IRAQ: Words That Come Out & USA Reflections

Mother's Day in Baghdad Mother's dreams died on the couch yesterday, and so did Thamra's mother, next door. They were sleeping soundly and no one heard them go... Ahmed and Abu Shaker tried desperately to revive them... But no ambulance would come... It was Mother's Day, and the shots could be heard overhead. The dreams were motionless. 'The helicopter's close', Mother said. It has come to sweep your dreams Mother. Wake up! Thamra's all alone, and she has no more mother... on Mother's Day... Your cell phone will not answer in the evening, the paint on your walls is peeling, and you have no reason to be there, Mother! The war has not come to an end. And I don't want you to end... There will be no ambulance for you Mother. There will only be choppers watching your dreams go... There will only be rains to wash away your couches and silence the phones! How will I talk to you again? Your dreams are drained! Did you not hear the last snore...? They're gone with the guns Mother! And your couchless dreams are damp and sore. You have no reason to sleep, Mother. Wake up! Thamra's all alone, and on Mother's Day she has no mother... She only has the rain. For Little Hasooni For the love of your face that captures my brother's beautiful eyes For the love of your tiny 'skinful' fingers and 'fleshful' cheeks For the love of all thats in me, thats in you All that you now cannot see For the love of you, my little instance of my bigger brother May God bless your tiny nose a thousand times May he guide you as it grows with your curiosity And may he carry you into all the worlds you will come to encounter with every footprint on the walks of life... Ah! Fallujah! You reek of red... the military bugles sing in crimson, and the peasants chant, their song of scorched earth... The leftists left no leaf unraped; the rightists, no faces, unravished, an aura of blood floats over the wounds of your weeping earth and yet your spirit stands erect. Ah Fallujah! Mother of the ghost warriors Still-born in a boot-mutilated masjid kicking and screaming for another life to come out untouched The skies spit back at your pale perpetrators The green has been stolen from your tear-rotting cheeks and flung high from your date palms into your fast-drying womb, but its too late Your virginity was fractured, with the cry of the first bird that lost its wings to a false freedom Rise now, and slowly God will seek your fingers The sun has risen; its his call for you to come back to life Rage...again...and again. When It Happened... When it happened, a long time ago, cheap phone cards meant the world, and the world was wrapped up in Schiphol; Phone booths where Easterners' sweat left finger prints on the damaged glass and lingered... His voice, a restless, sometimes nervous whisper, questioning his short-term obstacles...small, but looming large, already... so much like the fluctuations of his sensitive ego... -'This guy snores, he sleeps on the airport seats...his feet stink!' -'It's OK. You'll be OK. Just call me before you leave' -'11 more minutes'... Aches and time. This summed up his experience. -'Where is your warm bosom. I cannot cry. They would think I'm not man enough to be alone here.' No, I guess they won't. They won't know you carried the bloodied limbs of the stone-throwers into their make-shift graves...They won't know you discovered your brother's dried up carcass amidst cyanide fumes...That you escaped the gun shots of rutheless murders after your Palestinian blood... But you will have my scarf to smell me, and when it's dark and no one can hear you... You can cry your heart out...For I will be there. For Someone Older Highlights of those endless times...surface. Those that I missed and those he had spoken of. The clash of culture steams from his open eyes, That empire of pride, now slowly collapsing What were those dreams that I wasnt a part of? When did I come in, anyway...? What was my role? His aged mind travels too far for my weakened senses. His strength, a tower of wisdom hovering over the infinite mind of a poet Talk not to me of olden times or new ones. You are all Time compressed in one handful of love. Winds of those days when the clouds spoke my name, You were in there smiling, Peeping behind corridor doors asking, Did you know, I will, will you to appear in my lifetime? I knew then what I know now That time has taken all the braids of those long-haired days and dragged them my way I have a myriad of ribbons of ecstasy to unravel, Moist kisses on curious brows to bestow, and everywhere else... I want you all around me, and over me. I want you to be in me and I want to be a part of you Mother Her lines speak, her face, a mirror, hardly scratched... Clouds of questions stream through her lashes and land on the pillow. The days long gone unroll again in slow laps, around her brow... Hints of answers spark through her half-closed look.... Age disperses its weariness in peace around her eyes. The tentacles of intolerance that once were her fingers, now outstretched, groping for another lost answer... She believes I have it. But I do not. And if I did, I would not give it... for fear that the three stents in her strained arteries...burst... I am the purity that you bore and baptized mother, as clean as your heavenly heels... as spotless as God can render a human, and as stained as the devil would try... For I have been tried... But the firmament has seen me through. I lack your serenity, your solutions... The mirror of my heart is cracked. It refracts a myriad shades of your love for me through those long gone days... And I still love