and more in the joy of its beauty and the pretty scent of its perfumes. One evening, a furious storm tore up and carried away all the flowers. Then a torrential rain fell, frosting the bruised soil; everything that it loved the most was gone, torn from its very heart. Now it is all one, but this cold without respite, this senseless deluge, was the final cruelty. Meanwhile the wind took up the light earth in handfulls and scattered it before. Soon the last unyielding bed was stripped bare, the wind had no hold over it, but the water, being unable to cross it, and it was such an imprudently hilly garden that there was nowhere for it to drain off, remained there. And still it fell in torrents, drowning the ransacked garden in tears. In the morning it was still falling, then stopped; the garden was now no more than a devastated field covered by muddy water. But then it all subsided when, at about five o’ clock,, the garden felt its waters become calm, pure, pervaded with infinite extasy, pink and blue, divine and sickly, the afternoon, celestial, came to rest in its bed. And the water neither veiled it nor stirred it in any way but with all its love deepened further perhaps its vague and sad look and contained, retained in its entirety, tenderly embraced its luminous beauty. And henceforth those who love the vast spectacles of the sky often go to look at them in the pond.
     Happy the heart thus stripped of flowers, ransacked, if now full of tears it can also reflect the sky in itself.

An unused fragment from Plaisirs et les jours, 1893-1895.

Today’s cynical quote of the day

“Familiarity breeds contempt – and children”

Mark Twain, Notebooks (1935)

An interesting research study  that further investigates the idea of familiarity vs ambiquity with relation to relationships between people. The research study is found here: Click here.

Abstract:

The present research shows that although people believe that learning more about others leads to greater liking, more information about others leads, on average, to less liking. Thus, ambiguity—lacking information about another—leads to liking, whereas familiarity—acquiring more information— can breed contempt. This “less is more” effect is due to the cascading nature of dissimilarity: Once evidence of dissimilarity is encountered, subsequent information is more likely to be interpreted as further evidence of dissimilarity, leading to decreased liking. The authors document the negative relationship between knowledge and liking in laboratory studies and with pre-and postdate data from online daters, while showing the mediating role of dissimilarity.

Norton, M.L., Frost, J.H., & Ariely, D. (2007). Less is more: The lure of ambiguity, or why familiarity breeds contempt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 97-105.

I know why the caged bird sings

After 24 years of being in this world, having come across all kinds of people, different cultures, religions, social and economic backgrounds you’d think I would be a self-conceited and confident individual by now, and absolutely sure about every step I take. The irony however is the more I learn about human beings, the greater the increase in my hesitancy. Spontaneity is a beautiful attribute, it may be associated with creativity, intelligence, curiosity, intellectual disposition and so forth. However, the dilemma I am putting forth here concerns that of the mind and the heart. The heart once a carefree child discovered that it can no longer do as it pleases. Not because it was doing anything wrong in particular, but because what it was doing was drawing a lot of attention. Envy is an evil sword that cuts deep. You don’t know where it will strike from but when it does, you will be likely injured. Over the course of the past three - four years I have come to understand that experiences whether productive or non-productive (I refrain to use good and bad) are the only elements from one’s existence which we may proudly call ours, solely our own. They a) tell us that which was not said in words, b) fill in the blanks of our understanding, c) increase our certainity in ourself d) teach us that we are the captain of our ship however we cannot control the storms or intensity of the winds.

With that being said, I have barely made it through the preface of my book. Life experiences were introductions;  to people, places and cultures. To complexities; what not to do and what not to say, how to cover, and how to bare.  

Here is to another year of self-preservation from outside forces.

Tor / Sufjan Stevens – Star of Wonder / None Shall Pass (f. Aesop Rock) (remix)

Insensibility

they speak of things we don’t see
like a dark indisputable mystery,
suspended between your breath
and mine, this languished air
of a thousand ancient dreams,
lies crying, orphaned for love
amidst disappearing sands
our deep insensibility.

Spaces

lifting hands and crying to the sky:
i will go with you
i am the journey of your life,

this is what a blank space
in the ether would represent
if we were in our freedom

the heart and mind subjugate
and mingle with all of existence
there would be no boundaries

or limits to our love
and sentiment, if our
pride did not echo the world’s

reeking stale confusion,
we must someday learn
ourselves the plant to grow.

an afterthought

I am sad. But I guess it is alright. There are the good things in life to appreciate and be thankful for.

fuck it.

OK life is a bitch. As a writer I have the literary license of using obsenities so back off moralists.

I miss being able to have the time to think and write. It’s true what they say about losing something to gain another, and whoever that retard was who said it in the first place, but seriously fuck wisdom, because it’s a pain in the ass to have to be always doing the right thing at the right time.

Georges Moustaki – Le Meteque

Nature’s Rule

maybe I don’t feel
what I should when I talk
or listen with my ears
and not my beating heart,

maybe life should not be
how we wish it for us,
or tire ourselves fighting
to achieve such a purpose,

perhaps rivers should just flow
quietly with time beneath the moss
and smooth stones
that might prove the hour,

or the eternal peace to prevail
when your heart and mine
learn to be patient
and nature’s rules bear.

