When you write...

Now that you have written,
you remember it only as you wrote.
Your poetry becomes your truth.
Beauty that makes sense cannot be true.

Enjoy Me.

I'm just passing through...

Watan / Nation / Homeland

"Why didn't you speak in German?"
Her son is annoyed.

Martha tried for years
to hold her tongue just right
so she could catch the 'ain.

Her blonde hair went gray
and wrinkles covered over her paleness.
Finally, she can pass as one of them.

She would probably agree, though she doesn't know,
that it is only because she promised
to be one with John, in life as in death.

She will take this rebuke from her son,
rather than explain.

Martha does not mind waiting a few minutes - even hours -
with her son and grand-daughters,
outside the door to the embassy,
of what was once her Heimland.

Empty-handed

"No files," says the voice emboldened
by the bullet-proof glass.
"Just take out all the necessary papers
and put them on the tray."

The tall, long-limbed, and Sudanese man
is visibly at unease in his dark coffee skin.
He gives an awkward smile while fumbling with his papers.

"Etfadalee," he says, asking her politely to proceed.
She proceeds.
"Why do you want to go to Germany?"
"Why is your son living in Germany?"
"Will you come back?"
"Wait, do you have permission to live
here?"

Hassan from Djuba village answers
deferentially
His son, Djamal, is an engineer in Munich,
Hassan says it with a small hint of pride
for Djamal is not a refugee.

"Yes," he says, "I will come back."
He does not say, "Insha Allah.
I am old and will soon die,
and life - I know - gives no guarantees.
For what happens if there is a volcano cloud
laughing ashes on your plans?"

Hassan had seen the man before him in line
refused an appointment, "You forgot
your medical insurance and bank statement.
Please make another appointment."

He saw the man gather his papers,
heavier with disappointment,
"Please," Hassan begged God, "For once, I pray,
Let me return empty-handed."

how to deal with people ignoring you

1) Do what a friend of mine used to: actually call out to people who had deliberately ignored him, and if they looked down, he would bend down to look up at them and wave and say "HI! It's me! N...." :)

2) Call them on the phone while standing squarely in their line of vision. When they see it's you that's calling, say "Yes, I thought the bell would ring. Am I on your phone still? Good. I thought you knew me too."

3) Ask a common friend to introduce you. Better yet, ask someone they don't know to introduce you to them. Imagine the confusion when they find someone they don't know is introducing them to someone they already know but tried (unsuccessfully) to ignore. "Hey {their name, cos you know it}, how are you? Meet {your name}."

4) Conjure funny scenarios in which people ignore you, and you get them back with your supreme wit, and hopefully both parties laugh. Cause laughter, my friends, is the manna of the gods.

Yeah yeah. :) Next time I'll try the other options :)

both

i'm old and i'm wise


but i'm also a young child.

what good...

what good is time -
if waiting does not stop,
what use is a clock?

what good will words do
if they cannot bring him back from
leaving: that other kind of death?

On forgetting

After a time, you would forget. First, you would forget his chin, and then his nose, and after a while, you would struggle to remember the exact color of his eyes, and one day you wake up and, pfft, he's gone: his voice, his smell, his face. He will have left you. And then you can begin again.

- "French Kiss," said Luc to Kate

that's what i would like to say

" If mine,
it would be the secret dream
of walking alone across the floor of my life
with an easy grace, and with love enough
to live on at the center of myself."

- Ted Kooser, Daddy Longlegs

'ats wat 'e sayz

more bukowski on writing

so you want to be a writer? by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.

writing saves

nothing can save
you
except
writing.

it keeps the walls
from
falling.

- excerpt, Bukowski on writing

reading kills

From Way Back

An old poem I found...


Moments slip like coins,
clinking down a red-brick wishing well.
A penny for some silver thoughts,
Only a penny....
for a priceless dream
of calling back
a few moments with him.

Bed Head

messy morning hair
shows that i've been taken
by love or by a dream.

salsa

Today my feet are so full of dance,
lingering in the ache around my toenails,
thumping in warm, swollen, tired feet.

i would promise them cold, cold, water,
but i worry that may wash this night away.