Maadar

All I can remember from her
are her sunken eyes, her wispy, wrinkled skin,
somehow miraculously youthful, beautifully protruding cheek bones,
arthritis ridden joints and a constant prayer on her lips.

What I don't remember
is her unbelievable solitude
her unfathomable struggle.

I remember her bitterness... her hurt...

Her youngest went to war
Her oldest stayed and became a stone
Her sons like fragile pillars of dust
Her faith like unwavering flame weaving her unspeakable truth 

Do I have her cheek bones?
Her sunken eyes?

Do I know what she dreamed of?

I know she was stubborn...
How did she hold her own and speak her truth
in the deafening sound of a world unprepared to hear her revolt?

She died... alone...I didn't go to the funeral.

She was no one of mine.

As I get older I learn of the flaws of all the saints
As I get older my eyes sink in and my joints hurt

As I get older I think there better be a god
too many people I know were wasted away
faithful in his redemption and avenging prowess.

I look in the mirror to the image of a woman that I am
a 40 patch piece of all the women I don't know.

They were more than a grave and a lock of hair
more than memory of a child forced to learn the meaning of motherhood
by her own fleeting childhood.

I haven't earned a single piece of my being.
Just a lucky patchwork of good parts of all the unlucky women
who left no mark except a vague name that will barely last the next generation.

I can hardly remember their names now
And to pass them along to an offspring who may in turn remember their names for 50 years…

Like I will be but a handful of dust
for a child 75 years from now
when he will pick me up in an urn and throw me to the wind
and I will be dispersed through the thickness of time.

She had a way of not loving me
so much so, that I made a point of not loving her

until tonight
when I remembered her little pot, on that little stove, in that little kitchen
and it squeezed my heart into a tiny wrinkled ball
of youth and ignorance and not giving a damn.

I would never want to stay over at hers
and she would never really ask me to
but she’d wash a plate full of fruits for me
and I didn't think they were clean enough
and I wouldn't sit next to her when she would ask me to
and she wouldn’t tell me stories when I asked her to.

She once told me of the rosary beads made from date pits
made by a prisoner of war, who had something to fight for…
and I envied that, even though I didn’t understand it…and I still do.

I wasn’t old enough to care to ask who she was.

The news announcer would be barking in the large belly of an old TV
where the wooden little door was pushed to the sides
and I liked to play with the little house for the barking man
and I hated, hated, hated the florescent lights and the hard pillows
but loved the hand fan she always used and the kettle on the fire in the “bukhari” she would keep going all winter…

and she had a system god dammit! She had a system…

She cared about my father so much
that she hated us for having him in our lives
and she thought my mother caused the cells to grow into a tumor
and the morphine to not work.

She was a woman from a village of women-made-invisible
but she shed that skin
and I never will know what she did all those days
in that little place where the stairs lead to no place of love
and the plants and the rosary beads were a family that god wanted her to have.

…

You know what?
Fuck this story.
Fuck all the stories of all the women who had no voice
and no choice
and no say
and I don't remember a single valuable thought from them. 

They all lived like they never were
and I will forever remember how they are dead
and I don't care about them.

Their death has meant to me much more than I ever cared to care about their lives.

They were like little statues of marble in a memorial made of straws.
But now they are all strewn through the wind for me to forever sigh about
and about their enigmatic, effervescent realities
and they may never have loved me.

They never cared about me.

They never knew me.

They would never have liked me.

After all I lived a life they won’t approve…

They shaped nothing of me.

Yet my cheeks,
and my sunken eyes,
tell me I have a part of them I can't shed.

Grandeur

Photo by: Hakan Yilmazer

No! It shouldn't come to them so easily;

As if my utter misfortune has somehow entitled me to more...depth,
I resent the wise, beautiful people who feel...

I feel no compassion for those who live harmonized lives and accept what nice things come their way.
I slam happiness on its chest and yell no!

Scared that if I am ever happy, I will lose my... thoughts?
But what do I want to be? Why does it still feel like a possibility that I will grow up one morning into an entirely different woman?