“I like to reject the status quo”

I am a believer and a disbeliever in God, love, life, faith, call it what you may. It is an interesting dichotomy, because I come to realize every day that concepts such as these are traps. I have in my most faithful moments felt the restlessness of my spirit, trying to escape some kind of invisible boundary? What was it? I am not so sure any more. My discussions of God or the omnipresent creator can be quite dynamic, I can debate for hours on the characterisitcs of the divine. But true to what I just said above, the aftermath of such exchanges arouses an unpleasant feeling of some sort of finality, a conclusion; so I ask myself: what is that it? Should I stop thinking now? Since we have arrived at a conclusion, set a definition that denotes in words, an evidence of the topic or issue at hand. It is a shame that we are so limited by our own intelligence, or ability to be intelligent; using the tools of logic and science or even some damnable previous experience, to hypothesize our current situations. While life is complex and beautiful it is undeniably an impossible task for one human being to visualise or frame another thing or person’s life-in-a-movement kind of picturesque way. Yet. We all do it.

So I like to reject the status quo as I speak it, define it, vocally depreciate and appreciate us, you, me, the collective existence. I would like to place myself in the category of those mad people who can never be content with what is. The what-is equation is a trap, neither am I ever content in the what-will-be. Honestly, we live in the grey, and yet, make the mistake of black and white every living second.

It may be an existential dread, but I wish to go against everything I Stand for culturally, spiritually, what country I come from, or who I associate it. All these elements deem it a risk of poetential blockage for sustained continuation of my essence.

When the evening touches your heart

When the evening touches your heart
as we two in our feelings walk in spiral swaying steps
colored red, orange, and gaining a purple dense,
hands moving to and fro measured in a steady pace
a solitary happiness celebrating the cherished oneness,
of dreamy day dreams in daylight hours,
that spectacular energy infused imagination
waiting to be delivered with exhaled breath,
when this soft gaining twilight brings a smile
that reaches so beautifully to your eyes,
awakening humor around a passive mouth,
rekindling fire of ambition’s ambiance
with which the setting sun caresses the sky
blue ancient yet renewing in color tinged light,
when the evening touches your heart’s weary strings
you begin to live anew,
when this setting and words invoke a melodious tune,
are you ready to breathe in deep the memories of rising moon?
with whiffs of ebbing organe gold
when the retreating sun will make you bold.

quote unquote

“I have a theory you will not read about in books”
–
“You’re thinking so hard your not thinking”
–
“I ain’t the only one who can read here”
–
“I want you to read with your eyes not your mouth”

As spoken by Ardis Mitchell ; )

e.e. cummings

The artist’s country is inside him – e.e. cummings

Affirmations

Keep life simple
Articulate thoughts with clarity
Give affection where and to whom it is due,
What else is there to live by
in a world of chaos and calamity?

Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1914-1984)

Before You Came
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Translated by Agha Shahid Ali

Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don’t leave now that you’re here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

Be Near Me
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Translated by Naomi Lazard

Be near me now,
My tormenter, my love, be near me—
At this hour when night comes down,
When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comes
With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets,
When it comes with cries of lamentation,
with laughter with songs;
Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.
At this hour when hearts, deep in their hiding places,
Have begun to hope once more, when they start their vigil
For hands still enfolded in sleeves;
When wine being poured makes the sound
of inconsolable children
who, though you try with all your heart,
cannot be soothed.
When whatever you want to do cannot be done,
When nothing is of any use;
—At this hour when night comes down,
When night comes, dragging its long face,
dressed in mourning,
Be with me,
My tormenter, my love, be near me.

When Autumn Came
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Translated by Naomi Lazard

This is the way that autumn came to the trees:
it stripped them down to the skin,
left their ebony bodies naked.
It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,
scattered them over the ground.
Anyone could trample them out of shape
undisturbed by a single moan of protest.

The birds that herald dreams
were exiled from their song,
each voice torn out of its throat.
They dropped into the dust
even before the hunter strung his bow.

Oh, God of May have mercy.
Bless these withered bodies
with the passion of your resurrection;
make their dead veins flow with blood again.

Give some tree the gift of green again.
Let one bird sing.

متى ستعرف (When will you know?) by Nizar Qabbani

MOBIUS STRIP by Robert Desnos

The track I’m running on
Won’t be the same when I turn back
It’s useless to follow it straight
I’ll return to another place
I circle around but the sky changes
Yesterday I was a child
I’m a man now
The world’s a strange thing
And the rose among the roses
Doesn’t resemble another rose.

Robert Desnos, translated by Amy Levin

for prodigal read generous

for prodigal read generous
 - for youth read age -
read for sheer wonder mere surprise
(then turn the page)

contentment read for ecstasy
- for poem prose -
caution for curiosity
(and close your eyes)

- e.e. cummings.

Martin Heidegger’s vision of becoming more Authentic

VI. ONTOLOGICAL ANXIETY AS THE IMPETUS FOR AUTHENTICITY

A. Conformity, Inauthenticity, Lostness.

We were born into a world of quiet conformity.
Initially everything we do and say and think and believe
have been done and said and thought and believed before.
The activities we regard as worthy of our time and effort (learning, work, play),
the ultimate values and meanings we pursue (achievement, love, children),
and the particular styles and forms thru which we pursue these goals
have all been provided by our various human cultures.
How different our lives are from the lives of ancient ‘cavemen’!

Unless we find ways to wrest control of our own lives from society,
all of our decisions will continue to be made for us
by the unnoticed forces of the cultures in which we live.
We may not be told which spouse to ‘choose’ or which job to take,
but how free are we to reject both marriage and work as basic styles of life?
How have we been carried along so successfully by culture without noticing it?

‘They’ even hide the process by which ‘they’ have quietly relieved us
of the ‘burden’ of making choices for ourselves.
It remains a complete mystery who has really done the choosing.
We are carried along by the ‘nobody’, without making any real choices,
becoming ever more deeply ensnared in inauthenticity.
This process can be reversed only if we explicitly
bring ourselves back from our lostness in the ‘they’.
But this bringing-back must have that kind of being
by the neglect of which we have lost ourselves in inauthenticity.

