across the garden

I am alone in a room across the garden from you.
I can see your light from my window.
I don't understand.
Why are we apart?
Why must I sleep alone again tonight?


What is so important that it is worth keeping empty homes?
What is so great that you can do with your life that you cannot share with me?
What is so important for you to do, that wouldn't be greater and more important, if in fact you shared it with me?
What are you looking for in your life that we cannot find together?
I don't understand.


Why do you let denial, rejection, and distance tear a wound between us that we cannot heal?
What is so important that you let our relationship die,
a little every day,
a little today,
a little today.

A letter to a man entitled: ‘Marriage: this is what I want from you'

I want you to respect me and care about me and any kids that we have. I want us to be happy; and to communicate always; and to make a healthy home where our kids can grow up in a good family. That means having respect, care, love, understanding, communication, trust, and the freedom to grow.

I want you to not be sexist and to respect me as an equal person. I want you to understand that our home is important and that keeping it clean makes space for everyone who lives there and makes the place more joyful. I want you to care about this and to know that this is your task as much as mine. So, if we both work, we both care for the household tasks. Respect the space where we live.

Men are capable of the things that women do,

And women are capable of things men do (like driving!).

I want us to respect each other’s opinion, and to discuss and make important decisions together.

I want total monogamy. If we are married I belong to you and you belong to me. so you ought not to do anything sexual with someone else that you wouldn’t do if I was there physically present with you doing it too. Because that is what it is like: as if I am there.

The same goes for me.

I want you to know that any person who would have an affair with a married person is not worth having an affair with. And, any feeling that makes one desire to have an affair is never love.

I want you to be honest and perceptive about your emotions, and to notice and avoid illusions. I want you to love me and our kids as much as you love yourself, or more. And I would do the same for you. That means you can’t be selfish. You can’t do things that will hurt your family just because you feel you will gain something.

I want you to be happy and to be growing healthily. I want the same for myself. That means we need trust, respect and freedom. So, you can develop your interests and have as many, or as few friends as make you happy; and to do things you enjoy. I don’t want to confine you in a prison, and I don’t want you to confine me. so long as you understand that we are a unit, you are not an independent individual, and we move together. We are on the same raft.

I don’t care if you earn a lot or a little. So long as we honestly plan our resources together for the well-being of the whole family.

I don’t care where we live, so long as I can have a decent occupation there and I can see my family (brothers, parents, cousins, aunts…) sometimes on holidays.

I want you to let me take care of my parents when they are old if they need me. and I want us to have your parents around if they need us.

           

I want us to get to know the world together, to learn new things, to grow and mature, and to share things. To share happy and sad things, new things and old.

I don’t want you to approach me as if there is some power struggle going on. I don’t want you to be governed by, and live in your head amongst your insecurities. I want you to come out and live with me in this great world. I want you to aim, life-long, to have a good relationship with me. to be loving, forgiving and charitable.

I don’t want you to be emotionally competitive – putting in “your 50%” and always checking the balance and asking for change. I want you to put in 100% no matter what. And I will put in 100%. And maybe society will put in some, and God will put in some. And then, maybe, if we have 350%, this relationship might work.

A family and a home are not bought with 50/50 = 100 cents. They cost at least 350 cents. 

There is nothing left to wonder about.

I wondered why I write
Why I write
Why I write
I wondered why I write
Why I write
all day long.


I wondered why I write
and I wondered and I wondered
I wondered why I write but I wonder no more.


I will write because I have to
I will write forever more.




                                                      and stop
                                                                  change page




I wondered who my audience is
I wanted everyone to read it
but no one to see it!
But I wonder no more.


Writing is like dancing
like walking
like talking
I will do it because I have to
I will write forever more.


Writing is like a flower growing on a rock.
If you want to, you will look, and you will see it.
But even if you don't.

Fear is a Destroyer

28.03.2011


Why are men so afraid?
Fear, I hate you.
You alienator of men
You killer of love
I hate you.




I write because I have to
Because I have to
I have to

For Luigi

A good relationship, love and communication,

Are a light

And in that light you saw yourself

And you didn’t like what you saw.

Instead of wanting to fix it,

You withdrew back into a shadowy corner

To lick your wounds.

To lick them with reasons and excuses.

That is why we broke up.

wounded men

11.02.2011

Wounded men are everywhere

Their hearts are made of mud.

They don’t take their wounds with courage

They don’t heal.

They strike back, at you, if you stand close enough.