But my heart is thinning and I’m developing feelings, for life…

“Meant for grandeur.” rings in my head as I make another pot of coffee and listen to trivial concerns of a beautiful woman with a beautiful life that I don’t envy…
He once held my shoulders, shook me and yelled: "feel it!"

His eyes scanning my expression, searching for a sign of amusement, of a fleeting moment of satisfaction, gratitude, recognition?

“You are never impressed.” He concedes.

It took me a long time to understand his confusion. Why am I not impressed?
Why is nothing new? or beautiful? or breathtaking?
why am I not excited?

Do I long for something so vague that I find no solace in the benign pleasures of the cognizance of beauty and novelty?
It didn't occur to me …. until Nigel sat in front of me with that uncontrollable shake in his hands, with his bag of lunch, spilling soup all over the table, when I was filled with rage and disgust at how I can't have a break, to read a page of this book, which talks about nothing, and meaning, and the nothingness of Meaning…


It didn't occur to me until my escapism was interrupted, that this, is what it’s like to be who I have wanted to be, and after being that, this is what it is like to be betrayed by our biological destiny.

He spits as he talks and asks me to heat his food, and pour him tea and I was secretly afraid he was going to ask me to feed him too while he stared at my chest.
I'm just filled with this icy bitterness, that he, was one of those whom I envy. 

He passes a wrinkled photo of himself and his deceased wife to me…young, beautiful, laughing with such grace that I’m afraid I will taint this captured perfection if I hold it in my cynical hands for too long.

I see the glimmer of beauty in his eyes still, except the wrinkles on his face now match those of the photo…
He had found what he loved; he did it so well he is still being paid to sit around forsaken hotel rooms, read and judge!

He loved so deeply that the smell of the soap his late wife used at this hotel one summer in 1991 brings tears to his eyes.

He traveled, he learned, he loved, he danced and he thought and now he is sitting in front of me with frail fingers while Parkinson’s takes hold of his fragile bones.
I was struck by the convulsion I felt mixed with so much compassion I would have hated it a few years back when I thought feelings were for the feeble…but now my heart is thinning.

And then people die. It’s always the people who die, not you, until you do and then you are the people that are dead in someone else’s world. So it never really matters until it does, and then it doesn't matter anymore either ‘cause you’re already dead too!

But somehow, when you are away, 
death is not even real.

It is as if it’s the season of death again and people just…fall.

And then our little survivor part sweeps the dead, just like dried leaves, from underneath our immediate consciousness and then we forget, that we will be the people that will be others until we are not…

I sip on the coffee custom-made for me by my name written on it, forcing me a feeling of grandeur I would otherwise lack in my days…

The janitor sweeps the dried leaves with such dignity, elegance and precision…and I wonder if he is meant for grandeur...if he has found it somewhere amongst cigarette butts and whistling Sinatra tunes.

Now for the first time in a long time you, have become my people! and I will notice you and perhaps even feel you.

I will notice you age, as wrinkles appear on the corner of your eyes. And one day I will wake up and notice that not only my life is in all different shades of grey, now your hair has joined it too.

I will be thinking about your death when you ask me what I am thinking about and I will lie and say I am thinking about grandeur...


Nothing gives me strength like your fragility.

It's like being told you are a poet and suddenly owning up to it.
It’s like the first time you are trusted with a pet;
the transition to when it's no longer a novelty but now a constant in your life that, you need to keep ...alive....

I thought it but never meant it.

Like that frisson of regret you feel when the moment to say a word has passed and it shall never be again…
that delicate sensation when you feel something so foreign that your brain goes into a foggy denial of the existence of a thought…that shall not be…

Then on an evening, ripe with the anticipation of a fall,
while you're sipping an exquisite glass of wine,
it bursts into the doors of your senses
and brings you to your knees
with its effortless beauty.


You watch it dance in front of you,
gracefully across the floor
like silk dragged on smooth curves
planting a soft, subtle kiss on your neck,
your wrists,
your chest…

And with its beauty,
the uncoordinated limbs and disharmonious incoherent physicality
no longer seem hostile.

A thinning heart she says, gets pricked by all the thorns in the world…
and you know it is well on its way when I can no longer look into the eyes of George, or Nigel, or Kasandra, or Edith.