[Martin Heidegger Being & Time, Macquarrie p. 312-313; Stambaugh p. 248; paraphrase]

How can we bring ourselves back from our lostness in conformity?
What have we neglected, which has allowed our culture to absorb us?
How can we re-possess our lives, wrench ourselves away from the ‘they’?

B. Who Am I?

But if we notice our conformity, inauthenticity, & lostness,
perhaps we have the possibility of emerging from our cultural cocoon
and creating lives that we clearly own.
Initially we are creatures of our genetic make-up and cultural conditioning.
And if we do not notice our conformity and find ways to retrieve our beings,
we will remain in our culturally-given, inauthentic selves all our lives.

However, in addition to being products of human culture,
we are also our powerful and pervasive internal threat-to-being.
On this foundation, we can begin to construct our Authentic Existence.

C. How Do We Become More Authentic?

What can reverse the process of sinking deeper and deeper into the ‘they’?
How can we extract ourselves from our conformity, rise above our enculturation?
How is it possible to become more whole, centered, & integrated
in a world that prevents precisely these qualities from emerging?
Beginning as conformists whose ‘decisions’ have already been made by culture,
how can we become more free, unified, & focused?

Our Existential Predicament—perceived, perhaps, as ontological anxiety—
is the rope by which we can climb out of the pit of inauthenticity;
it is the handle by which we can grip our own beings.

First we must acknowledge our ontological anxiety.
This includes peeling away the protective evasions we have so cleverly woven
to protect ourselves from the deepest truth of our being.

Once we have revived our ontological anxiety, we must keep it alive,
not allow it to die away into comfortable obscurity once again.
Instead of letting our being-towards-death fade back
into the diversionary small-talk of the ‘they’,
we must focus our lives around this ‘threat’.
Then our ontological anxiety can become the light of our being
—purifying, refining, & integrating
our otherwise diffuse, preoccupied, & fragmented existence.
In the light (or in the shadow) of this constant internal threat-to-being,
we are empowered to choose our Authentic projects-of-being
—those basic endeavors that correlate best with our ontological anxiety.
Returning to this deepest truth of our being can bring us back to ourselves.

Retrieved from http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/XP226.html

come winter the birds will depart

Lately I have been very absent; caught up with commitments and deadlines, but deadlines don’t do much for inspiration and creativity. So life is curently like a swinging pendulum, you move one side and you are pulled on the other side in the next instant, yet time does not stop ticking. Therefore to make the best of what there is, I will be shifting some priorities and reorganizing my time for other things. Soon….very soon. In the meantime, enjoy:

Ma Maison – Marcel Khalifa (-بيتي)

Ana youssef ya abi by Marcel Khalife

All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name (Andre Breton)

I always get anxious before travelling out of America, the very fact that I am a Muslim, makes it worse. Then the horror stories I hear about others who get questioned while returning leads me into a panic mode such that I want to hide in a cave somewhere in an island and never have to lead this gypsy life again.  It is ironical because I recall how I did not want to ever move here, the idea of leaving behind the familiar; places and people did not sit well in my heart. But I had little choice in the matter. So now I am here, and I am nervous about going away.

The positive side to this dilemma is that not everyone is living my life; a lot of people don’t ever get to travel out of their countries, unless its school or business related. Not everyone gets to go to school and pursue higher education degrees, a lot of people have never experienced the life of ease I lead, being provided for, taken care of and looked after, even if it is only monetary support. But what can console a restless heart? Man requires a certain dose of courage when moving forward, the courage to go alone, the fortitude to persevere in one’s chosen path, but…there is always a goddamned but somewhere jumping and making noise to get attention, so this but is about being different, about fitting in and not being judged. On retrospection I am blessed to have people in my life who love me and respect me, but the fear….never goes away. My life certainly took a surprising turn when I moved to America, I had thought things would work out like A B C when I was in Riyadh…however here I am working on my doctoral dissertation, feeling surreal about the immensity of the task and its implications on my future. It is everything that I would have ever wanted, but never conceived I would have an opportunity to pursue.

My days often feel rushed, they are literally slow in terms of events and occurrences but they leave me feeling like I need to stop a moment and reflect.  I suppose because there is so much going on with school work, dissertation development, and my need to understand and position myself for successful outcome, that the cumulative sentiment is like running a marathon. Perhaps Muslims have become the Jewish version of a condemned minority who will forever wear the albatross of extremism on their necks? But as an afterthought, fuck religion, and fuck the God in whose name we fight and kill each other. Perhaps it is time we identify who we are as individuals instead of associating crippled identities with groups and ideologies that do more harm than good.

When you are old by William Butler Yeats

One of my favorite poems to date:

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Art

I think it is Art when we cease to exist
under the pretext of expectancy
and begin to breathe with our eyes
hands and feet.

It must be the depths in my sinking
that erases the need to be in control
or the casual stroll by the sidewalk
of a busy street where people are
just faces, impersonal, unattached
to my sense of feeling.

It must be Art
not to belong anywhere
or to anyone
preserved in anonymous memories,

To rise and set in the colorful shades of your
subtle intimacies, my mystic muse
characteristic of such silent dreams

An Art
to let go
and just be.

Death

One day you will see
The things you felt were impossible
Open like the lotus flower at your feet
And the skies bow down to dance
With the summer rain falling on the streets,
One day will be more than a lifetime
To reflect upon the things you did not achieve,
There will be magic
A momentary brightness
And a sudden overtaking sleep.

