Mother When Her Eyes Opened in Pain

And somewhere in the back of my mind, 

my brain submits its resignation,

my nerve-ends brittle with the accumulation

of chemical substance and pain, 

my eyelids locked, 

in defiance of the sun's prying fingers, 

my senses crawl back into their cradle

of infancy, 

yearning for the womb they just departed

and panicking at the prospect of life. 

Events like runaway torrents of waterfalls, 

drowning the sounds of approaching doom,

drawing a barely symmetrical line of light, 

the start obscure, 

and the end so evident, 

I chose eternal starvation and slumber. 

 

 

Sun-fading Afternoons

Sun-fading afternoons

with the pink

plucking at images within.

 

Fading lives

disappearing in the diminishing azure

streaks of comfort

in what is still light.

 

Red had come the still-birthed war years!

Purple was the pain.

Crimson, the yearning

for the return of yellow beams

on tea-aroma-filled patios.

 

Peace found its dirty pink

in the haze of amnesia

and soothing rays of oblivion.

 

Time implanted on wet sands

ALL came back

the waves lulling in, siestas

like forgotten children's toys 

scattered on the shorelines.

 

Hours to arrive

in afternoon car rides

on semi-paved roads

rearview mirrors’ dust particles sending

blinding refractions of incessant rainbows

glaring back at the ambit of color

and trying hard to rise above it…

I May Not Go Like You Did

Where did it hit you first? 

Your neck or your heart?

Were you as old as I am today...

in decades of confusion,

ages of nonconformity?

In pain?

I pleaded with god that night

although I did not believe in him...her

And then when you came home, 

I saw him with you. 

We had not touched base in a quarter of a century. 

We came close when I ventured into your non-celestial territory. 

The earth around your grave had lost its sanctity. 

Some even said it had turned into a 'terrorist hotspot'...maybe. 

My heart gave out, the coward it was. 

But then, who has time for sideline requests from me? 

Like when Leena passed and I was under the mercy of family agenda. 

So I could never kiss her kind face, a last time. 

I think I remember what happened first. 

Your neck almost broke. 

Paulina's Dolma was too acidic. 

I had secretly let her in on the pantry of spices; 

her creativity almost took your life. 

I remember holding your hand, in the ambulance, 

uttering the first tired words that came to my panicked brain:

"It will be OK."

It was for a while. 

We stopped talking 

as I started to try 

to carve-out a meaning for my existence. 

That too fell from me, in the midst of life's semantics.

I never paused to call out your name. 

I was scared. 

I love your name. Every night. 

When I read the Fatiha for your eyes. 

I think I know what will happen first, with me. 

It won't be my brain. 

It lacks sufficient energy to extinguish itself. 

My heart will somehow self-implode. 

_________________________________________

For my beloved father. 

My Deathbed Vision

I didn't ask for this mask

some surgeon crafted and tossed it

in my face

I didn't pick the tone or the hues

or the shadows

I asked for a breath

for once 

but breath is a gift granted

by the firmament 

to those who waste it in fury 

and fumes

I tasted a tube

and the plastic so strong

disappointed

my sense of anthropomorphism

My mechanical heartbeat

its string pulled

by accident

so they pierced my heart 

to fix it

and they really didn't...

I never asked for that either.

They said I was sick

in the blood

my aspirations anemic

my wellbeing thin...

I had only one ambition

to make peace with my maker

to be consumed by him or her

to be kissed and blessed

and forever forgotten...

For my mother at the peak of her illness and in the pit of my despair. She had undergone several flawed procedures and surgeries, suffered a heart attack, and just barely made it through alive. We had faith in God and he saved us. 

Our Graves

Our graves reside in many countries, 
foreign tongues give 
blessings 
that we cannot comprehend.

The soil smells alien 
& the stones refuse to speak 
our language. 

Our graves do not 
recognize our 
cherished memories. 

They cannot remember; 
they were never there. 

These lands that embrace
our losses
like fallen leaves, 
gather them, 
only to 
blow them 
into oblivion. 

I know not 
where I will 
to be buried; 
only God knows. 

I, the daughter of a father, 
born under one sun, 
passed below another moon, 
& laid to rest 
where war ravagers
stole his tombstone. 

Our graves will not 
grasp the footsteps of
visitors. 

