At the Deathbed of Reason, Alive I Poet.

Useless words from a woman yearning to explode.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

A new film is born

Yay! despite all the insanity thats been tumbling into my days lately, i am now inspired to start my new film. It feels great.
It hits you at the most wonderfully inappropriate times, film dialogue.
Suddenly you see her crossing a street and the long haired guitar player catches her eye and she feels something for the first time in days. His music is alive in a dead place, struggling to stay alive his music is, but he is smiling, and her eyes yearn for life, her body crosses to him, Jasmine surrounds them, sound stops, and something dies, something else is born, and words are exchanged in my head..and i can see him, i see her, i see the street and i race out of bed, yearning.
You must sleep, you have things to do early morning that you have already procastinated on all week and yet at 3 AM, script scenes start to march into your head like never before...and you dont know if its a distraction from needing to pee...or because you need to outlet the rage building inside you without breaking more of your friends plates since breaking two earlier was enough...or is it that truly something stirs in your imagination and you know, you just KNOW, that where you are, what loves have come and gone this year, the horrid war being waged at your country, the horrrid war being still waged at your other country, all of that has to become something approaching art...a feable attempt at art...a start at art..something...make it something aside from a ridiculous brain fart...
so my new film is born. Its about love and war. Simply. The loss of love, the gaining of war. Two souls start a new life in peace and that peace takes them places within themselves that are worse than living under the shelling of an exterior war they could not stop.
Its about the search for trees.
Its a film named "Yasmine".
I hope i make it this year...would be a wonderful thing to do.
My own little offering to Falastine, Libnan. And to my sense of integrity and self respect.

Crossword genius in the making

Hya all by-now-four-readers-of-mine. yay. My inanity grows in splendour.
I did two, TWO, cross word puzzles today while the Israeli trashcan of an army solved all their puzzled problems of the past 100 plus years by figuring out how to send 20 bombs to beiruti suburbs within a minute...dude...thats what i call bravery and real manhood...
Its suposed to be over. Why do my bloodshot eyes and swirly weary brain cells not believe that somehow?
and really, when they say over, does that mean i get back to my bed, with my pictures next to it, and my flowered table beside the graffitti i so badly sprayed on the living room door? do i get to stress again about the car noises outside the window and curse and curse to myself, laughing out loud at the utter nuttiness of living in beirut?
does toni get to pass by now and watch tv with me, attempting to sneak peeks at my poetry journals while i open another bottle of wine from the fridge and run back in with my orange dress flying to yell at him again? does ghalia get to come by at 2 am for her nightly ritual, to laugh with me at the craziness that passes for single lebanese men these days? does nadine get to bring me sweet cakes and delicious pies in the morning and listen to me ramble on and on about how the man i last loved is a total moron?
does toufic get to insist that i get off my fat arse and join him for a ride at the corniche at midnight so we can look at the poeple walking and make fun of whatever it is his beautiful mind likes to make fun of? do i get to see sands grin again soon in utter delight at something, offering us utter delight in her act of grinning?
and and and and...does that mean that we get 2.5 billion dollars to rebuild everything in a jiffy? does that mean that the depleted uranium is no longer a problem to breathe? or that i can go to edde sands or oceana and show off my tan and be ABLE to swim?
and does that mean that the countless men and women and children who lost souls, arms, legs, eyes, skin, hair, clothes, passports, money, weight, hope, homes, cars, identities, feelings, faith, humanity and the will to continue...what happens to all that when a fucking war is supposdly fucking over?
OVER MY ASS. OVER MY DEAD BODY. OVER THE PIGS FLYING BY THE MOON THATS BLUE.
It aint over.
It will never be over.
As long as pacifist silly curly haired hippies such as myself are still spilling forth venom and curses at the zionists and their american cronies of death, as long as someone like me who is comparitively very blessed still finds herself crying at night for no reason, well, it wont be over.
I shall never forget. Millions will never forget. And when even atheists such as myself pray that the hegemonic and cruel forces that invaded my home and my father's future and my heritage find nothing but death in their eyelashes when they wake to haifa's beautiful seashore, that their ears hear nothing but the banging of death bells resounding in their gut all over jerusalem, that they taste acrid agony everytime they pass by an uprooted olive tree in jenin, that they shiver in winds of ice that burns eveytime they walk the cobble streets of aka...
for every pro zionist- pro american government asshole out there, you may not know the kind of pain we are going through collectively, or the kind of uslelessness i feel in my safe and wonderful world, but i assure you, i assure you with the force of hundreds of thousand of arab children born right now as i write, that you shall never be at peace...
A flower blooms not in soil it was never meant to penetrate...
take your death elsewhere...for we will continue to live here.
These are my thoughts as i sip vodka berry juice, commune with wonderful amazing friends, and figure out crosswords to make me feel smart, and remind me of my mother and her favorite past time with me while she was dying in a hospital.
Its like being two people at once, i smile, i sip, i shriek in glee when i find a word, i make huge healthy salads with ten different ingredients to feed 5 loved ones, and yet in the back of my mind, hate churns its song in poems...in films im writing...in thoughts i send to someone who i hope is suffering...in anger at a region around me in silent death hiding...

anyone know the seven letter word of the week?
crossword hint..."balls, having none"...
applies to many poeple around me right now and its the worst trait ever in a human being...
yalla, hit me up with answers! its the easiest one you will ever solve!