You know the secret

You know the secret
And I know it too,

The unexpected unfolding
of a bewitching truth.

You know the way of the escape
from the outside into the self

Loving the deafness, blinded
by hoping, perished from
longing,

You know it
Just as I do.

The quiet voice
of unfurling Beauty

And the laughter
of blue sky, white clouds and
the intoxication of a midnight moon.

The Mystic

The mystic is eternal
Like the endless sky
Always present, essential

Shadowless, existential
Yet together with the rest
Joined, submerged into the music

A lyric loved, loving
Lover into insanity
Seeking the enrapture in the
Beloved.

Sobbing on the breast of
Reason,
The mystic soul is a sentimental
Heart homeless.

Shrouded with doubts
In search of knowledge,

He lies in the desert waiting
Vultures eyeing his weak body
Flesh ensnaring
Mirages confuse consciousness
Lone in the entire expanse of the
earth, of nature he is composed of

Soil, wet grass
dew drop on red rose,

The mystic’s heart encloses all
Beyond comprehension the truth
Behind what you and I are.

Haiku #1 – Bird Song

Lilacs strewn on grass
Sound of approaching feet
Bird’s song at daybreak.

Eddi Reader – My love is like a red red rose

25 years old today.

still here.

C’est la nuit by Khaled

il est une chose du cœur

This life — measured by
a bill payed (or pending),
a weekend of homework due
waiting for dirty laundry
to collect itself in a pile,

my nimble fingers love to type
on a keyboard — I think
I have been true
to the love of God,

Departing from need
and want,
the I and Me –

an empty carcass
movment and physicality

dreaming eyes
spread like a beautiful woman
upon unruffled
white sheets,

     hungering heart

gnawing –

incomprehensible need.

Life without the Arts is ‘sense-less’

Raison d’être of Life

Poetry that I had authored during the years 2004-05 is now officially available in a book titled “Raison d’etre of Life” published by Cyberwit (editor: Karunesh Agrawal) on Amazon.com. If you are curious to read, I suggest you get a copy! : )

Thank you,
Sana

Disfranchisement of Minorities, Debauchery of the Elite and Rise of the Common Man

 

I observe silent and stealthy destruction of the weak, the poor, and those who stand for something that is not in accordance with the ‘sheeple’ mentalities. The establishment of institutions, groups, and policies that support and represent minorities are much more destructive and harmful for their existence than if there were none in existence. This is a message for all humanity: Stop isolating and emphasizing your identities. We are human beings prior to being categorized, designated and defined on the basis of our ethnicity, cultures, and religions. Why must we claim a race, religion, or culture that was pre-defined years ago by: our parents, grandparents, ancestors who are quite dead and denigrated into dust.

The current political crisis in the world is very legitimate – there is nothing wrong with Middle East collapsing right in front of our eyes – why is it happening? Because someone is being difficult and stubborn, is not budging and merging its identity with the global world/culture. If you stand apart, you will stand alone, so good luck with that. Isolate yourself and get ready to be brought down by all the secretly conspiring forces in the world. I have followed with this trend of individuating one’s identity and eventually people have lost because they were trying to assert what need not be asserted. Just because you exist, is reason enough to justify who and where you come from.

The other trend is prevalent in America: Minorities establishing separate existences by setting up institutions, foundations, etc. to assert their rights – what rights? Currently the black communities in America are at-risk – economically, academically, morally, and live in daily conflict among people of their own culture. Who exactly are the minorities competing with? If not with themselves, and how funny is that? A dog chasing its own tail…I will drink to that. Those who intended that minorities be weakened have succeeded because the effort has been put in action and consequences realized. People have shifted focus from self-development and using their intellectual and spiritual faculties to argumentation and competition with each other. Rather than create an atmosphere of competition we would do quite well to foster a climate of collaboration, love, perseverance, and support in empowering each other. I pity the fools – yes our foolish leaders, religious Ulema and clerics, who are intent on making decisions regarding how other people should live – men – I suggest you fear for your own lives – for God is present among us and within us, He is watching and you will suffer in your deaths for attempting to replace His role in our lives.

People are getting rich and making money from so-called noble causes and endeavors that appear to be charitable acts.  We presently live under the influence of mass hypnosis of media, political corruption, senseless sports, which demean the existence of humanity by placing a few individuals in positions of power and subjecting the remaining to comply in the form of mindless followership. Elite educational institutions are losing their value because THEY were manipulative power houses - contemporary societies mark the end of various forms of monopolies. What we are witnessing is a revival which appears to be in the form of ‘collapse’ in various sectors of the economy – this collapse must take place to make way for social restructuring. The collapse began in financial crisis all over the world; the fall of dictatorships (and more countries are on the way to their demise) while the masses stupidly sit behind television or internet screens and babble away arguments that will have no effect.

The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer is a famous statement made by academics, professionals and subject matter experts who continue to dwell on the issues of the widening gap between wealth and poverty. But the real gap is the widening ethical and spiritual gap, which is tearing apart the nerve, tissue, and muscle of humanity. Soon we shall be shattered and perhaps then begin to appreciate our spiritual senses in replacement of our carnal senses. The rich and powerful will never want the common, thinking – intelligent – sensitive – spiritually strong – man to rise and lead this world – the common man is shun, from power, from leadership, from any place or position that will be detrimental to the outcome of major political decisions. Those who are in power are mere puppets to more debauchery, corruption, and faithlessness. God have mercy on us, because when the common man tires of these games, he will let lose the angry urge to fight and it will not be a pretty scene.