Thank God for winds that 
lift our souls 
into many places. 

Places, where the blessings
of loves ones
can be touched...

Note: For dearest Aunt Maysoon who passed on 9/29/2019; a dear friend; fellow walker; animal lover and fountain of kindness, wisdom and knowledge. 

Mosul

It will rain 

torrents 

as the blood finds its way

over the Mosul dam.


But no mercy can erase 

the daze of death

in children’s eyes...


And no sanity cease 

the glazed gaze of the crying elderly. 


The science of breaking a people

is teaching their young

the art of slaughter.


Ripping up a nation 

comes with 

tucking fright into bedtime rituals.


It arrives with burning

centuries of memorized lyrics and feeding the ashes 

to famished minds.


Rain cannot not wash away 

the footprints of panic now engraved in rotting ground.


This fury of breath breeds stifled survival that all of God’s rains cannot revive...


Fear is ‘the thing with feathers’ that pecks at the heart of normalcy. 


“Let’s all roll out the beds in the heart of the room (for the groom)...the (envious) enemy has died and his colors have paled...” 


But they burned the beds and they burned the grooms...


And lastly they set fire to all the remaining songs....


And no Mosul Monsoon could ever extinguish the lingering rage...

Published in The Rising Phoenix on August, 12, 2018.

On Her Birthday

A window of dreams
for my mother
fills
images of my brother
safely home
where it's not really home...

Visions of my sister
sleeping
sound and safe.

Glances at my troubled self
somehow...sane.

Chocolates & Her Curt

He used to kiss her charcoal forehead;
his sixth sense instructed;
she was sublime.

She would return
the gesture with a
golden glisten
from her despondent eyes.

She appreciated heat
in all its highlights;
her persuasion of love,
contagious.

An appetite for authority
guided her instincts.
and she ruled
her home like no other
feline...

When alone with her human,
she touched him
in places
his heart
had never traveled.

As he'd stoop to brush
his lips across
a silky sea of fur,
it would arrive;
a tidal wave of purrs.

Note: Chocolates, my beloved cat, passed in January, 2017. In her 19 years of love, she gave me 17 years of joy.

My Longtime Brush

Someone will happen upon it,
next to the mouse trap.
By then, the dust of hours passed
would drench its identity,
a commercial brush...

Purchased by an Iraqi-American
or American-Iraqi -whichever convenient,
accompanied by a British-Iraqi -indefinitely,
at some 'capitalist' mall,
where the lures of 'fantasy feminism'
were at play.

They will happen upon it,
next to the trash can,
and wonder,
who chose to brush their mind away
during laborious empty days of
deep thought?
Who decided to void
their gender,
their identity,
for pennies on the dollar,
in this promised new life?

They will question;
the taste acquired,
the judgement,
the quality assessed,
and the final
decision...
to discard a plastic
"Vicky C's" brush
under a
work desk
at a law firm,
....
and leave it
untouched,
contaminated by
rat dung,
that at some point
had launched 
centuries of war-triggered O.C.D.
in one single second.

Tall Baghdad Nights

We slept on cool, 
gently breezed rooftops
under clear soaring skies.

Stars so high, 
they stooped 
to kiss 
the gentle hands of God.

We lay enveloped in white sheets,
as pure as the fronds 
of newborn date palms
bleached 
under the Baghdad sun 
as the day dragged on.

At night, covered in crystal
net tents,
twisting the fiercest of 
gnats' ambitions.

Our dreams as pure
as Jesus's peace
on earth. 

Little did we know...
that soon the stars 
would be waging wars
against...
our dreams,
against our sleep,
against our peace...

Evil Eye

I left an eye

blue stone 

and wide

high on the wall

staring straight

at an empty floor.

I let an eye

lids lowered

hover

over canvas-covered chairs.

I raised the eye 

above the window

so sky was near...

Still semi-precious 

tears

soaked the heaped pieces

of the past.

No canvas is 

strong

for the sores born of wars.

The immunity from memories 

cracks 

at the seams 

of our stitched-up fears.

This eye

blue

stone

and the constant stare.

No evil enters

beyond

the front door.

And yet

all the eyes 

and all the blue

and all the stones

... could not stop a single war.

For Sophie, My Beloved

Creature of God
I love you.