The beautiful thorn of a life lived, either to the fullest,
or the life barely lived: sitting in a corner looking up at me with bright eyes too big for his bony face,
while I pour a handful of change in his cup and with it,  a few melting pieces of my thinning heart.

The beautiful thorn of grandeur, when it was meant to be in the making of the coffee
or the sweeping of the leaves or the stillness of a painting…

One day I will turn 60 years old
and I will become her.

My childhood memory of her beauty, when it was constantly mentioned and admired:
The smell of her powder, her perfume, the dark red lipstick, the Nivea moisturizer, and the type of gum she always used to buy.

Before I was tall enough to no longer look up to her...

the moment when I found her old clothes fit me now, the sense of pride I felt the day I was told I look a lot like her,

the moment I realized she is becoming smaller and I am becoming taller,

the sadness when I heard of her heartbreaks,

I've known her for many years.

And I know I will know her for many more lives. I gave up trying to keep her out of my thoughts and writings and lives.

And as I breathe in and out in a rhythm foreign to my soul, away from her,
I understand what I was meant for.

She is the wise, beautiful one who feels, and I will live to be a hundred years wise and beautiful and live the grandeur she manifests in her smile.

Men

"Men as Tables" by Della Calfee

Men
are marvelous creatures.

In the constant, confounding urgency I feel,
to have been, rather than be,
and to look rather than see
and to have written rather than write

I skipped a few steps and
stumbled with lumbering strides

falling into an aerial trap
where spontaneity bit into my flesh
and with an injected dose of lucidity
I realized
that all my confusion in life thus far
has been caused by these splendid beings.

I am merely amazed at the power that I have given up
trying to decipher the deception
that has been passed on to me
while I ponder the power I would have gained
had I given in to the overwhelming urge to be, more:

more than the something endearing

you may find in a little girl who likes poetry and sings;

more than the agonizing longing
to be and remain submissive,

despite the power bestowed upon me, by you, to own you.

Yet at the expense of being constantly scrutinized

by those who claim to know me
I have realized that being the brand of realistic,
that I should be,
would only lead back to a mediocre life
that I have pretend-lived
in a shadow play of the world
of hazy recognitions;
and acknowledging that I am what I am, when I am,
does not make me any less real.
More unusual perhaps…
and I won’t apologize
if that does not fit into your very, of course, extraordinary
tedium.

Now as my fingers slide on the black shiny keys
to scramble down what I have not understood yet,
between the muddled appreciation of the beauty

of the fairer sex
and the seduction of the broadness of the shoulders
of the rougher one

and how interchangeable these expressions are,
I realize
that I have missed the point,
of looking.

Men I say,
are magnificent creatures.

I don’t say it enough…I don’t know it enough
but I do appreciate the men in my life.

All of them.

From the ones
that I have been, lifetimes ago,
to the ones in a life I remember more about.

The men I have grown to admire,
even their treachery.

With each role I took:
as a daughter, a sister, a lover, a friend, an observer
or a nothing, that is a something, that has possibly
defined me more than anything,
I became less of a something endearing
and more unsympathetic, unkind, and impatient.

Now learning to be, and see, and walk, all over again,
these unsung beings in my book,
mean more…and perhaps are now allowed,
to be more.

Somehow now that I am not what I should be
I am more of a me, that should have been.

So as I skip a few steps like I do and
stumble again
I won’t fall into my trap,
I rise from my extremity,
and appreciate
the virile part in me,
that Freud thought I envy.

Men,
are me.

The Ring

My days, are worded.

Like an antique, heavy, brazen, ring, studded with plump, colorful, disharmonized gems.
At the end of it all, four words ring as I play my singing bowl.

What can I do?

The world, home, mother, faith, poverty, injustice, illness, humanity, betrayal, aging, living, guilt, pleasure, deception, protection, apathy…

If I think that I am more, would I?
If I think that it’s not real, would it?
I no longer seek an answer.

I pretend that it’s never happened and ask for more passivity over the counter.