you... More. These Dreams I get these dreams, of rooms and faces -the so-called 'Bond of Nightmares' of planes leaving me behind, and long lost visas. On the other side, the World has set, the day is gone. On this side, they burn the Quran, and praise Jesus, while Jesus cries... Things unamed have rooted me here, sentiments untouched, and thoughts over-protected. The question looms -Do I really want to be on this side? What is there to come home to? My fathers smiles in another room where the ceilings are high and the ocean is nearby... He holds these purple birds from Paradise, and sends them to flutter in my face... My sister knees-crossed on the sofa, playing Backgammon with his shadow... Later, laying rugs of crimson whims down my corridors of dreams...each with a different home-sick pattern... She resents this side...She already knows... There is nothing to come home to... As an immigrant to the USA I had the opportunity to experience many of the extremes that are America. From military life, to ghetto life, to high society American suburban life. I was fortunate to experience much which most Americans never do. The extremes and prejudices and facts of Life in America. In the USA as in many other societies you are categorized, labeled, and your future possibilities and Great Expectations are determined by your dress, appearance, speech, outlook and mental state of mind. If fate deals you a bad hand, you can quickly tumble down from the heights and the ivory towers it took you a lifetime to reach. the American Dead End Face It. America is the best and worst of mankind and society. It is an experiment, and if history proves true, that experiment has reached its 300 year zenith, and its all downhill from here on out. When the politicians get too fat, and the lawyers too numerous, and the people are dumbed down, its the beginning of the end. America was made possibile by its diversity and its extremes. Now those days are at an end. Today, if you look different, talk different, act different your American chances are zero. America You Were Born of the Sword, and You Shall Perish by Your Own Hand With a Little Help from Others Today the USA is a fascist police state, whether planned or by chance, those in power know how to milk it and use it and foster it to their own ends. America has the resources, the power and an overkill capacity in its military few other empires have had. America uses its military overkill capacity to the max, and thus has lost its moral authority. That which had made America Great is now its dead end. Its moral authority is bankrupt, and the world knows it. Other empires are waiting in the wings for the American Empire to deal its own death blow from within, and that time is fast approaching. America the Wolves Are At Your Door Your Own Fascist Government Stumble It!

IRAQ: Words That Come Out & USA Reflections

Mother's Day in Baghdad Mother's dreams died on the couch yesterday, and so did Thamra's mother, next door. They were sleeping soundly and no one heard them go... Ahmed and Abu Shaker tried desperately to revive them... But no ambulance would come... It was Mother's Day, and the shots could be heard overhead. The dreams were motionless. 'The helicopter's close', Mother said. It has come to sweep your dreams Mother. Wake up! Thamra's all alone, and she has no more mother... on Mother's Day... Your cell phone will not answer in the evening, the paint on your walls is peeling, and you have no reason to be there, Mother! The war has not come to an end. And I don't want you to end... There will be no ambulance for you Mother. There will only be choppers watching your dreams go... There will only be rains to wash away your couches and silence the phones! How will I talk to you again? Your dreams are drained! Did you not hear the last snore...? They're gone with the guns Mother! And your couchless dreams are damp and sore. You have no reason to sleep, Mother. Wake up! Thamra's all alone, and on Mother's Day she has no mother... She only has the rain. For Little Hasooni For the love of your face that captures my brother's beautiful eyes For the love of your tiny 'skinful' fingers and 'fleshful' cheeks For the love of all thats in me, thats in you All that you now cannot see For the love of you, my little instance of my bigger brother May God bless your tiny nose a thousand times May he guide you as it grows with your curiosity And may he carry you into all the worlds you will come to encounter with every footprint on the walks of life... Ah! Fallujah! You reek of red... the military bugles sing in crimson, and the peasants chant, their song of scorched earth... The leftists left no leaf unraped; the rightists, no faces, unravished, an aura of blood floats over the wounds of your weeping earth and yet your spirit stands erect. Ah Fallujah! Mother of the ghost warriors Still-born in a boot-mutilated masjid kicking and screaming for another life to come out untouched The skies spit back at your pale perpetrators The green has been stolen from your tear-rotting cheeks and flung high from your date palms into your fast-drying womb, but its too late Your virginity was fractured, with the cry of the first bird that lost its wings to a false freedom Rise now, and slowly God will seek your fingers The sun has risen; its his call for you to come back to life Rage...again...and again. When It Happened... When it happened, a long time ago, cheap phone cards meant the world, and the world was wrapped up in Schiphol; Phone booths where Easterners' sweat left finger prints on the damaged glass and lingered... His voice, a restless, sometimes nervous