Creature of God
who knows fear first
and love when it comes,
I love you.

Creature of God
who kneels,
who shows thanks,
who knows not how to praise,
but knows how to express
love,
I love you.

Creature of God
who protects
and self-sacrifices
for love,
I love  you.

Creature of God
who knows not God,
but does more for God
than most,
I love you.

Creature of God
who knows not God,
God loves you more
for you are most worthy.

A Foam Cup

A foam cup

sits at the water fountain.

Ramadhan

and half the floor is consumed;

the other half, observant.

Struggles in obedience,

compliance, 

and ambivalence;

with some agnostic side-line stares.

A foam cup

sits single

not so lonely, 

it actually stands...

sore.

A foam cup 

conveniently near water

close by,...more water

...a closet.

A cup

it speaks.

Ramadhan and

Ablution is upon us

evermore 

than any abnormal day...

The Fast,

tedious;

the cup, 

a sign;

it speaks not of breaking a fast

but 

sanctity 
and other 
suppressed
more significant  words.

Note: Inspired by a foam cup sitting on a water fountain next to a water closet in a State building in Ohio during the month of Ramadhan. There were a number of Muslims fasting on the floor that month. Someone needed it for Ablution and other Islamic rituals. 

The Time of Being

The prize of solitude I reaped
endless nights of concrete streets
Sophie digging her nose into crevices
craving hints of previous passers.

Dreams of August drizzles
torrents
rinsing the pain of parting
though Lina still smiling
lingered in the precipitation.

Rituals of walking worship
greenness
persisting
in my footsteps
Sophie barking her misgivings.

Hours minutely revisited
flaring contentions
roped into my hair
flying at my face
swaying
my life
a sisal footbridge
coming to a standstill
deliberating
stepping down...
stamping the ashes
out
of memory
with every stride...

Crystal darkness
singing
tomorrows following
my shadow
against a backdrop of
evaporating
celestial promises.

A crown of clarity
I adorned
a still world
in a non-moving moment
perfumes of white white
wild
rose petals pampering
my nostrils
breathing
as though God was going to snuff out
the next whiff.

It was that time of being
I missed...

Mama's Kitchen

The solid bread on
the warm wooden table
under the neon sun
that lights your kitchen

a gray strand of hair on
the just-wiped tiled floor

and the Muezzin calls
from the patio window.

It is the dusk of our lives.

The mechanical voice
of the TV announcer
declares
yet another battle.

Still, the scent of ablution
from your palms
pacify
my corrugated brow.

You kneel
and the sustenance
of forever compassion
is your promise
as you talk to God.

Your kitchen is not our memory anymore, Mama.
The original
has found a resting place
of scorched stone
in Hai Al Jamiaa.

Here in Amman,
you cannot uphold the walls
of a home
that can gather
the peace
we once breathed
when the world acknowledged
us
as humans!

Your trying fingers
cannot knead
any more flakes
of make-shift safety
into our Khubuz, Mama...
It will not rise.
It has not risen in 13 years...

Nor can you raise a sanctuary
from within the darkness
of foreign sands
that rage
with our very presence.

You love on.
It is all you know.
You will love on
so we can live on.

And all the broken bread, Mama
all the cracked neon sunlight
and burned wooden tables
cannot bring back
what you want more than life for us...
our land
with your very own kitchen.

Massacre

Matters that should have been left to God
to ponder
God who adores all 
and yet none
when creations matter

Eyes awaiting 
determinations from the firmament
infinity & successive massacres

Remnants of children
with hands up 
in the face of extinction 
they see in a camera

Torn roots 
scattered
as God's humans stand
steadfast

Earth unturned
drenched
in all the crimson
that God can bury
in one

coup de grace..

Source: Turkish News Agency.  Hidayat, a 4-year-old Syrian refugee in Turkey 

raises her hands when confronted by a camera that she perceives as a weapon.

Mocha...Even Now

It was a dark room.
Your eyes turned to mine
for light.
I was learning
of your parting.
But there was little,
I could impart,
to your emerald gems
that would explain
the agony
in your belly.

It was a dark floor, cold and wooden.
You jumped into a chair.
I stood.
The vet's fingers delicately taking apart
the phases.
Her letters like blades
shredding my sanity and peace.

You gaze again
knowing
all my pain
and yours.

