courage, my girl

Push yourself
to be more like your poems;
a piece of courage jumping out of the window.

Goodbye, to a friend

This is the status of departure
a dull goodbye
with bags dragging behind us both.

A dancer in the mirror

Feet shuffling left and right
there's one rhythm,
does your heart beat to it?

Jericho, a day out

The walls tumbled down
for too proud of kings
walk over their nations,
even in the desert

Acre, a fort

Strolling by the port
midweek, the sea is the same
strong like the fort it lives on its feet.

Haifa

We return, once more
to where we belonged,
after stealing an orange from a holy site.

Bethlehem, a visit

Bethlehem,
here, He was born- a child
there, His Mother breast-fed him, on the road
while our mothers recluse to homes, in comfort.

the teapot, drying

On the counter, the teapot lies

its belly turned out, dripping water

you cannot pour out of an empty vessel, 

you remark and the teapot continues to dribble water on my hands. 

Jerusalem, the heart

Eighteen times, built and destroyed

imagine the damage 

I have only once built 

one sandcastle then jumped on it 

imagine, seven doors 

open then another six waiting for Judgment Day

I have only once waited

for a letter of your judgment, never arriving 

imagine a bullet-hole in a metal door

marking the wars on the land

I have seen a war rage inside of me
on the seven doors of the city, where I walk and weep every day.

one arrives, one departs

On the gateway,
in the same hour, like swallows my friends
one arrives, one departs from my hands.

a man, a bird, a sky

I pin myself to the wrong kind of love
a bird that flutters away
when I walk the same patch of ground

Advised by the wrong weather

Shock the audience with the lyrics

said the musician 

with an unfinished song. 

the speed of lightning

You don't return emails
yet I am aware,
you are gravitating towards me
with the speed of lightning

Warplanes

I sleep to the sound of a warplane
hovering in the sky above me,
can the loved ones I lost pull it by the wings?

Empathy

Tattooed on her shoulder
empathy:
the wave of sadness she feels, on behalf of other people

Language on a crutch

I have severed the tongue in me, left it to wander for years
my native language limps onward
it walks by me on a crutch

in a car with a stranger

- Which country held your body, the times your brain was working?
- Soils, with different twisted tongues: one for home, one for elsewhere
I pay my attention to the window, where the nose of the lady meets a setting sun

- The horizon is beautiful
there's a muffed silence in the car, like fog rising
from the dashboard onto the glass

- Why did you reverse your footsteps?
- in what sense is a return a reversal:
reversal denote eraser and who wants to erase their history?

- What is your direction of prayer?
- the same direction of the sun, Eastward,
not a key change if prayer is still kept as a habit

- You sound an awful lot like someone who....
- Got cut out from a rooted tree?
there's a muffed silence in the car, like fog rising

- where is home?
I look from the dashboard to the glass
I close my eyes.

Modern-poetry

This is modernity;
who can tell, these days,
where poetry begins and stories end?

a letter of rejection

All these words
I still cannot tell you
I don't have space for you in my heart.

the things we talk about when we joke about alzheimers

Here is another way to tell you about a disaster
that has been conducive by age, numerals and numbers
you are losing brain cells

you mistrust
your hands to find the correct light-switch
or recall with the same intensity how to tie your shoes

there's space for spots
in your eyes
at times they fail to direct you right and left

but they direct you
to the time you were seven years old
when there were soldiers and a black bag

why black? your daughter will never know
this is a secret locked in your brain alone
unreachable

you will recall with clarity
a day that is received with
tears of joy

we joke now
about the times of washing machines
brimming with two-day washed clothes

we laugh at poor
eyes, that don't see in the dark
but we forget too, that this was once life.

1520, generating

This is the beauty of new things
and a burden too, generating
1520 times, these words to you

a red dress

in the closet hangs the red dress
one he bought her
the one she never got to wear.

Stick incense

Reminder of an India I have never seen
with my very eyes, the smoke rising slowly toward the ceiling
reminds me of an India I have never seen live
but heard in a northerner's Urdu wordings
a delicate Delhi accent, a Punjabi poet rising
like smoke out of ashes.

a burial service for the King

Here lies the silent music
of the mourners, piling like rice

waiting for a resurrection
in a wasteland

here like the silent music
of the mourners, with flowers

holding petals, shredded out
yellow, red, pink and gradation of hope

for the King lies in a shroud
made with musk and linen

wrapped, Lord of the universe
maker, human, seeker of peace

here lies the silent music
of the mourners, us among them,

in black and dark blue
roughened and bruised

mourning the tapping
of a morning on the windows of resurrection.

Sharing stories

Like word of mouth
is the story, formed with superstition
leaves way for blabbermouths
to keep on rambling

the light of Easter

Believe it or not,
this is how the light disperses
exploding out of death
to rise, on Easter

A kind of love

This is what you need
as the month opens and closes
a kind of love that storms
with or without the aid of crystals, your head.

Rethinking heritage

A vision of my grandmother, with glasses on
strands of yarn in her fingers making jackets
to restrain warmth in my chest
this is heritage,
the way love is weaved for us to hold in our hands.

A busy person

Give the best job, to the busiest person
you wrote to me without thinking of logic
how can the status of being under pressure give way
to the tide to flow under feet?

This is our daily
take out the last bit of rye to make bread
keep the time like the seconds
maybe there will be space for us to achieve,
those dreams we have kept on the shelves for years.

Jealousy, revisited

Your quivering voice
lights up the nightly conversation
about another woman in his hairy arms.

A missed chance

This is the status of tears
an excuse
to missed chances, under-expressed.

Palm Sunday

He enters Jerusalem
like a soft breeze, on a donkey
we weep the walls that keep falling for him

Stagnation, water

Water that does not travel
becomes stagnant, reeks of smell
don't be like this, states an old friend
who stopped being present in the crucial minutes

Weariness in the step

This land makes me, this land kills the things I love
dreams dreamed out of the clouds
weaved with the sun, everlasting rain
this land makes me, Za'tar
breaks me bread, whole-wheat engulfed
kills the chance of standing on my two feet
without crutches propelling me upwards
this land kills those who love it,
with its thrones, with its rye
with what makes of it, a boundless emptiness
without borders or barb-wires.

Art & a heart

Like a swallow, it arrives
all the art that has been compiled
out of a scratched out heart

Too valuable, these tributes

They have fallen, young jasmine
it is not yet spring- we say
gone too young, those who die for us to live.

Our mothers

Superheroes, without capes
under-celebrated, even when we give flowers
our mothers

Strange Things Come Out of Your Mouth

Strange things come out of your mouth

you hear blame between the breaths

for the thoughts as they line waiting to exit

like preschoolers with heavy backpacks, your head

Read the rest here: https://visualverse.org/submissions/strange-things-come-out-of-your-mouth/