Wounded men, you cannot heal if you do not want to.

You won't find relief, 
or joy

if it be not the utmost thing you want.

You cannot really have a woman if you cannot love her.

You cannot have me if you do not love me.

And the sad thing is then

That nor can I have you.

Wounded soldiers, you have given up.

You have changed sides.

The enemy left you alive, but only because wounded you would fight against the home front.

Men with your hearts made of mud, you have abandoned us at war.

You have let us down.

It’s a shame

It’s a shame

It’s a shame

There was love in your heart and light in your mind

But you hold the key to both

And your guard dog is angry.

What ought I to do?

Ought I to stay here and fight

Perhaps to bury the dead amongst you?

Or do I cover my face once more, and walk on amongst this land infested

And live to tell your story to a better day?

It is time for a dedication to an old friend. This is 'I am hurting inside' by Bob Marley

When I was just a little child (little child)
Happiness was there awhile (there awhile)
And from me it... it slipped one day 
Happiness come back I say

Cause if you don't come
I've got to go looking
For happiness

Well if you don't come
I've got to go looking
God, for happiness, happiness

Say that
Say I'm hurting
And it's no sense
I'm hurting, I'm hurting
Deep inside
Oh good god now

Oh hear my cry, hear my cry
Yeah my my my my my my my cry

Been together like school children (school children)
Then you hurt me just in vain (just in vain)
Oh, Lord, I'm your weary child
Oh, happiness come back awhile

Cause if you don't come
I'm gonna go looking
For happiness (the road is dangerous)
I've got to go looking
For happiness, happiness

Said I'm
Don't you know I'm
I'm hurting, hurting inside
Oh I'm hurting 
Who cares
Who cares

Does the one who love, oh
Feel the pain
Feel the pain

Does the one who love
Feel the pain
Feel the pain

(Been together like school children)

I wasted my time

I wasted my time

I didn’t waste my time because I met you

I didn’t waste my time because I came close enough to see you

I didn’t waste my time because I hadn’t found a thing to see

I didn’t waste my time because it was you

I wasted my time because there was a river

A divide between us

And we never crossed it

And in it fell everything

And it swept it away. 

today

We could have spent our time getting to know each-other

And getting to know the world

And making our own place in the world

Digging our own hole in the ocean

If we were in the same boat

If we had taken the basic simple things for granted

If we had a ground to walk on

If we had love

Can you tell me that we didn’t waste our time if we didn’t do that?

An old, pointless piece of writing

or,
Another Complaint that Tells Something about Me, but Nothing about the World


or,
an ode to my heart




23.09.08


Are you living with the man you love?
Because I am not.
When cold winds came we sought shelter separately, and left each other to manage alone.
and then
Time,
and The World came in and sat between us.


I lost him amongst the corpses and the ruins that populate this earth
and which keep us living apart for decades on end,
by breathing their lies into our ears and guiding us falsely
to that NOWHERE;
where one despairs and spits blood.


But for all my faults and willingness to entertain substance-less figures,
my heart never betrayed me or my love.
I imposed on it,
asking it to accept other men and situations which I fancied.
I insulted it,
for its stubbornness.
And I tired it,
with endless attempts to stuff it.


But my heart nevertheless stayed true to its core.
In its silent resistance
and forceful dismissal of what was not true,
it pulled me out of pits.


For this I am grateful
and because of this I am happy.

go

I've been trying to juice this coconut of a life, 
by being nice.


I will be a rock and I will crack you open.
You want me to be hard
I will be hard
but I will crack you.
I will make of you orange juice;
lemon juice;
fruit punch;
and leave you out for whomever wants,
to drink you with a straw.


The night is over
the battle starts again
I am well prepared.

a political piece

Two lovers, one black and one white.
We lay in each other's arms, in a bed
by a window, in a room full of books,
lovingly,
in a room on a high floor of a tall building


We lay there whilst the city's law enforcement didn't know that we were there
together. 
But we knew that they would soon find out,
and come in,
and take us apart.


The scenario I wanted was that we would make love tenderly despite it all
and that when they would come
we would be in defiance.
When they would come to separate us
for being black
and for being white,
we would have been loving one another.


But he turned from me in indifference.
He lay on his back.
He knew, we both knew, that they would come sooner
or later
So he turned from me in indifference,
and waited at a distance
untenderly, 
not making love.