Mercy! As I grab you; all of you.
And all the green starts to speak...
Let me go.
Please.

Dad...Again.

You come back these days

Your eyes, vivid.

A sideline question: “How are you?”

Fifteen years plus, I’ve covered your eyes,

With high-impact interruptions…

a war or two;

the loss of a partner or more.

I have chosen not to relive our moments…

The beauty is too painful.

Your eyes these days persist.

“How are you?”

And the answer pushes me off

the next heartbeat…

The image sweeping;

your eyes crying.

“Why are you crying?”

“I’ll be here next year. I promise…”

Since, I’ve not been able to touch

those glasses,

to wipe off the tears.

The brown in your eyes today glistens.

Fifteen years, I’ve dulled the pigments.

“How are you?”

“I miss you Dad. That’s how I am.”

His Infancy -for M.G.

Infancy came in flippant forms,
trembling,
reaching for letters like shooting stars,
then setting them ablaze,
fumbling,
for filtered feelings,
passing passion,
through tubes of emotion,
observing,
rainbows of stillborn ecstasy forming,
and lightly laughing...

Infancy,
in flying,
floating above
expected climaxes,
stumbling over expertise,
like it was some cumbersome accident.

Infancy,
in lowered-eyelid giggles,
muffled mots,
gasping for a remote sanity,
staring at sudden wisdom,
as though...
another self,
had just tapped his shoulder...

Rage Can Rest

"Dad, we're getting ready to close the casket."
"Did you want to take a last look?"
"Dad, we're carving out forty-nine near and dear years of your life. Would a last look help you?"
Now, her rage is as distant as the day she was born. 
Now, her face is as peaceful as her first night home. 
No, that was not a few hours away. 
No, she was never here to stay. 
Baby cots do not have lids;
you already know,
dreams do have ends. 
And yes, rage can rest...
eternally, 
even if your heart never will...

Note: For Nandi whom I met once in her short lifetime, but impressed me for the rest of mine. 

Zanzibar...Transitioning

There...
tucked under the sunlight
where manacles of slaves
sang melancholy melodies

There...
the sun
did not keep its distance
its eyes; window cracks
in rotting buildings
and eroding market squares

There...
the smell of the sea
spoke of speedy sustenance
for the starving...

The covered heads of women wandering
indicative
of a different vision
of how the Indian ocean rolled

The smiles of men
weak
with the confusion
that came
with conformity.

There...
the stories of bloodshed
assembled
for sale
like crimson rugs
for tourists' feets
to trample on...

How they all arrived...
What they made of the experience
& all that's left of it...

MIA (Ahmed & Pippen)

Awaiting a signal
for his return;
a Cardinal calls.
I walk to the window.

The corpse of my dead thoughts stirs...

All those mothers
awaiting long lost loved ones
every morning;
there were no Cardinals, Blue Jays or even Mourning Doves.

No calls.
All the waiting.
No end in sight.

Pippen didn't know where he was going (when he flew out).
Anymore did Ahmed (when he left the nest).

When they made him read his last rites on the blurred screen,
I felt
the cold white sheets of his bed where I'd once slept
envelope my chest
in a slow-forming noose
tugging out the last breath of hope in me...

I didn't have to wait;
his mother did.
And No, ...
There were no Cardinal calls;
only the DPMO,
finally claiming,
they had found some bones...

Note: Ahmed Altai was an Iraqi-American MIA (abducted by the Mehdi Army in Iraq) whose remains were finally found in 2012. His mother was my mother's childhood friend. When we (my mother, some friends & I) had all gone to Ann Arbor,  Michigan, to attend a  Marcel Khalife concert, he had offered me his bedroom to spend the night and went to spend the night at a friend's home. 
Pippen was my cockatiel who in one month had memorized 12 bird songs (per the bird clock in 'his' room). I lost him in 2014. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-FMrk0VUjM

Submission

They soar,
these questions
that your eyes ask in silence,
before I can grasp
the tail of their quest.

Your utterances
capture the rest of my letters,
from a gaping mouth
and stretch their meaning
to saturate all the ego
that is your mind.

My hands
you hold down
and insist that I express myself.
In my resistance,
you discover my religion…You.

My head, 
you cup,
as you sip my thoughts,
and relish the familiar taste of your skin
in my dreams.

