Abstractions

you touch my face. it's strange how i don't flinch. instead, i let go, and feel every inch of my body sink into the mattress. for the first time in weeks, i am present. here. this moment wrapping itself around me in a familiar way. because i had seen you, many months ago, long before i knew you. i had seen you in my mind. not as an idea, not an image. you were much more; some kind of real/not real. so many times i saw you standing in front of me, the crease in your shirt, the ink on your forearms, your open palms. i move your hand away from my face, feel the ridges on your nails, touch each finger tip with mine. i trace the deep lines in your palm, and kiss it. i close my eyes, and i breathe. i am here. you are still here. lying next to me, smoothing my hair. i place my hand over yours, and I tell you to grab my hair.
pull hard, love. i want to know you are real.

I am never dating emo artists again.

Words to live by.

My name is Pomegranate Queen, and I’m a recovering emo-dater. I’m also a self-identifying emo. I can tell you from experience that two emo’s don’t make a right. What they do is create a whole lot of unnecessary drama. Agony is not a beautiful thing. Neither is bad poetry.

This year has been intense. Too many planetary retrogrades. Too much resurfacing trauma. Too much processing that went along with it. And a whole lot of guilt. Perspective ceases to exist when you’re drowning in a pool of self-deprecation. It leads to more guilt, which then translates into more angst. And more bad poetry. The quintessential cycle of emo-dom.

Please don’t take my sardonic tone as anything but my need to make light of a serious issue that has serious effects on people in my life, including myself. They call us emo; I say we have been blessed with the ability to hit the most intense of emotions. We experience life in the most extreme way, for better or worse. Many of us live through art; writing, painting, dancing those very emotions that take us to the most beautiful and euphoric of places, and also to shit holes. Because with such gifts come emotional cyclones. But after every storm the sky clears, eventually.

So what have my 31 years of emo-ness taught me? To never fall in love with another emo. Easier said than done. But what my fellow emos need to realize is that when the ground beneath you starts to shake, when you begin tripping all over yourself, you need someone who can ground you. Someone who, despite not knowing what you’re going through, has the intuition and understanding to let you trip, but is there to catch you before you smash your face into the pavement.

But alas. We can’t help who we fall in love with. That’s just part of being emo, I suppose. Depressing thought? I’m off to write a poem about it.

Transience
(vignette 1)

He is lying on his bed with the cell phone next to him. It rings a final time. He knows she will call again. And he will continue avoiding her. He sits up and looks at the pile of paper on his desk. His room is cluttered with books and clothes. And paper. Lots of paper. The deadline for the next issue is in a few days and he has not been able to focus. He told the editor he would get the piece in last minute. He walks over and sits at his desk. Stares at the computer screen, at her email from last night: I’m going to hurt myself. He gets up and walks over to his bed. Takes the phone and shuts it off. Then he realizes how hungry he is, and makes his way to the kitchen to get some food.

***

I have felt darkness. It burned my skin, melting flesh and muscle, charring my bones through. I dissolved into myself, like lava. I flowed thick. Over my bed, unto the floor, into every crevice of this old place. I flowed down the stairs and out the front door. Unto pavement and down the street. Across town. To find you.

***

In this love you are like a knife with which I explore myself.
Kafka (letter to Milena Jesenska, 14 September, 1920)

Walk Hard



because we must inject some humour into it, as my sis says.

Walk like a Poet

The last two weeks have been a blur. Since the elections back home, the protests, the killings. Been overwhelmed by emotions and lack of clarity. Head full. Body sore. Trying to keep it together. Life goes on here, responsibilities and commitments. To family, to friends, to the youth I work with, to the new person in my life. To myself. My birthday just passed a few days ago. But I wasn't feeling it. I drank hard, trying to escape something deep in my bones. That night I curled into myself, head buried into my hands, trying to get the breaths in and out. The tears came after, when he placed my hand on his chest and stroked my hair.

I haven't been able to think about anything but what is happening back home. My family, friends, people I don't know who are risking everything. I'm caught in some kind of cyber-purgatory, waiting to hear what's coming next. Twitter feeds, facebook, youtube, skype. Bad connection cutting conversations short. Just enough time to say I love you. I hope you are ok. I am thinking of you every single second of my day. Even when I'm not.

I got more ink on my body a few days ago. A birthday present to myself. The only two hours in 1o days where I breathed easy. His touch soothed. We talked about zombies, Motley Crue, bad sex, and the new Guillermo Tel Torro book. Wound heal wound, he said as he hugged me goodbye. I hope and pray there's resolution in your homeland so you can enjoy your life.

I hope and pray the same thing for those being beaten to death for walking the streets and speaking their hearts.

I'm in a perpetual state of mourning, while trying to find the beautiful things in between breaths. And here I am, blogging about things I haven't been able to articulate to those closest to me. I'm feeling messed up. That's what I say. It's the truth. But what about what's in my bones? What about sore limbs?

