Pretenses

Her letter lay on the table, unopened still, for the third day in a row—
I can always pretend it took a few days longer in the mail.

Peace,
another word to ruminate over,
chew on it like cud, and regurgitate.
No, I won’t tell you what it is;
one of those things you know only when you lose,
like life, like happiness,
like your keys.

We were walking 'round the neighborhood when the weather started to shiver,
looking inside houses, cloaked in the night—
if people knew how much their chandeliers told about them, they’d lose them.
I was savoring the cold like I do my sadness—
silently, with nostrils open, and a smirk on the inside of my mouth.
I was pretending, when we buy a house, I can invite my family over some time.
But the thought got stuck, there, on a wooden bench near the back entrance,
damp with the evening’s breath, fibers gaping, ready for the frost.

Peace.
Should the peaceful even be allowed to talk about it?
If we could only will it, we wouldn’t be here.
Yes, let’s pretend.

Pretense,
that’s how people wait for peace, pretending that it was there.
And in the meantime, there are fridges to be cleaned.

We celebrated our seventh anniversary in front of the TV—no sex, just apple pie.
Our faces were beaming in the glow of having said it all,
or just enough—the rest is too boring anyhow.
These days I can pretend to devour him—he doesn’t even need to know.

Peace.
It’s like nothing, the anticipation of pain—
is good the absence of evil?
Abundance, time, they cost.
One of those things you forget about.

(Originally posted on October 20, 2006)

Yoke (Concept of a Nation)

(To the Lebanese Bloggers of the War)

Hunched
in our corners of the earth,
holding down the fort,
pretending to do something.

Garbling
a code of song,
of longings of ten years ago,
and of love

to this concept of a nation,
this bowl of fire
in the guts.

This resonance of a woman’s voice
reverberating in the heat;
this prayer of desperation
that shudders under the familiarity of death;
this face, grown weary from
this concept of a nation.

The rhythm of days
has grown syncopated
in the largesse of your breath.

You, inhabiting the rubble,
the ghost streets and the night,
the night pregnant with the silence
of those who weren’t there.

You, parting the weight of the air
laden with age,
with truncated years.

You, carrying the clot of a promise
between your teeth
like a mother cat carries her young.

Lift the yoke of what remains
and trudge
_____forward, somewhere
the earth will exhale
and flatten her bust for you.

(Originally posted on August 29, 2006)

Cats

And then there was a gap
where my life used to be.
A continuum of tedium,
stopped in its tracks,
a cavity blown
where the banality once was.

Now my life is much too serious,
and yet the world around me isn’t.

The light on Chestnut Hill never dims.
I hesitate to tell the people there
that somewhere else
the sun is broken.
That somewhere else
my dad tells me
--so earnestly he could almost believe it--
that it will be alright.
That, miraculously, our building still stands,
and that he ventures home still,
every once in while,
to feed my sister's cats.

I don’t tell him it’s the cats
that make me cry.
That the thought of them cowered
in the stairwell,
not even meowing,
as the world’s face is peeled
is all I can handle.
My aunt cowering in the emergency room,
I can’t.
Whatever lies next to her,
behind the curtains,
I don’t want to think.

It thunders here,
my cat is behind the toilet bowl,
inside the couch,
and underneath the bed--
all at once.
I don’t even want to think of those cats.

A cat wounded in air raids on Al-Ouza'i

(originally posted on Jul 29, 2006)

Looking Through Your Eyes

I remember seeing it through your eyes,
my country,
as for the first time.

The tight colorless street
where I grew up
choking with people,
_____now covered with a dust
_____sinful as only humanity is.

I remember looking up
as you raised your head
at buildings that resembled
pockmarks on the face of God.
_____They now rest in pieces
_____on the streets
_____and the face of God
_____is nowhere to be seen.

I remember meeting my family
in you,
sprawling, loud and insuppressible,
spreading over the table like a headache
that shouldn’t be cured.
_____Now the table lies naked,
_____all the colors of the vegetables
_____turned black.
_____Even the flies recoil.

