Tag: personal

Categories
Poems

Notes

Quarter tonic
Sugar with sugar
Sweet tongue
Semolina Lena

Noncognizant strikes
Dodge brother, dodge
Relentless moving
Those dark eyes always worth it

What I would give
To make this right
To step out of character
Or am I in one now?

Tired of this
Fearing its endlessness
The closer I am to one
The farther I am from both

When the notes I hear
Or the words, dear
My world flips
But I’m quarter built

Flipping like it’s
Practice makes perfect
Play the notes, play
As close as I can get

Limits limit
But memories punish
Flabbergasted and expectant
What are you doing? Incredulous

I am flipping and practicing
Playing notes and replaying nostalgia
Giving love like watering the parched
Learning to strike the balance

Leave me be, demons
You turn sustenance into air
After I’ve fed my soul
I shall have my peace

Categories
Poems

Untitled

Eyes first meeting
Enchanted voice
Beauty and chaos
Delightful layers
Just a hint of tired
Well-hidden under a smile
Reaching out to soothe
What doesn’t appear to need it.

Not aware of depths
Counting breaths
How deep could they go?
Vanishing colours

The clouds passed
Resuscitation
And the sunshine
Sun-shone those depths
Unbalanced chaotic
Hurt with every stroke

They remember without connecting
At a standstill
A story ends
Without an ending

Categories
Poems

“To my friends…”

I know you, friend,
I recognize my self in you,
Your countenance a canvas of your heart,
Or a parchment with ink bright red,
I’ve never met you,
But I see the part of you,
That would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me,
Respect, dignity, and solidarity our shared language,
You have my gratitude.

It is so difficult to find you,
A necessity,
If it was so easy,
Then they would find us,
With their language of conformity and violence,
Copy-cats of blind majority,
Bent on propagating and steering,
We recognize the steps of their dance,
From a mile away,
We try to steer clear,
But sometimes our shared language,
Calls on us to act.

To the scoundrels,
I know you,
I recognize my self in you,
But that was an old self,
I left it behind long ago,
A fossil,
I’ve never met you,
But I see the part of you,
That would hurt me,
For entertainment,
Or derived righteousness,
Humanity’s parroting scoundrel.

================

Author’s note: I dedicate this poem to Sarah Hegazi (Rest in Power), a queer feminist activist from Egypt who recently passed away while seeking asylum here, in Canada, and to all who are navigating and surviving cruelness and systemic injustice.

Categories
Poems

Depression

Unyielding,
Immoveable and dense,
Stuck in place,
A blank mind,
Submerged in quicksand.

 

Categories
Poems

An Ode to Mangoes

Your fragrance,
Simultaneously bewildering,
And calming,
Sets into motion,
A desire for memories,
I follow my nose.

Ah, there you are,
A sight for sore eyes,
Pleasing curves,
Coloured softly and brightly,
Shades of green, red, yellow, and orange,
My entire being aches for you.

I move closer,
My heart beating faster,
My yearning for you,
And a past life,
Grows with every step,
I had forgotten,
My fondness,
for your plumpness.

I reach for you,
Feeling your soft skin,
Running my fingers,
Along your familiar shape,
One of you will not do,
I want all of you.

Come home with me,
I will bathe you,
Caressing you lovingly,
Before I devour you.

With every move of my hand,
You surrender,
Your wetness drips and splashes,
A heady sweetness,
From another world.

Your flesh in my mouth,
Intoxicating,
Ignites fireworks in my mind,
I struggle to consume,
Your every last drop,
Every last morsel,
I do not want to forget.

Categories
Poems

Self Isolation

He paces back and forth,
Stamping his feet,
And for good measure,
Flips over some furniture,
In the living room of my mind.

Dressed in slacks,
Shirt and a vest,
A tie and polished shoes,
Hair neatly parted on one side,
Moustache a neat horizontal patch.

Let me introduce you,
This is my madman,
He sometimes puffs on a pipe,
Pacing back and forth,
In my living room.

He is a man of many tongues,
Mumbling to himself in Turkish,
Cursing in German,
Yelling in French,
Arguing in English.

“Listen to me!”
In an operatic overture,
He gives multiple directives,
All conflicting with each other,
All seemingly both Right and Wrong.

So powerful,
I attempt to compensate,
Balance and direction,
But it’s too late,
In this moment,
One lens is blue and the other pink.

I scramble for my,
Compass of decision-making,
I cannot believe my eyes!
The madman’s cacophony,
Has led North chasing East,
West dancing around South,
True North rendered indecipherable.

He leads an orchestra,
Of conflicting instruments,
The Emotions section,
Clashing with the Logic section,
And the Perspective section trips on its own feet and plants its face into the ground.

All this in my living room,
Wherever shall I bring my guests?
And how will they react to this man?
He will surely spit in their tea,
And slap them upside the head.

Categories
Poems

A thoracic study

Dear reader,
I feel a lump,
Behind my sternum,
Lodged in place,
Neighbour to the heart.

We had talked about,
How we were different,
But the unspoken truth,
That our love for each other,
Was not strong enough,
To overcome those differences.
An untruthful truth.

Dear reader,
What is this lump I feel?
It will not leave me be,
Right between my lungs,
Tight.