letter to my friends far away

 

send me pictures of the plants you are growing

since the spring when the virus was growing, too

so that i can see the earth thriving and keep 

an image of beauty amidst bombs blasting the soil

of little known lands. send me poetry 

in the form of birds still singing elsewhere

and the color of the sky undisturbed by smoke 

from flying fires that target people in their own homes

so that i may keep an image of people living

without the fear of death. 

send me songs with words that people speak

when they feel safe, silly words about losing love

or heartbreak or betrayal and finding love

again, so that i may be sure that words still have

meaning when uttered, at least for those living without war.

send me the sound of your heart beating

on a usual day after the sun rises or after 

you go for a walk, after brushing your teeth,

or pick up your children from school. sounds

of people laughing, or chatting, or just

sitting in silence, while the cars hum by

from a nearby street. i want to soothe 

the noise of blood flushing my ears each time 

a new wave of panic rises from injured soil.

send me the smell of dirt, newly dug and the 

feel of worms on your bare fingers

i want to know something stays alive

in some chunk of earth somewhere else.

send me the dreams you dream

when you go to sleep without preparing

a bag with a passport, nonperishable food,

clothes and warm socks, a blanket, a flashlight

in case you are shocked out of sleep at night

by air raid sirens, followed by the sounds 

of blasts. lend me your dreams for a lifetime

so that i may keep the image of peace in mind

at least for another day.

range

 

they built a new road. each time the taxi

this is the new road. a new development, smooth addition to potholed streets, uneven

takes me, always a he, says: have you seen it? it's the new road.

first time we were the only car on the road and the tall lamp-posts, equidistant each one from the next, turned their heads to see us go past

not even buildings seen, the bushes on the sides seemed to be cleaned of plastic bottles and other trash to be expected in such a city as this one

at night the lights were white and pure, only on this road

since it is new, it is the future we haven't lived yet, the future called progress lived in the direction of the original west: east to find the indies, steal spice

future after the eradication of the past, only after this

europe where it all began. naturally.

19 million USD was spent. 190,000 times of receiving retirement pay.

you wouldn't even live that long. 100 USD a month. no one would.

it is pleasant to go smoothly, a dream really

the lights turned their heads to see us go smoothly, in their eyes a cold neoliberal judgement. because we are a country of beggars who consume only what is given as charity.

meanwhile, the people protest the increased gas electricity price.

on the outskirts of the city, going up the hill

i am an amerikan citizen, i don't have time, i take taxis

on the sides: barns of dirty white sheep huddled together each smelling the other's sweat

one goes smoothly blind, the bumpiness of not seeing is as normal as the shooting of bullets into border villages at night on your way for bread

in fact, being in the center, central capital city does not make you safer from the war.

go in the village an hour away. in the mountains.

you remember those sounds at night they tell you are fireworks?

they have numbed you to gun-fire. they tell you they are killing fruit eating birds. and true, you find them scattered on the side of the road of the village in the morning,

their eyes are still open. so duck down, stare into those mirror eyes. you see

the human form, the face, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the clay skin, the dark hair

the human form killed as if it was not, transforms into the expression of the soul, a bird with a black beak and utterly beautiful

only in death are you beautiful. city grave-site black hole all things swallowed up.

you are not a city. you are the memory of a place.

the memory re-membered  from scratch. from pieces of what was, pieces of what is to have been, what could have been.

is there room? is there ever room to invent the story?

the method: look inside my coffee cup.

black and white.

either or.

1 or 0 or 0 or 1

positive or negative.

the capacity of our mind or the mind squeezed into the capacity

a limitation

a divide and conquer strategy always needs a dichotomy

split the main dichotomous idealogy into many dual parts, keep the double arrangement of things

if we know we are alive, then we are not dead

vice versa

cut up reality into parts

rearrange the parts

make chaos

appear arranged

 

 

august, 2015

the first time i bled my mother had gone

back home to bury her father.

and even when she was in the kitchen

making coffee for the stranger 

who had entered our home invited

or through my nightgown uninvited

my mother had gone

to tend to the needs of men

over her daughter. 

my oldest sister had covered me

with bed sheets

a body pronounced dead 

at the first sight of bleeding

and when i woke not yet knowing

of the shame my body 

had committed, she asked me

if i had sat on the dirty ground outside

like maybe i was dirty 

stained like that 

in the dry blood of becoming. 

finally. a woman

too long, and maybe

i had an infection. 

like maybe i was ill

like the way all the girls back home

would let each other know

how they were sick meaning 

they were bleeding.