whisper, questioning his short-term obstacles...small, but looming large, already... so much like the fluctuations of his sensitive ego... -'This guy snores, he sleeps on the airport seats...his feet stink!' -'It's OK. You'll be OK. Just call me before you leave' -'11 more minutes'... Aches and time. This summed up his experience. -'Where is your warm bosom. I cannot cry. They would think I'm not man enough to be alone here.' No, I guess they won't. They won't know you carried the bloodied limbs of the stone-throwers into their make-shift graves...They won't know you discovered your brother's dried up carcass amidst cyanide fumes...That you escaped the gun shots of rutheless murders after your Palestinian blood... But you will have my scarf to smell me, and when it's dark and no one can hear you... You can cry your heart out...For I will be there. For Someone Older Highlights of those endless times...surface. Those that I missed and those he had spoken of. The clash of culture steams from his open eyes, That empire of pride, now slowly collapsing What were those dreams that I wasnt a part of? When did I come in, anyway...? What was my role? His aged mind travels too far for my weakened senses. His strength, a tower of wisdom hovering over the infinite mind of a poet Talk not to me of olden times or new ones. You are all Time compressed in one handful of love. Winds of those days when the clouds spoke my name, You were in there smiling, Peeping behind corridor doors asking, Did you know, I will, will you to appear in my lifetime? I knew then what I know now That time has taken all the braids of those long-haired days and dragged them my way I have a myriad of ribbons of ecstasy to unravel, Moist kisses on curious brows to bestow, and everywhere else... I want you all around me, and over me. I want you to be in me and I want to be a part of you Mother Her lines speak, her face, a mirror, hardly scratched... Clouds of questions stream through her lashes and land on the pillow. The days long gone unroll again in slow laps, around her brow... Hints of answers spark through her half-closed look.... Age disperses its weariness in peace around her eyes. The tentacles of intolerance that once were her fingers, now outstretched, groping for another lost answer... She believes I have it. But I do not. And if I did, I would not give it... for fear that the three stents in her strained arteries...burst... I am the purity that you bore and baptized mother, as clean as your heavenly heels... as spotless as God can render a human, and as stained as the devil would try... For I have been tried... But the firmament has seen me through. I lack your serenity, your solutions... The mirror of my heart is cracked. It refracts a myriad shades of your love for me through those long gone days... And I still love you... More. These Dreams I get these dreams, of rooms and faces -the so-called 'Bond of Nightmares' of planes leaving me behind, and long lost visas. On the other side, the World has set, the day is gone. On this side, they burn the Quran, and praise Jesus, while Jesus cries... Things unamed have rooted me here, sentiments untouched, and thoughts over-protected. The question looms -Do I really want to be on this side? What is there to come home to? My fathers smiles in another room where the ceilings are high and the ocean is nearby... He holds these purple birds from Paradise, and sends them to flutter in my face... My sister knees-crossed on the sofa, playing Backgammon with his shadow... Later, laying rugs of crimson whims down my corridors of dreams...each with a different home-sick pattern... She resents this side...She already knows... There is nothing to come home to... As an immigrant to the USA I had the opportunity to experience many of the extremes that are America. From military life, to ghetto life, to high society American suburban life. I was fortunate to experience much which most Americans never do. The extremes and prejudices and facts of Life in America. In the USA as in many other societies you are categorized, labeled, and your future possibilities and Great Expectations are determined by your dress, appearance, speech, outlook and mental state of mind. If fate deals you a bad hand, you can quickly tumble down from the heights and the ivory towers it took you a lifetime to reach. the American Dead End Face It. America is the best and worst of mankind and society. It is an experiment, and if history proves true, that experiment has reached its 300 year zenith, and its all downhill from here on out. When the politicians get too fat, and the lawyers too numerous, and the people are dumbed down, its the beginning of the end. America was made possibile by its diversity and its extremes. Now those days are at an end. Today, if you look different, talk different, act different your American chances are zero. America You Were Born of the Sword, and You Shall Perish by Your Own Hand With a Little Help from Others Today the USA is a fascist police state, whether planned or by chance, those in power know how to milk it and use it and foster it to their own ends. America has the resources, the power and an overkill capacity in its military few other empires have had. America uses its military overkill capacity to the max, and thus has lost its moral authority. That which had made America Great is now its dead end. Its moral authority is bankrupt, and the world knows it. Other empires are waiting in the wings for the American Empire to deal its own death blow from within, and that time is fast approaching. America the Wolves Are At Your Door Your Own Fascist Government