I remember climbing the shoulders of the mountain,
the plain spreading behind us,
patchy and still,
and the valley round the corner,
yawning wide,
like the mouth of heaven.
_____Now it doesn’t shed a tear for us.
_____It had been there when it all began,
_____when men fell from grace
_____and ate each other.

(Originally posted on July 28, 2006)

Let it burn

Let it all dim a bit 

Let the lights flicker and die 

Let the noise chatter itself soar 

Let this chaos wind itself into the ground 

It all shall be...

Let the words wrestle themselves into oblivion 

Let everything exhaust itself 

Like dogs 

Like street walkers 

Like this city 

The trash shall burn, and we shall choke

Someone cannot breath, this too shall pass 

Taste the char in the air, the remains of what was 

Looking back, what does he miss the most?

Or is he beyond? Beyond missing 

Beyond the yearning, beyond the din 

Is he now only a memory, like so many others 

Fading, receding, but haunting 

Every now and then, in the making of the self 

In the unmasking of life, in the crevices of the everyday 

In me, you live in me, whether I like it 

Or die in you, as I would 

Childish Fears

I have managed to flip my fear inside out.

Now you don't recognize it,

Now it looks like anger:

It ravages everything around me,

And everyone..

Could it all be something else?

All the empathy and the compassion?

Is it only because last century it was me

That was the child in fear?

Of the same terror, rolling its aRs

And mangling our 7as,

Like the flight of death?

I think of the one I love:

Was all his resentment only

Because, a decade or two ago,

He too was the child in fear,

Abandoned like all the children

Now ravaging our screens?

And what becomes of it?

All this fear? All this apathy?

All these angry childish stares?

What remains when the faces are gone?

Holy Night

I think of my dead father,

How heartbroken he would have been.

I wonder if he knows what's going on;

I hope he doesn't.

I hope, after we pass, there is 

Only a peaceful void, and that 

All encompassing glow of love.

Though I sometimes wish for Hell 

For those who unleash it here.

But I assume She knows best,

She who is All, the Good and the Bad,

The Love and the Suffering.

I assume there is a meaning behind 

All this cruelty, all this injustice.

I think back to that night when

For a while I was Her, when 

Everything dissolved 

Into little glimmers of Love.

There was nothing else, but the breeze

And the hand of my dead grandmother 

Feeling my beard for the first time.

Useless Objects

I have my wedding ring still. 

I have the watch I gave to you on our anniversary.

Always on mind, it says; I gave it to him.

And your hand-me-downs; also gave some to him.

I have photo albums filled with people no longer there;

People I no longer talk to, people I loved once.

I have shelves full of music I no longer listen to,

Books I'll probably never read,

Films I'll likely never see.

And somewhere, I'm sure, 

There a piece of a life I'll never live.

Absolution

To My People 

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

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

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

(Originally posted on May 22, 2007)

Exit

Of callous politicians everywhere

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And we shall recur
Like a hallucination
Like loss
Like life

(Originally posted Aug. 6, 2004)

Silent Green

We pass through death quietly,
Sight unseen--
Slipping like ghosts at a party,
Unnoticed--
Haunting the spaces that carry
Our smells like second skins...

Sideway glances in a crowd,
The sound of laughter receding,
Entering the cool darkness of the air
Willingly--
On the other side, imagined relief,
A new beginning, or respite
From weathered selves?

The train passes. Let it go.
Another will come. You wait.
You listen into the tunnel:
Fluorescent light on white tiles,
And a faint hum...

The story continues. The world
Never fails a beat. You want it to
Notice the absence. But it churns
Beings like dust, lives like smoke,
And hurtles on...

Someone will notice. Someone will choke.
Someone will face the night alone tonight.
Reaching an arm across an empty bed,
Someone will feel the cold of the sheets.
Absence will resonate somewhere,
Will echo, and rage, and plunder...

Facing the night, with the knowledge
Of life elsewhere, undeterred--
You hold your silence,
You face your absence--
This once you will not look away.
It is here. And you are ready.