You are everywhere,
in me.
I breathe your name,
savor your presence
as you grace
my eternal orbit of your realm.

Lost are the reasons
that bind me to reason.

You are my all
and all that remains of me

Is yours…

February -My Birth Month

It's like February brought birth from another land...
Not where I was born.
Cold and white and despair-intriguing.
The dogs won't walk.
They snore.
As do the chilled waters
surrounding dying flowers
who have forgotten how to be thirsty.
This February was the sign of my death.
Smiles from older photo-memories of people,
peeped.
They were gone to a land warmer,
where God had more than one sun to give out
And left us,
in the land of Cold February.

Angel Stuff

You were made of angel stuff:
the stuff that is hard to come by
these days...
Your smile would open God's sky
to let through his faith in humankind
But you never saw the sky...

And now you have left this world of skies.
And we lie,
injured spirits underneath,
drenched in self-inflicted miseries of rain
when God had intended your Angel Monsoons
to wash us clean of pain.

Now

Breathing Islands 
around me
vanishing into the blue

Hues of hope 
dithering with the 
abandoning sun

One more hope
I hang on to the hull
of your shipwreck

To find that 
I cannot bury
my head 
in your dying dreams

My life hangs
at half mast
as I attempt to pull
the lagging
images of ​your disolving ​love

I struggle, 
I drown 
I drown deep down
I rise
And again, I drown.

DAD'S WAKE-UP CALL

Like he was kissing God's face,
on the prayer rug
every dawn
as he bent to kiss
our sleeping cheeks.
Every morning,
always . . . the few irresistable moments
before our wake-up time . . .

Our Last Phone Conversation

For: The Beloved Late Lina Hanania El-issa

'Hold on!
Don't go just yet.
A few more words over these lines;
they could be
my last
but, you don't know it...'

'Hold on!
How's life?
I may not know tomorrow.
I want to know
that yours will be good
when I'm gone.'

'Hold on!
I have hope;
not anymore in enduring...
I have hope
that you will endure
when you call again,
and I'm not there to answer.'

'Hold on!
I have saved
some of my last breath
for this conversation.
So speak
that I may hear you,
speak
that I may love you,
for the last time.'

Drinking Tea

I like to sip something warm
when in anguish
a moisturizer for my harsh thoughts
to take the edges off
my sharp emotions...

Something warm
to cool me down
Something fluid
to liquify
my speculations...

I like to sip tea.

And let the taste linger
over my tattered spirit
for a while
as it renders it whole
and gathers
all the wandering thoughts
bring them together,
and make them warm...

I like to sip tea. 

To soothe my tired heart
to help my mind unwind
like an aimless spool of thread
roll slowly away from its core...

My Father...Dying

A thousand moons falling 
and the rain from his eyes seeps through 
a glazed agony 


A thousand moons had risen since 
I had rinsed 
my heart in his 
warm wisdom, 
rested my thoughts
on his weary brow 
demanded his eyes carry
my mind 
on the tides of 
his every breath 
till he was breathless... 

A thousand moons had danced
when we released 
our mental exhaustion 
into each other's realms 
and observed infinity form... 


Dance moons dance... 
trample his agony,
as he goes,
lift me above mine. 


Now, that he's gone...
let all the moons fall...
forever...

Moving House

We paint the scenes with furniture
and then move in the sunlight
We scratch the moments
on the walls
and stain the floors
with memory

Our life we fragment
 and pile into transitional ‘homes’…

Tis strange that they never
come back
full-fledged,

In the mind,
they’re always remote,
forever spaceless,
somewhere up there…

The truth is that
they hang in our hearts

Home is what
our minds will capture
but never touch

Because while they form
The mind twists...
within the next turning point
another home is looming….

Dad, His Brief Case and Ralph, the Cat

He lived in a Samsonite hardside briefcase
cat & all...
In it were stacked,
notes from Stockholm,
lies from China,
sometimes cries,
and cigar smoke.

Tobacco dust, like his tears found the corners
when he couldn't wipe them off his spectacle rims.
Those were old too...but comfortable.

In that case,
arguments of what might have become of Cambodia,
in the sixties, but never transpired.
Further down,
underneath layers of thoughts and words,
what he had proclaimed to primary figures
that had made the wars go around
and stop...