So I wrote about that
about the distance between us as we lay in the same bed
about the sorrow i felt
about the harshness
of him turning on his back
laying in indifference.
About the paperclip that pierced my heart. 

And so my poem,
Everyone thought that it was just another love poem!
Alas! Not one person saw that I had tried
to write
a political
piece!



25.02.2011

the season to be joyful is now

I smell the spring, and the summer
coming this way.
I see its light!
and I hear its life budding.


God asks us to sacrifice so little!
And he gives us so very much.


Oh man of the city
in the valley
under the shadow of death,
do you think you are prudent?


Because if you are not lifting your eyes 
to the heaven above;
and if you are not cleaning your space
and making room for joy,
then
you are not.

24.02.2011ti

Cailagh and Launfal

One morning Bella Hooks came to visit. She told Kenza stories about her town. About once upon a time in a time not so far from now in the land of Teigue. There lived a boy and girl. Launfal and Cailagh. 

Launfal looked around him, looking for his father of for other men to hug him and show him how to walk upright and how to wear his beard. 
He looked for men to see him and his baby beard. 
But he only saw images of men. Wooden sculptures with mites eating the bases. He climbed on a bus shelter and screamed with joy as loud as one can. 
He called out to the others. But only his dad came out and slapped him silly for yelling in the middle of the day. And then his dad he went back to sleep. 
Launfal didn’t cry like a cry baby. He ate some roots and stepped on some insects.

The next day Celves came and took Launfal to a dark patch of forest from which I don’t know if anyone has come back. When sunlight enters the place light bugs flash feverously around him and distract him. Anyway, he is drunk and his memory is not that good. He forgets where he is not and what sunlight is.
On that first day the Celves rushed food and drink around him and tied his feet and his hair to a tree. They say that eating Celvish food makes mortals partake of the fairy nature and thus traps them forever in the fairyland.

But worst of all, Launfal does not know where he would go if he left from them. He thinks that he needs to eat all he can and become really fat before he goes back to Cailagh so that she will accept him back. But the fairies now place the food each day a bit further away from Launfal and he has to bend over to reach it.

Cailagh doesn’t know where the boy is. In the mist of morning she lies alone. 
The smell of morning and the promise of cold stir her heart. They awaken her mind. The coocoo bird says ‘Cailagh, he cannot come back if he cannot love.’
But Cailagh does not speak coocoo.

Bella and Kenza sip tea. Bella plays with her socks. They are thick and long and cotton. White with patterns embroidered all the way up. The kitchen is a brick red. The table is thick wood and the bright night outside is beautiful and full. 
They let the sorrow slip through their fingers and they clasp the warmth of the mugs. The scent of the tea is charming. 
The colors and the smells of their life comfort them and they keep their heads above water. Stress it eats through your skin and it does not help you to find any missing person. So they wish Cailagh the happiness she will need to work the land in the day and to talk to Launfal’s fattened figure if she finds him.

(but the question is: what is humility)

In Cyprus we thought that beauty was humility

quiet endurance

inward freedom

unbreakable calm

and modesty

and we though that God was on our side

But look at the blacks in America!

They struggled to speak

They sing with a loud voice coming from an open soul, and they say it so you have to listen.

They were strong, and proud

And ever so beautiful

And surely, if there is a God he is with them also.

stones on the beach

22.01.11

I won’t be waiting.

The same moon that shone in ancient times

when Socrates was young;

that shone on us when we walked across the park

that saw what we felt;

That same moon that shone, resting its gown on the sea water when I sat on the beach looking at the open world

in front of me;

the same moon will shine.

but our unity has ended.

and a new love begins.

Time is a brick wall

You can’t push or pull

You can’t make what we had any bigger than it was

nor any smaller.

I wont be waiting

But I am glad for what we had.

And it won’t go away.

It won’t evolve or dissolve.

But the rest of me will.

The past is carved in stone

but in life we are alive

Reality now is more than some shapes in stone.

Stones on the beach, the sun strikes you

the sea’s water washes over you

But the people come and go   

a short story passed down through the ages

With sexual relationships I feel like I am alone on a sea of broken bones. Or that I walk against a cruel wind seeking shelter and crying.

In life I feel both joy and grief. The grief I carry with me in my backpack. Sometimes it even eats through my bread and I find it hallow when I want it. But my joy is not exactly mine; it is all around me. I find it in the places where I am. It’s really only about being able to commune with the ecstasy of life and share in it. So let us say then, that my sorrow requires patience of me, as every great weight does; and my enthusiasm requires ability, attentiveness and skill.