she too had learned the body 

is a crime scene, always at fault

for wanting to expose the secret

between her legs.

imagine how sick i am 

coming in the mouth

of another woman-

an act 

of unshaming the body.

she gave me a paper packet

told me to go in the bathroom

keep the blood a secret

place the sticky side on the inside

of my underwear.

the way he would tell me

how this is our secret

and no one else should know.

and how many times after the first time

i bled through my pants

in public. 

like my body was evidence: 

a floating corpse in water

coming up bloated.

how bloated this bleeding would make me feel.

still makes me feel.

no, we don't get to keep our secrets

in private.

bleeding is a public act 

we cannot control.

the bleeding body is wiser

than the one that never bled willingly.

indeed there was pride in my walk that day

remembering what my father had always said 

about never again raising a hand

to his daughters 

once they bled.

how he would walk disconnected

with each step swallowing sorrow

as if he never felt.

i never expected him to protect me,

even while my sisters believed

he would save us from anyone

who dared break into our home.

the bleeding body is homeless,

at fault of losing itself

unable to be controlled

mad, irrational, dirty.

these kinds of bodies 

cannot be broken into-

their blood is proof of having been broken into

over and over again.

there is no need to protect

the bleeding body. 

it brought it upon itself.

when my mother returned

fatherless

and we told her how i had bled

whispering to protect the man

in our lives from knowing 

what this blood meant

she warned me not to jump rope

or sit on cold surfaces

but nothing about how to protect myself

from familiar men

in case my parents

would be too naive to understand

anyone is suspect

she left so many blank spaces

in her story, blank 

and dense with years of covering up

crime scenes 

that only the bleeding body 

can uncover.

Will

In an Other day, soft and careful-hearted

non-dual beings will come to disrupt politico-corporate 

order and the police will take off their clothes 

right down to their feet touching the ground. 

Non-dual queers will climb platforms and podiums 

where microphones will capture the sound of freedom 

in song speak. Words will go in exile for silence 

to usher a new era.The sky will smell of incense. 

Weapons will haunt cavities in the earth 

where steel aluminum copper and metal 

were once extracted to target unwilling bodies 

in lands that observed but could not act. 

No one will be shot any where at all. 

No one's home will be bombed by drones. 

No one will have to survive amid debris and 

the dead. Death will be a gathering a walk a dance 

a song a howl a rivered permission to flow through 

and alongside life. The wall built by the border 

will crack on its own and trees will fill their branches 

and thick green leaves along the crevices. 

Border will no longer mean an end, the law

guards, documents, separation, concentration camps. 

Everyone's hands will be tied to their hearts. 

This connection will be one's passport. 

Gender will come and go as it pleases. 

There will no longer be a need to verify one's identity. 

All the intersections and struggles or non-struggles 

will be narrated by a four year old girl 

in her own language. Sometimes there will be 

only gestures. Sometimes loud screams. Sometimes 

uncontrollable crying. No woman will go missing 

or disappeared or killed from misogyny. Ni una menos. 

Everyone will know at least one pain in their lineage. 

This will slow people down. 

The Amazon will recover. 

The ice-caps will have no more need to mourn 

in place of humans. The polar bears will go on living 

safe in their heritage. There will no longer be countries. 

Justice will be administered by the weather. 

All the stolen settled lands will come 

under the collective rule of ancestors passed 

and ancestors to be. No one will own property. 

There will be no desire to own anything. 

Everyone will be aware of their feet and the channels 

in their bodies. Money will be recycled into energy

to power stoves for cooking big meals

to feed everybody. 

Food will be grown in balconies, living rooms,

backdoor gardens, rooftops and street sidewalks -

all green and dense in the summer

to cool down homes in the vicinity. 

Cars will have long become extinct -

their parts transformed into residencies

where anyone can create without the need

to call themselves an artist. 

People's race will be the pets they keep,

class will be the rituals they practice,

sex will be anything that gives one consensual pleasure.

Norms will be a name in a Dutch-speaking land -

pronounced Noomsh. 

Time will be enough. And fear will always be 

called in, listened to, transformed.

Public transport will be free.

Education will be free.

Freedom will mean freedom and peace

will mean peace. 

There will still be suffering as there will still be joy,

but these will be experienced through the wisdom

of the stars and the planets and the galaxy, 

meaning suffering will not be brought on or generate reactions

from earthly events. People will have mastered

breathing through difficulty.

Prisons will be abolished.

Punishment will be unnecessary. 

Everyone will live and die

in uninterrupted cycles

of being and non-being.

The sun will rise and set

happily.