In that case, the late letters to
heads of states,
pleas for peace
in a sinking world...

Then came the cat,
orange and staring,
the warm distraction
he'd craved all his life.

A deck of cards was the only game he controlled.
Everything else had collapsed into a soothing frangrance of tobacco dust.

It all ended in the briefcase,
the smaller, crystal bowl realm of guesses
he could see through bifocals.

And one day the lid fell shut...
And Ralph was gone...
took his life over a balcony rail.

No one could face how he died,
and then, it was Dad's turn.
He crawled into the other side briefly,
and decided he didn't want to return.

He left the Samsonite briefcase on the dining table...
On it, a picture of himself, hugging Ralph.


Note: Inspired by a photo of my father holding Ralph, our cat. His very familiar brief case on the dining table behind him. Dad died of a stroke in 1999. He went into a coma on February 18, 1999 and passed away on Sunday, February 28, 1999.

The People Of My Land Today

They speak strange words
these people that come from my land
they grow legs and horns for sanguine stories
that sit on chairs
then rot as they unravel and run...
They trace images in the air
that only God
can read
they bite their native tongues
as they utter
these new words
like 'them' and 'us'
These people from my land
have released their grasp of their roots
The seas of enstrangement
have filled the hallows of their
sinking hearts
they dream different dreams
dominions where nightmares
touch the grounds
as they enter
with feet
that scream
to stamp a smoother end out.

Eye for Eye

(For Emily Henochowicz)

Sniped in the eye

before my vision

could savor the next ‘thirsty pixel’.

Blue skies

now charcoal

now crimson

and then no more…

Clouds pushing hard

for a way out of my socket…

Blue tears

streams and rivers

and then this drought

carves its bed in my face.

Know they, that I can spell

more names for color

than they ever tasted in their

mothers’ wombs?

Know they, that Yahweh

designed different dawns

for minds like mine?

Know they, that I am the same blood

that pulled that trigger…

And saw they, with their eyes

that can still see,

the horizons of their expiring aspirations

refracting?

If an eye was the cost,

my cause is not lost.

I did not fall.

Their humanity did.

_______________________________
My poem to Emily Henochowicz, a Jewish art student who lost her eye to an IDF sniper when protesting the Gaza flotilla incident.

My Country...My Country

You have a beautiful house
in a faraway country.

It used to be your home...

But I don't have a country
anymore Mother...

I don't anymore, have a country.

They laid Aunt Nahida to rest,
with all the rest,
tormented,
questioning,
her burial in a faraway country.

She too, no longer has a country.

You put the cobalt-blue china vases away Mother.
The Rahal paintings, you placed,
on the walls of a house of stone...not brick,
and you tried to call this house,
your home,
in a faraway country.

Please don't tell me, I have a house, Mother.

You too, ...you don't have a house!

You too Mother,
you too,
you no longer...
have a country.

Mother

She brings parts of
that part
of the world
here...

She brings sun
in Turkish coffee cups

She brings news of freshly-brewed war
on the TV channel that
doesn't play here

the story of the
made-in-Abu Ghraib
corpse
that no one could identify
at the neighbor's garden gate

She brings smiles
from better times

She brings hope
that people over there
can continue to live
and carry on
to the next war...

Note: 

This poem was read at Igtham Mote. This was an event to "Mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War (care of the National Trust across England & Wales, in remembrance of those affected by conflict)"

http://therewereourown.co.uk/venue-igtham-mote.php

The Walls of the Neighbor's Home in Mansoor

Moist damp walls
and frivolous cats used to
run their long tails
in the slits
between the hinges
of the doors

Now the creepers
run the windows
where bullet cracks capture
the smeared drops of last breath

And cold gardens of pain linger
where some wished they could have blended
with the weeping soil

Now it is...

Then it had laughed
when the sun tickled
its belly to beautiful mornings

Those days the palms will tell you
knew stories
that could warm sniffling infants to sleep
for hours if their mothers wished…

Those days the street lamps glistened
to the hum of love-making coming
from the rooms

Nights, under leaves
where toes grasped grass
and released
under stars
pushing swings
sharing thoughts of
Sameness
Oneness
Endless...

Then the walls stood strong
gathered us in
and guarded our thoughts
less they turn into sin...

Now they hide the hate
and remind

We no longer belong…