To be clear, a ‘sexual relationship’ I mean a bond with another where your sex and their play a vital role. We have these all the time don’t we? And if I may tell you so, I sometimes find it hard to process all of it. Bits hang loose and create a mess.

This story is about one such relationship whose smell lingered on with me long after it had ended. It stayed in my hair and clothes from where a soft breeze could bring it. Rather, this story is about how I travelled so far and long to speak to that man again; about how I never found him; and about how one might accept that I shall never be without him.

I still feel a pang in my heart about it but in general I am more peaceful. I have opened my hands and let the sorrow go, drift off with the wind. I have opened a hole in the ground and spoke into it my pain. And now as a result a calmness touches me lightly and it protects me gently from the grip of what is left to happen still.

Dear Socrates (a poem),

There is pain in my heart and confusion in my mind. 

And I am trying to find clarity, I seek it. 

I want it deeply. 

But all that I find is when I close my eyes, and put on a 80’s love song really loud, and dance to it like a retard, I find that my heart reaches out and joins other hearts, and at those moments I feel something good happen, something real. 

I try to be ethical because I confuse it with being good. I am ethical, because it’s an easy thing to be. And I sit on my ethics and I look down and around at the people and I feel like I don’t want to step down because what’s around me is stinky sticky and gross, unreliable and sad.

I want to be good because I believe that it will give me an immunity, it will protect me, and I will be able to walk through a land of crap and rotting untouched, and unharmed.

I doubt that my senses can discriminate between what is real and what is not, and this leaves me sometimes without a guide in this labyrinth. Though I don’t doubt that there is a real and an unreal. 

I am happy. 

Music

23.12.2010

He left me for dead on the side of the road. that is why he doesn't speak to me any more. he is ashamed.

Perhaps he thought I would die and vanish. Zip. And so it wouldn't matter.

Or else, he thought, he would get away, leave for the new land he hears so much about.

When he found he couldn't leave though,

I think that is when he started locking his door.

Staying in doors. 

It's as if he is afraid of me casting my eyes on him. 

He lowers his face in shame when he sees me.

He hides himself behind shame, and

he escapes from it only through contempt.

My heart breaks.

It breaks all over again.

Because,

for what ever reason, he walks away still

and leaves me by the side of the road.

He leaves

he withdraws.

He does not let us be happy in one another's presence.

He shuns me, he shuts me out, he looks away from me with contempt.

The way a mother looks at an unwanted child.

An unloved child,

that no one will ever allow it to love them

and be glad in their presence.

That no one will ever show gladness that it be alive!

A child that just needs to get on with it.

'You don't matter' he says

'You don't matter anywhere near as much

as my insecurities matter to me.

So I'll be off now.

Be gone.'

And he walks away, with his heart cuddled in his arms,

comforting it.

He walks away, looking as if

as if I had rejected him.

Insulted his greatness.

It breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart.

Bre (as in bread) 

a! aeye

aches it.

Can you hear the sound of that? 

You can't hear the sound of it if you haven't heard it in your ribs!

You can't taste the honey

if if

you have not ever tasted it.

How can you recall the taste?

Oh my old friend Poetry. My old friend poetry. You have always been by my side. You have always let me be honest.

You have always saved my life.

Oh what is a cliche? It is nothing to you unless you taste it.

How can you taste the water if you 

have never tasted

it.

Oh

my old

friend Poetry.

It has been so long since you were last by my side.

I haven't seen you here helping me so since high-school.

Remember?

Remember those days when you were my only friend

and I sat in the school yard. Shouting!

Shouting with my heart,

sitting ever so calm and quiet. You were my only friend. My most trusted companion.

Do you remember Poetry when we sat?

I have been saved from so many deaths.

So many deaths by the side of the road.

That my life is no longer mine.

Take it. I will do what you want.

I am a servant now. 

When I was shouting, I was free.

But I was dying.

I died, and people walked away.

I died twice

thrice.

And now I am dead.

Only God picked me up.

Dead.

And now I am his servant.

Do you remember Poetry? 

When I was still alive?

When I shouted? 

the ontological question

I opened some of 
the fantasies I bred
to the day light
and the sun burnt them.


With a knife you shred them to bits
and the wind blew them away.


Some of the real hopes I bred were run over
by reality.
Run over. Squashed.
Kaputted.


That's all, that's all that happened.