Month: June 2025

deletun zabaanetun-e, zabaanetun shehr-e

your heart is your language, your language is a poem

My soul. I say. How is your health?
It is not raining rain, you reply.

My heart is restless, you say.
Mine too, I admit. I have been blue all day.

Did your heart not want peace? you ask.
The heart did, I say, the mouth wanted something else.

We don’t send our best to lead us, I say.
From heart to heart, there is a path, you agree.

I am without words. I conclude:
I hope that this will end without more suffering.

May my place be green, you say.
May my place be green, I respond.

You might think to make yourself small.
They’ll make you feel ashamed
for sharing colorful ideas.

But when the rains begin to fall,
they’ll come asking for you.

You might feel the need to stay silent.
Trust is a luxury and yours
has been spent
on lottery tickets for someone else.

But when the rains fall
and the floodwaters begin to roll in,
they’ll come asking for you.

You might have to hide.
Draw little eyes on ping pong balls
so they think you never sleep
and draw a little mouth
that makes the same sounds they do.

But when the rains fall
and the floodwaters roll in
and the sea begins to lick at their feet,
they’ll come asking for you.

You might feel you need to run.
That things aren’t tolerable
any longer and it’s better to take
a chance on parts unknown
than to risk another minute
on this freight train ouroborus.

And when the rains fall
and the floodwaters roll in
and the sea swallows them
and they begin to feel the weight
of their chains in the icy depths,
they’ll wonder
how you could have forsaken them.

When they try to rule you,
ignore them.

When they threaten you,
laugh at them.

When they shoot at you,
belittle them.

where they kill you,
build a shrine.

When they bulldoze that shrine,
plant grass

and declare
that all grass
everywhere
is now a monument.

Every time anyone anywhere
stamps its blades with their feet
they march with you,
with us.

Breathless

It’s easy enough to take the firmament
for granted. If you thought
you could lose it
you might go crazy.

Leaving home is like that.
You feel freer than a cloud,
surprised at every turn,
and often bitter solitude

in spite of the new colors around you.
Familiarity is constraining,
but is also a scaffold.
Quite contrary, but then again

what might a fish say if 
cast into the air?

He might say, I can’t breathe!

He might say, I can fly!