(originally posted on May 07, 2017)

Here's to Beirut

 "...Above the city of losses, the city of Lights
Bouncing back off a starless sky, the city
Where we'll try to save this night from the death of nights."
    - Joe Bolton, "The Name of Desire"

Here's to the glitz of a dying city 
That no longer resembles itself
Because its light has been stolen..
Here’s to the glam of a deranged city
that no longer resembles another
Because its promise has been broken..
Here's to a tired city, a toxic city, a cruel city
A city of thieves, and of charlatans
Of open sewers, and blocked roads
A city of revolt, of anger and despair..
A city that has died a hundred times 
And deserved every single death..
A city that has killed a million times 
And savored every single one..
Here's to Beirut, the Medusa, the Hydra
And the ever burning Phoenix 
The masochist and the sadist 
The victim and the crime..

The Smallness of Life

(To Katy)

This,
the smallness of my life, I said,
can you see it?

But she said nothing,
she just wrote
a series of details
and small spaces.

My life used to spread, I said,
over pot-holed streets and easy laughter,
a time when youth was
just another smell in the air.

But she said nothing,
she just sniffed;
from where she stood,
she could smell it still.

But my life has stretched so thin, I said,
it has shrunk into this square mile
between where I sleep and where I yawn.

This corner of the world, I said,
that I call my own;
this bit of the earth
I staked as home.

This piece of life, I said,
that I squander at will;
this circle of friends
I ignore to call.

This head resting on my hip,
this hour of the day when the sky
looks like Mary in front of the cross.

This hollow in my heart
where they used to be;
this cat, this breath, this,
this smallness of my life...

But she said nothing,
she just blinked.
Her life wasn't any bigger.

(Originally post on January 30, 2006)

I Thought We Were

To friends departed too early

I thought we were endless,
raging against the night,
laughing life in the face,
and running...

I thought we were shameless,
masters of our indolence,
wasting time like we owned it,
and yawning...

I thought we were spotless,
dazzling and daring,
dreaming of one day,
and dashing...

I thought we were painless...

I thought we were later:
first grandparents,
then parents,
then us...

I thought we were future,
till the past piled on,
today slipped by,
and now…

I think we are naked,
humbled and defenseless,

standing in the wind, and bowing,
seeing for the first time our culling

what remains of us, scattered
and huddled, and hoping…

Originally posted on Friday, October 05, 2007

Comfortably Numb

Song (Re)Cycle: Of Grief IV

To those left behind..

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

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

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

My laughter sobs
And I become, I hope
comfortably numb

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

I’ll Be (Nothing)

I’ll be nothing, that’s what I’ll be.
I’ll be the limbs breaking on the ice,
I’ll be desire melting onto itself,
I’ll be the longing that possesses me
That I’ll never possess.

I’ll be nothing, that’s what I’ll be.
I’ll be the vicious hope that rides me to death,
I’ll be just another breath, another step
To nowhere...

(originally posted on December 06, 2004)

D(e)ad

When I get back you may be gone 

But I don't want to see you before I go 

I don't want to see you like this 

I don't want to remember you like this 

I don't want to remember you 

I don't want

I don't care

I don't care to forgive you 

I don't care to forgive me

I don't 

Parts of You

Parts of you stay with me

Stay in me

Stay as me

Parts of you stay

When you're gone

When I'm gone

Parts of you--

Stay!

Gone..

Insistence of Being

And if I disappear, where would I go?

The silence left behind will not be heard

Amidst the noise. How long would it take

For anyone to notice the absence? And

Would it matter? Would any of it matter?

A church bell tolls, water gurgles,

A bird chimes another, as if in peace.

Life thrust upon us, an insistence of being,

An echoless voice in a chamber too full,

Is there any choice besides its negation?

I do not reject you, fellow prisoners,

I reject this, the sentence, the ruthlessness 

Of being, of time, of life, 

Of that essential loneliness that envelops us, 

That wraps us all like a shroud since birth.

(originally posted on May 24, 2017)

A Time Before

A time before you and me

A time before the past was past 

A time before the present got past

And then the future, too--

The future went past

And you and I

Lost in the past

In this forgotten city

Blown up by the sea 

At the edge of an old dusty world...

A time before my mom, and her mom 

A time before my dad forgot the world 

And remembered only his sadness 

Curled it up like a kitten 

Hurled up into his lap

And licked it clean...

(inspired by:

https://www.the961.com/photos-lebanon-1900s-1920s)