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

For EuroArabe, who would love him

This is my first post. I dont even know how to use this website still, so bear with me.
I dont want to ramble, nor do i have much to say, weary.
But this first poem goes to EuroArabe, for her generosity, her kindness, her defiance of the status quo, her resiliance, her sense of humor under fire, and her long long friendship, and mostly, for her support and eternal encouragement for my silly words. Thank you.



Today

Today, your smile Zeid
lessens the need for alteration to exude my hate
quiets my screeching, my need for an aid
alcohol perhaps to inebriate
but oh there it is instead,
your smile baby Zeid,
I use that to propel me breathing
or maybe its the safety around me I abhor, the comfort I have grown to hate.

Today
I gaze at your questioning eyes barely witnessing half a year
singing to the universe in lands we could not grasp
we could not come near
music your railway to my heart as you learn to stand
I watch you crying,
me sobbing
unable to stop your back rubbing
till
giggles and smiles and noises that sear
calm your infant skin so silky
so luscious
so clear
I stare your eyelashes down in love
in pain
I think of many others I have recently seen
crusted red on their lips in an immortal stain
not one of them allowed
to be an angry teen
a young mother
a grandmother
I breath sustenance of your arms of milk flesh goodness
your feet twitching always
to a far more holy
far more precious
beat
while Al Jazeera claws at my eyes
images in close up to rage my heat
stab my eyes with pins of salt
so many sides
so much war
no one to blame they quote
everyone at fault
souls of Arab promise have come to a halt
many in the rubble with arms like yours Zeid
fingers
toes
and pink pyjamas, old and frayed,
whole lives unfolded
betrayed
immobile now these divine feet.

Today I sing and dance with you on bare tiles of kitchen joyous at your scent
my inability to stop kissing you
all that you represent
your skin
now heaven sent
your cries of glee I replay at night to sleep
your cooing laughs deafen the merkovas
the f16s
the bombs whistling
timers going
everything that damages my sanity
anything to stop the merciless hum of soldiers marching
the buttons pressing
the constant beep
the mindless drone of politics, men and women, yacking
words flowing
sheep
sheep
sheep.

Today I see your besotted mother
calling you her koala cuddle
calling you her dream
I see your fingers clutching
stronger each day
learning our way
becoming more like me
losing all thats good in you
losing your mind wandering free
learning in images you percieve not yet
of hands in rubble
slack opened jaws
male eyes silent in horror
returning
having just bought bread
thinking
at least Zeina will have her labneh sandwich
Muhammed his bread with the sweet tea
at least we are all together still
my five hearts on southern soil roaming
my tireless wife
and me
and to know
in one split second of life
of death
of so much death in one family
his male yes untearing
in
denial maybe unfacing
the Israeli death machine and its blood sucking glee
his hands still clutching
as if unable to stop denying
his hands leafing ID cards remembering
a few minutes ago,
yes
yes
yes I swore my life lived was just here
there was five of them hungry, my wife our youngest soothing
and here is the bread in my hand still,
and here I am thinking,
this is still me.

Today
your feet still twiddle in joy Zeid,
in our Amman of peace treaties and weddings
and placid beautiful women
at a spa
at a resort
at a club
oh so trendy we are,
with our dead sea.

Today I marvel silent your sheer beauty Zeid,
I feel jealous
I envy skin so enchanting
I look at your hand clutching my heart
I think of Qana
I see old pictures of miracles that have started to fade
I know I should not compare
nor would I think to trade
nor could I twinge at the warm nest your mother has made
your seven months of adored baby faces
no hate in your world
no terrorrizing traces
nothing but kindness
pure sheer lovliness pervades your home
fills up all your baby places
mama stands guard in arms strong and brown
her pride builds trenches around your protected spaces
and I wonder
I wonder
I slam fists into my pounding gut
and I ponder
who gets to decide
where we are born
to what color
and what gender
what religion
what democratic state of splendor
in which west
in which dying east
do our souls lay to an untimely rest
for the Israeli vultures to become a feast.

Today
I hold you uncontrolling
I need your eyelashes curled and questioning
smiles so spontaneous
like a rainbow
in this swamp of tears
I pray to the 37 smiles we lost in rubble
I dare not think of their faces
I dare not wonder
if they sensed trouble
I dare not imagine the heat
the scared pattering of baby feet
the slow quietening of their heart beat
skin once brown golden skipping
now white
palor as pale as a sheet
I dare not turn the news on again my Zeid,
come here,
come rest,
lets sit together again, for
when your eyes mine meet
you heal me
you give me flight from these substances to soothe me
your life yet pulsing give me a sanctuary
gives me harmony
gives me priceless victory
when all I can see around me,
and in me
is vile Arab
silence
smirking Israeli violence
and in the air,
in the dense poison of this air
is the stench of yet another
defeat.