Friend, chicken soup, rain, steeped tea, whiskey, birthday present, husky puppy, broad shoulders, immigration, imagination, yoga, sex, resume, adulthood, divorce, hotel, smile, hookah, love, umbrella, qualification, drugs, poetry, emerald, money, mother, home, injustice, guilt, home…  home…

home…

If I say it’s not, would it be, not?
If I say I don’t, would you?

Hands, shaking, heart, pounding, and you know I’m ok.
Head, light, eyes, black, out, fluttering, open, we’re all ok.

Priorities, selfishness, helplessness, happiness, oblivion, irresponsibility…you had me day dreaming about new horizons…how dare you? Prejudice, death, self-righteousness, burden, care, love, rain, saved, sacrifice, knees, tired, lonely, betrayal, mother, home… mother… round and around and around I arrive to where I started,
absent myself.

If I retrace my steps, would I run into myself?

Phone rings…

Don’t worry she says…she worries about me.
I’m not worried, I say! I worry about her.
We worry that we make each other worried and that worries us.

I look through a list of names; can I seek comfort in anybody’s embrace? I need an escape.

Today, my word was ‘need’.

For less than a second, the need escapes me. The need to help, to fix, to have, to be, to know, to need.

I am nothing, if not a path. 

In the mirror, where the shadow falls upon my bare body,
is where I let the magic and the real, have a dog fight.

You had me believing that I am still me, without the need to be the me, that has been betting the wrong side.

You had me put all that I could own up to, on a magic realism that is engraved, with a grim truth;
that at the end of the day, where ‘what can I do’ has no answer, the reality wins; and I flush the magic down the toilet with the rest of the words I have no need for…

I couldn’t have been more wrong…the word for tomorrow, is home; and for the day after that, and the day after…

The reality loses and I cut the fences around the ring and let the magic be the word my home needs to have.

This is War

Somewhere between the shores of my many souls,
I have settled down
Gave birth to a son and went to the far east to fall in love again
Now I'm back
Highlights in my hair
Morning in my breath
And my little son is a man
Somewhere between the many shores of my thighs
I've set sail to a fishing boat
Fishing for little sailors whose lives I don't know or care about
My son clubs the heads
And i give birth to many more
at night I march my army of cruel attachments to the gateway of romance and smile and hide my cruel intentions
Somewhere between the wild waters of my many tears
I've found a shore
I won't settle nor will I care if you do
But I will raise an army
And attack all the walls you have built around your heart.

The Lack Thereof

It scares me sometimes
that my world is as limited as my words.

there are feelings I don’t know about
because I don’t have them in my vocabulary;
but so subjective,
I don’t want to just take someone’s word for it!

People confuse me!
How can anyone ever measure their experience
with over used expressions of others?
With definitions,
that can be found in a dictionary?

Then at times
I dream of a brilliant expression:
the waitress fixing her apron,
I look over the invisible line that connects me to the left shoulder of a stranger
and lower my gaze to
sunrays hitting the spoon on my coffee cup
reflecting back in my eyes,
it flashes through my brain
leaving a gold trail behind my eyeballs
little blotches of dark glow under my eyelids
that smell like coffee and sun.
This moment,
I would want to copy and paste!
but I don’t know how
‘cause it still hasn’t been!
So I reiterate
just to discover that it’s been discovered;
that I have been discovered;
in an archetypal images of us,
of life,
of images flashing through our dreams
of a red vortex and Yeats’ gyre
of Japanese sensu and suzu gongs,
chiming balls and tarot cards
of sun, and snow
a werewolf and of medusa...

It’s all been there, already,
and my body remembers it



it’s all been and will be...discovered.

I walk down the street whistling,
my hands digging deep into my pockets
as if it’s a portal
that gets me to the other reality
that I just was.
whistling...

I think about how flimsy we are
between all the monstrosity we have created:

the callous metal cars that squish us into a lump of blood and bones
the cold cement buildings that collapse and entrap the flesh between their rubble...

we have made a big mess haven’t we?

I sometimes miss my mental breakdown!
Where nothing made sense
and yet my being was vibrating on a different plane
where flowers would speak
and I would cry feverishly
for a trapped image that could have no words!

I made no sense
but I knew it all...

it scares me how limited my world has become...