Don’t follow the crowd: Lead it

Special days like mother’s day, father’s day, friendship day, valentine’s day, christmas or be it any internationally identified ‘day’ appear to have been hallmarked as special to make us feel guilty if we do not participate in celebrating them. People easily go broke year after year buying presents for friends and family in an attempt to keep up with tradition, yet begin a new year with an empty pocket and knee-deep in credit card debt. How lame is that? I for one, would rather not recieve presents, or if I were to give something I would choose to give a meal to a hungry homeless man, some clothes to cover his/her self rather than continue to maintain this ‘exchange’ of gifts within our well-to-do circle.

It is sad that we overlook the concept of charity toward the deserving and focus our energies on those who do not need our attention. We continue to stroke each other’s egos and feed an already obese child with more food (to use a metaphor). Here honey take more, become morally corrupt, selfish, and less conscious of your purpose on this earth – forget that we are interdependent creatures. The truth is we are not independent and consequently accountable for the welfare of those who are in need.

The capitalistic society has unconsciously and intentionally bred a consumeristic mentality, for instance if someone is unhappy they are ‘given’ things, money, gifts etc, to bloster their happiness which is due to some other latent cause – spiritual decline, identity crisis, lack of purpose or meaningful goals in life, or even superficial relationships. Intangible internal and external deficiencies in one’s life lead to seeking fulfillment from unhealthy and dangerous avenues.

thoughts

Dare we ask what is the truth between these falsehoods? How much of our lives are make-believe and what part is reality?

Metamorphosis

Butterfly wings, pale sunlight and your love
A quiet word entering heart, existence endeared
Vision’s treasure to capture ether’s essence
And cherish the dreams coming true,
Single sentiment, for he that laughs
Sharing all joy, pain and sorrow,
A spirited heart – it learned all that came
Struggle to overcome the impossible
Faith in self, believing in divine ways
Inhaled freedom of a gladdened embrace
I bow to this earth: all creation manifests,
Metamorphosis: from child to adult I grew.

Rosary Beads

Some people I have seen always at prayer
Believe they will find the road to heaven
Clutching their sins
Left hand hiding behind the spinal
And the right counting rosary beads,

What ignorance from their pathetic
Limp purpose-less heart seeps!
Disgrace a good deed
Full of gossip their conversation from A to Z
Begins each syllable I want-to-be-better-than-he

They live sightless, root-less when Belonging
Vomits them out and Sense befriends Scorn
In pools of stale water they languish
Swimming ungraceful surpassing the toads,
Tearing my brain into two I have wondered

What the angels would say of such a race?
Whether the earth was polluted enough
To have a new-makeover, rejuvenate
Visage coarsened with disused life effaced
Living blind tradition defacing culture’s name

Walking, talking, sleeping, eating, thinking
Visible holes of history cannot be hidden
Can we not this stinking stocking replace?
But I cherish God, my God in my own way
I do not preach what practice does not say,

Nor over-smother in grandeur glory utter
That which would be a lie,
His Highness now couldn’t be larger-than-life
Or how could my veins let him dwell and
Within my heart these artificial portraits paint?

In mirror’s reflection a twisted dazed image
Unable to recognize their selves reflected shattered iris,
When the last page has turned; end of life itself invites,
Knock…knock, and, “who is it?” their cowardly soul
In terror replies, “not yet, not yet,” is all they can mutter.

R.I.P.

Sometimes there is no music between our hearts,
Sad silences stretch their broken wings.

My song does not soar because the sky is dark
You seek me like an enchanting discovery
your captured territory
And envelope me like clouds embrace
the stars,

I disappear unheard
out-of-reach
wild,
haunting my own past
Where the sun seems to forever rest
In Peace
(R.I.P)
shall we put out our obituaries?

memories. What shall I do with you?
Amputate this bondage
My only
truth.

A glimpse of foreign wonder
images that lie outside:
real World, man-made earth – a stupid spasm
involuntary thought;
each of us subsiding
in a flux of contradictory art.

Clothe my soul

Clothe my soul with love
Unhurried and deliberate
Like patience inebriate.

With your eyes
Watch what I do not say
At times stuck in an erratic
Symphony of mistakes,
I love my silence that moves
Me like the falling rain
On the petal of your endearments,

Consume me like a rare cuisine
Course by course and never question
The ingredients out of which I was prepared
How could I define a multiple-faced sanity?
Or my madness that in mischief sways
Like a flower-testing honey bee?

If life comes for free
Why does my heart sometimes weep?
When I am blissfully happy
Redeem the price with tears
I juggle the paradox of such fears
That depletes the value of simplicity.

Cloud my eyes with apparitions
House me in your cherished moments
Lest I be over when you awaken

Discovered in between the lines
Of a poem,
I was but a tune
Your lute had stolen.

Vernacular of Desire

Vernacular of ceaseless desire
Touch wood and put it on fire
Raise flags blow winds of passion
Discover the arena of action,

The moth burns itself for the flame
Immortalized by the pen is a poet’s name
Words of love each heart stain
The phoenix that dies takes birth again.

Shallow your prejudgments
Who can an absolute knowledge claim?
Secure a rational logic
I breathe, see and feel what I am.

You should steal

You should take me out for a walk one day
Steal my heart take me into the woods
I would sit and watch the rolling clouds
Let you talk…chatter nonsense
Fill the emptiness of lonely hours.

I could forever write poems from your gaze
Rekindle darkness pull out all laziness
From the sun, hang it back where it used to be
After you’ve stolen me
I know I would
Sleep

A deep dreamless slumber undisturbed
Taken away
Secretly kept, a refugee
Seeking asylum in poetry.

