Feel Like Travelling On

Sit down and be patient:

sure, it’s a beautiful,

endless, lonely Sunday

afternoon: the old people

are in their graves:

the old places are deserted:

the times of all those

times, faces, flavors

a few minds left old:

sure ahead the chief

business is tearing the rest

of the way loose, but by

the empty take the full

sit down, find something

to read: a grand possibility

was made, who knows

what became of it

~Poet Unknown

Vultures by Dilip Mohapatra

I am the new age Indian woman

the daughter of a father who

calls me Angel

and the sister of my brothers

who think I am a fairy

who has descended from the heavens.

I have the wings

that could take me to the highest of the skies

beyond the clouds and beyond the stars

but the vultures hover above

their ravenous and watchful eyes focused on me

and their talons and beaks

in perpetual readiness to pounce on me.

I get diktats issued from time to time

from the guardians of the great Indian culture

from the moral police and the custodians of values,

that my skirts should touch my ankles

that my neckline should stay just around my larynx

and I can't shake a leg in the disco

nor can I say cheers in a pub.

But how can you stop the vultures

with a sight that pierces through

the layers of my prescribed opaque clothes

to see through and sense the fig leaf underneath

and always ready to plunge and peck at

the offensive and evil protrusions on me

that entice them to no end

and that fans the lecherous fire in them?

I may hide my body in an iron armour

and even may go for a mastectomy

but the vultures will still hover over me

for vultures will always be vultures

even though they may have their own

daughters sisters and mothers.

And again I must continue to remind myself

I am a woman and

it's all my fault.

Walking Around - Pablo Neruda

It so happens I am sick of being a man.

And it happens that I walk into tailor shops and movie houses

dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt


steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.

The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.

The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,

no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens I am sick of my feet and my nails

and my hair and my shadow.

It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous

to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,

or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.

It would be great

to go through the streets with a green knife

letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don’t want to go on being a root in the dark,

insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,

going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,

taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don’t want so much misery.

I don’t want to go on as a root and a tomb,

alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,

half frozen, dying of grief.

That’s why Monday, when it sees me coming

with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,

and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,

and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,

into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,

into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,

and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines

hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,

and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,

there are mirrors

that ought to have wept from shame and terror,

there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,

my rage, forgetting everything,

I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,

and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:

underwear, towels and shirts from which slow

dirty tears are falling.

A Lesson In Drawing by Nizar Qabban

‪#‎Rhymealong with Nizar Qabbani

My son places his paint box in front of me

and asks me to draw a bird for him.

Into the color gray I dip the brush

and draw a square with locks and bars.

Astonishment fills his eyes:

"... But this is a prison, Father,

Don't you know, how to draw a bird?"

And I tell him: "Son, forgive me.

I've forgotten the shapes of birds."

My son puts the drawing book in front of me

and asks me to draw a wheatstalk.

I hold the pen

and draw a gun.

My son mocks my ignorance,

demanding,

"Don't you know, Father, the difference between a

wheatstalk and a gun?"

I tell him, "Son,

once I used to know the shapes of wheatstalks

the shape of the loaf

the shape of the rose

But in this hardened time

the trees of the forest have joined

the militia men

and the rose wears dull fatigues

In this time of armed wheatstalks

armed birds

armed culture

and armed religion

you can't buy a loaf

without finding a gun inside

you can't pluck a rose in the field

without its raising its thorns in your face

you can't buy a book

that doesn't explode between your fingers."

My son sits at the edge of my bed

and asks me to recite a poem,

A tear falls from my eyes onto the pillow.

My son licks it up, astonished, saying:

"But this is a tear, father, not a poem!"

And I tell him:

"When you grow up, my son,

and read the diwan of Arabic poetry

you'll discover that the word and the tear are twins

and the Arabic poem

is no more than a tear wept by writing fingers."

My son lays down his pens, his crayon box in

front of me

and asks me to draw a homeland for him.

The brush trembles in my hands

and I sink, weeping.