My bold pen
Salutes God
For the understanding He gives,

I – an enlightened soul
Know from where
And whose song
I was conceived.

Stupid Inheritance

I shall never talk to you again
Horrible acquaintance,

To think that I was sane!?
Striking conversations

Monologues of wisdom
Eyes watering salvation,

Pain you have been my guest
Long enough that I shall pray

For your quick demise and hope
Never to meet you again

This stupid inheritance I won’t gain
Obsolete is your name,

You build mountains to house ants
Insects don’t need mansions of

Marble, incoherent empires
Of baseless existence.

Once my poetry comes alive
The words shall dance on this page

I shall hope to disfigure your image
Punch these words right into your face!

Little Blue Jay

The bird clings to his nest
Though needs compel him
To fly away.
Little blue jay
Do not fret,
Uneasy in this messy net
Of complications
You must weave another
Home out of twigs
Thrown about
On the garden path
Of heaven’s dreams,
Find another road
Let the winds rustle and laugh
You must fly away
Ere the daybreaks
And sunshine departs.

A living crutch

Dear daddy turns around and looks
At me. I think I am his crutch
He cannot do without,
Which is such a sad thing
Because I am me
I must someday away
From him live.

And mommy knows he listens
When I say no he won’t
And I say yes he will,
I am the knot they seem
To have tied to cross into each other’s
Hearts.

But I am not thread
Or wool so you may not weave
Shawls out of me to cover yourself
In your ageing emptiness.

How will I live to grow?
Or blossom when daddy wants
Something I am not

An advertisement
Or the antique artifact
The museum owns

I am the moth that stays
Awake in the dark.

Misunderstandings consume them
Confuse, obliterate simplicity
A garment I am woven of
Out of sunshine God stuffed my being.

But daddy must understand someday
Not all life that comes from him is his
Or that a thing is grown to be kept away
In a dark cupboard without air to breathe,

And mommy must not be so sensitive
Expecting things readily cooked on a plate
Were I their chef I’d cook them both Sense
And season it with Creativity,

But to slander is not me
I am the living crutch they have mistaken
Not always the silent poetry
I am also a girl who talks and dreams.

I will build me a bridge

I will build me a bridge when they fight
Cut down some wood from the forest,
To cross the flooding river and try
Splitting my body into two
One for mommy and daddy can have me too.

I will build me a house on a cloud
When no one’s watching or is around,
Then climb aboard it like a ship
Pretending to sail with a pirate
The journey wherever be it.

I will find a red color pencil and draw
From the little mirror on the bathroom wall
The ant with too big a pencil forever writing
Theorizing, chewing the eraser, uneasy nerves
I will paint a smile in their hearts
Build a bridge for everyone to cross.

I am not going to stand myself cut up
In two halves – the ant shan’t live up to see
The trees burnt down,
Though little green grass is where she abounds
Nevertheless she may build a bridge without a sound.

Nameless

When I dissolve into you
my love,
A condensed breath
become your immortality
from this confusion
deriving
a sustenance,

It would still not suffice
my irrational longing
consuming this spirit
to subdue a fire burning
myself into ashes.

They named me when I came into
existence
from parents so extreme in their
differences

that I am Sana

A girl still
nameless.

In the silence

In the silence of the room
The heart must be
A temple,
The worshiper worshiping his deity
The mind an oracle.

Synonym of love He pervades
Our destiny with incense
Burning and glowing:
…………….a dot of light
Understanding it
…………….the incoherent sight

Prayer rug lies waiting
For me to kneel and seek guidance
Head bowed knees touch the floor
Embrace the earth, her journey foretold.

In the silence of the night
……….Seclusion
……………..Is the answer
………………….For the unanswered.

Wim Mertens – Often A Bird

This be the verse by Philip Larkin

Come again

Come again often and carry me away,
sensation of delight, come to me often —
when in the body memory awakes,
and the blood quickens with some old desire;
when lips and skin remember, and the hands
are conscious of a touch as if they touched.
 
Come again often and carry me away —
when lips and skin remember, in the night ….

(C.P. Cavafy)

Zaum Magazine

I am excited to announce that my poem ‘If sleep was a bird’ was published in  Zaum Magazine from Sonoma State University. I would like to thank Amber Nelson (poetry editor at Zaum) who initially announced they were accepting submissions. The judges carried out a blind review and I was excited to get an acceptance email from them! : )

All Imperfect Things

The courage to admit you made a mistake, that you have not lived the perfect life, that it could have been better…but is there any better? Any more perfect than what one constantly strives to make? In this pursuit of excellence and perfection, I have let go those I loved, lost pieces of my self, like an amputee who had willingly come forward to shake off troublesome limbs because they were slowing the body down, I have let go of emotions to not feel. Gradually I stopped writing what I felt. My words took on a language of justification and self defense. Age serves to placate the spirit but it does little for the heart. People bury what they were unable to resolve in the deep recesses of their being. If one were a skilled archeologist, the exacavation of deceased bodies upon examination would reveal innumerable tombstones; epitaphs carved into them, signifying a loss, a resolute untouched, left-to-suffer-alone conflict of the heart. The truth which we are not taught during our lifetimes is that there are no completions, you are not offered a break from living to experience closure of an interrupted and broken story, there are no dams to gauge the flood; what we are told, consistently and systematically is that there is a pattern to our actions and purpose behind our decisions, that fate exists and destiny dictates. After a while you know it was pure textbook talk because we were incapable by our very essence to deal with completions, there are only portions, moments, and possibilites, that serve to hint what might be, what can be, or what could have been. The deceptive trick of time, always tempting with temporal favors yet never giving in to chance, testing our fortitude.

No Fear

I would like to thank Chuck (aka Doctori Sadisco) for gifting me a signed copy of his wonderful book, and even though I had not had enough time to sit down and read deeply the work he had shared over a month ago, here I am turning pages and reading into Doctori’s subtle messages conveyed in verse. I read his words at a perfect time in my life when I am in need of a fresh perspective, some hope, and a better vision of who we are as people. What Chuck manages to do is follow his inner voice, the mysterious images and meanings birthed from lyrical words, you not only enjoy the music in the poem but also the message. How rare is that? Most of us get lost in trying to create the perfect poem, so we either destroy the music by rigid structures or lose the meaning and deliver an empty sentence that is just structurally perfect.

I found the following words speaking to me directly:  

“To remain in the days
Which gifted you with love
The angry days must pass
And the futile days and
The frail ones bent and broken
Full of sorrow and remorse
Not because your soul has wings
But for the rising flame of that love
Which took you from womb and carried you
Day after long day you woke
To the world and took your first step

So now take the next step
Deeper into love where your salvation
Isn’t with a God but is inside your own heart”

(p. 27, Sonnet XXVII, No Fear – Doctori Sadisco)

What a valuable gift these words are, priceless and to be cherished and read in times of darkness and need. Thank you, Doc.

Don’t hesitate to get a copy of No Fear and enjoy these wonderful sonnets!

http://virgograypress.blogspot.com/2010/11/doctori-sadisco-no-fear.html

Existence is a Leaf

A silence you may fall into
The cherished depths of love;
A reservoir of hope where none questions
The why and how of giving up,

I will be a strength that retains
The power to comprehend touch
You may disclose your secrets
That have made you roam this earth,

Existence is a leaf that falls only once
Betraying eternity and deriding our trust,
We sway to its music
While it takes away all that we earned.

Abode

These hours multiply into days
And weeks that change the face
Of time as we deem it to be
A sacrament of purpose
The ordained task of becoming,

Of going back into the nothing
Reversing thought unto its root
The very first act of conceiving
That led to this giant oak
Beautifully flowering,

It’s the rhythm in the easy flow
Gradually sustaining hope
And all that its colors show
Underneath our shells
The words we utter

Assailing the ancient shores
Our waves unending
My heart on my fingers counting
The miles I trod betwixt the roads.

Eternity

Will making this journey count?
When distances grow lesser
And years fewer
Can the memory remain forever?

Elapsed moments of ruptured hopes
Because fingers counted those stars
Earth’s sky that night had assembled
But no more – the sun has ascended!

I salute this creator:
The womb where dawns all creation
Me – You and Plant
Destiny prophesied: premeditated,

Would eternity suffice?
For hungry souls like yours and mine
I doubt this feigned suspicion
I whose will the grass applauded.

They Cannot Figure Me Out

They cannot figure me out
A riddle, I am a meshed collage
Of the several human versions
Existing on this earthly platform
My stubborn feet walk.

They cannot find me when I talk
Or safely anchor my heart
I am a blown away leaf
Framed like a wayward star
In dreams that awaken you with a start.

Verses introduce my heart
And poems leave their mark,
I never speak aloud but wonder
Why silence is a peace treaty
All war-torn refugees sought?

Neither does an embrace contain
My liquid soul leaking its essence
Devoid of the togetherness it must sow
My mind often lets me go
Drift where there is no more to know.

R.I.P.

Sometimes there is no music between our hearts,
Sad silences stretch their broken wings.

My song does not soar because the sky is dark
You seek me like an enchanting discovery
your captured territory
And envelope me like clouds embrace
the stars,

I disappear unheard
out-of-reach
wild,
haunting my own past
Where the sun seems to forever rest
In Peace (R.I.P.)
shall we put out our obituaries?

memories. What shall I do with you?
Amputate this bondage
My only
truth.

A glimpse of foreign wonder
images that lie outside:
real World, man-made earth – a stupid spasm
involuntary thought;
each of us subsiding
in a flux of contradictory art.

Rainbow

There were many and I could not count
The traces left behind,
A cloud of smoke ring circling what
I did not give a name to,
Unattended in the solitary gesture of a
Fountain erupting colors of a rainbow,

Why was it hidden all these years?
The day light, evening and night
So soon behind veils disappeared,
And between thoughts of two extremes
The valley of light and the terror of unknowing
I began to understand this state of groping,

There were things
I could not perceive
Spiral like a shaded mystery somewhere
In the corners of my unconscious dreaming
Where I awoke to find
Your presence in me.

The Awakening

There can be no doubt that even time stops once in a while to hear the pendulum of her actions and ponders over the silence that floats underneath the clouds on which we gently place our fragile dreams secretly harboring the hope that one day they will come through the incomprehension of everyday existence. There are those certain seemingly insignificant elements within us that engender this transition, of groping the unknown to the grasping of what has been meant for us, a possibility beyond our limited infinitude.

I have curiously realized that beginnings are always more inspiring than what later follows. Is not man a strange creature, living off excitement and craving the great unexpected all through his life? Where our fates were the sole harbinger of surprises, neatly tied packages marked with the year and date, so we may open them and greet whatever is within that is already ours. But it is altogether another matter if what we received was an empty box, wrapped beautifully, yet devoid of substance.

Whereupon, daughter-of-eve, you inquire unto your bewildered heart what that emptiness signified? Were you the inheritor of the throne-of-nothingness? Or had life fallen so deeply in debt to its creator leaving you to fetch for yourself that you merely became an endlessly migrating pigeon who found no reason to root her existence.

Sometimes the entire universe conspires to help us become what we are meant to be, with the little pitfalls that come in our way and the surprising levels of elevation we suddenly find ourselves upon, the highest summit of spiritual ecstasy whirling our sense of logic and those rare moments of peace upon which you and I, as a man and woman feel conjoined giving birth to happiness.

Mist and the Rose

I am the nobody you love
Faceless without body
I live in the ether you do not know
You claim to have seen my soul
But I am the mere dust
That encompasses the stone.

I am
When I am not -

Like a flame from the fires of havoc
I create amidst chaos
Drowning in passions
Consuming the desire
To be
All.

You speak not to me
But to your heart
That has whispered its secrets
To the silence of the night.

I am
The stillness amidst time
A caress undefined
That breeds hope
In hearts cold.

I am the kindness
That beauty defines
Whereby the river gently sings
An apparition of life
As the mist is to the rose
And I to your eyes.

Alchemy

Know it is the fires raging
whirling us away
subtle intimacy,

This is our dance
your kiss and my receptivity
the touch and spontaneity,

Your breathing
and my heartbeat racing,
Wings flapping
fragrant dreams emanating
know the hour is conceiving,

The ache of devouring
my root of longing,

Dazed I trace imprints of your gaze
wild travels on my geography
counting the miles one, two, three…
surpassing infinity,

They do not believe in hope
but in a picture of its calamity
outside the where and why
I exist in a womb of possibility,

Know it is alchemy
the fire work and the rainbow
and everything you and I know
that reveals serendipity.

This Circumference

slowly it sinks deep
this thought, a moment
when truth itself unveils
the unbearable ache of grasping
your dream.

and you find the grass not
so insignificant or small
the little bugs seem suddenly
important, a part of the whole

as if in a breath of a second
in the abdomen of time
life suddenly opened a window
and showed you a strange sight
you whispered, ‘unbelievable’
it was a divine sign.

you used to think in terms of
black and white,
too many colors confuse
reduce our power of making a choice
but I was a rainbow personified,

we could never be,
unless for the evening
between the day and night
covered under the mantle of
non-definition,

should you choose to
give up your sight for my vision
my heart for your reason,
there might just be a chance
for love in every season.

Spring

He clings to me like a vapor
of mist never letting go,
His love is falling rain
drenching my soul.

The sweetest treasure I unearthed
Clasping the warmth of his body
I live in his touch,

He thirsts for it
without knowing why
The night ends quickly
when stars disappear in the sky,

He craves me with deepening insanity
The where and why incoherency
Groping for heights we reached
In the mountain where clouds touched the trees.

Green leaves bow to his majesty
The ground he trod where stones sing
Calm prevails the sweet serene
The woods wake up, it is spring.

Magic, Silence, and Secrecy

Maybe I wasn’t street-smart
funny or wise,

Maybe life was a little bitter
when I opened my eyes,

Never could justify
how I lost myself
before I could find

A purpose to sanctify
the other ‘me’
that I could’ve been,

Who is her?
Who is me?

The past and the future
hang on each side
of this terrible reality

And the night breathes a mystery
something in between the notions
of a possibility

I am just what I might appear to be
magic, silence and secrecy.

Proud

I made them proud
Homeless thoughts
Shattered and confused
I defined their existence,

Living beyond the walls
Of man-made boundaries
I broke those chains
Which enslaved our dreams,

How far were we thrown?
Storm’s unending destruction
Flooding an identity incomplete
Stone awaiting sculptural sheen,

I gave them life
An eye’s prophesized sight,
A broken branch from orphan tree
I found my soil and planted ‘me’.

A while

It takes a while for them to understand
Time, patience, love, stronghold
It takes more than space to sink
Depth – my soul and heart shall not
Be out of link.

This quilt I weave
Threads of hope
And the dew sings,
“I will make love to the rose,”

It will take a while before they learn
How to be,
Know me
Why I talk
As I do.

Somersaults

If it was words that made love
I would be the proud owner of
A rich beautiful ancestry

If it was silence that engulfed
Your body in this warmth of my heart
Singing a chorus of its dreams,

Life like my pages
Would over-turn
earth-quake and
Tumble over weed and grass
Shatter
Like wind recreates moon in the waters,
Stir ants despondent into stages of
Surprise.

If the sky changed colors
And waltzed with the branches

And Homer awoke from
Long arduous sleep blinking heard his
Bones Rattle,
The antonym of Buddha’s dogma
Would expostulate joy = positive life.

When frustration would compel
A frizzy head of over-dense hair
Hands rove the planet and fight the rooted
Lair,
Sense of logic
Preserve reason with fragile care,

If I was a pen
And smeared the white sheet
Drew Words, began my life
From A for Am, B for Being,
If life were ink.

Each heart would bear
Permanent stamp
my finger print.

Paper Boat

Hungry for more that never came
The whisper, rustle and wild wave,

I built a house of sand in my name
Decided to play this shallow game,

Leper of my estate
A cripple of several dictates
I was chained to what was preordained,

East is my harbor
West the giver

Silent the crowd
Where is my river?

A Quiet Wandering

What people don’t see, they don’t believe. The material world is a curtain that obstructs their vision, preventing them from breaking away out of their cocoons, and transforming into the beautiful creations God had intended them to be. How do I fit in with this world that stands so apart from me? I watch it like a spectator from the mountain of comprehension unable to step down and merge into the very colors that brighten the horizon of existence. Mists of translucent dreams advance upon me and overtake my footing from reality. I am absent in my presence and present when you are unaware of my company.