What about walking hard?

And yet I feel these words are another step closer...

so I write.

In the Bones

This year brought significant loss. I said goodbye to two important people in my life, one by choice, the other, not. Grieving loss takes time, I know this, intellectually. Emotionally though, I have blocked a lot. But that's a survival mechanism, I suppose. To process on a daily would take a toll. But not dealing at all also damages. I've been having body pains again, this time it's tensions and soreness all over my back and shoulders. I thought it was due to bad posture, heavy bags, injury from yoga. And it probably is a combination of all those things. But after a slight emotional breakdown tonight (triggered from Iranian elections, thoughts of home, looking at photos of grandma, working on a difficult poem) I realized the tightness is the grief I've been holding in. Heaviness pressing deep into my muscles, my bones.

My body always tells me so much. I just don't always listen to it.

I know it's time to actively process the grief. And there's much to write. Much to write.

Homegirl

lips crease love
spill secrets glitter
good things
the sun in your mouth sis

blood never thicker we
tread this water together
always.

The last few months have passed fast. Time has become something precious, like all the life transformations that have arisen in the mix. I'm where I want to be and still walking hard. My blistered feet find comfort in a new kind movement. Every step counts. So I'm treading this path carefully.

This year brought loss. It also brought many blessings. That's how life goes, I suppose.

I recognize beauty in a way I never had. I wrap the beautiful things tight inside the palms of my hands. Live love, love life, lift myself above all the bullshit. Patience is not something I've ever been good at. But I'm finding patience for the things that matter. I'm saying peace to anything else.

I had always chosen to walk alone, thinking I'm the only one who had my back. Now I recognize I never really did, in the way I should. But I see that now (on the good days). What I also see is those who've been walking with me this whole time. I've never been alone.

These blistered feet walk side by side those in my life who have my back in more ways than I ever recognized.

My loved ones. The beauty of your sore limbs and mine. Moving together.

I see you. I love you. I walk with you.

synchronous waves resonate music into my bones. my heart beating triple time.

The Confession

After that self-righteous rant about FB I posted a few weeks ago, I've gone and contradicted myself (as I often do oh-so-well). I lasted a whole month, people. Needed to sort out my relationship to the vortex. Ego and all, once again I'm right back in there. What can I say? I missed it!

Spoken Word

I am performing poetry tomorrow night at a Refugee Rights Day event. A blessing to share my words with others. This year I made a promise to myself to carry my lineage through sound, not just in writing. I want to flow the music of my ancestry, my history, and my present, in spoken word. There is a different kind of movement in sound. One that is necessary and integral not only to the creative process, but also to healing the spirit.

gift your poems with sound. That's what she told me. Word.

Tomorrow night is dedicated to you, ukhti.

Reflection Eternal

With the beginning of Spring things have been (re)surfacing in a major way. In my culture, the equinox not only marks the beginning of our calendar year, but it's also a time of renewal and rebirth. On the last Wednesday of the year, we jump over bonfires to rid ourselves of any sickness of the spirit and ask the fire to give us strength. Rejuvenation.

zardi-ye man as to, sorkhi-ye to as man

The last few weeks have been particularly trying. I have to come to certain realizations about myself. Heavy? Yes. But healing and personal growth don't come easy. And I am thankful for every moment, no matter how difficult. I am still processing it all, but there's a certain calm that has come over me, for the first time in my life. I am in tune with myself in a way I never thought possible. My intuition is turning inwards, something I have never experienced before with such intensity. Knowledge of self, which is ultimately a connection to something much, much bigger. An endless reflection of self, a reflection of that which is eternal: Love.

the Vortex of Ego (FB)

I've been away from blogging. In fact, been away from a lot of things. For different reasons. One of them being that I recently joined FB and got caught up in its vortex. It lasted for 2 whole months but I managed to get out. Can't tell you just how much I disliked it. No light in it. No love. Just pure ego. 2 months too long. So easy to get caught up (in the self). A performance of the ego. Useless status updates, time wastage commentary, and photos photos and more photos. I can understand the "networking" aspect of it. Or connecting with old friends (though not something I particularly cared for). Those in my close circle, the ones that really matter, I connect with outside of cyberspace. Anyone else, I'd rather get to know the "old school" way: emails, phonecalls, or face-to-face interactions (we don't do enough of that anymore).

I missed blogging. I missed reading my favorite blogs. I missed posting my words. I'm comfortable here. And that's where I'll be.

(keeping the ego in check. dissolving the self.)

It's good to be back.

The Woman with Pomegranates

Belinda Eaton. Check this artist's work out.

I am disgusted by the colonialist (re)articulations that shape this white (British) woman's art. But also drawn to her work. Her "magic realism" paintings are more an aesthetics of Othering to me. Her exoticized (and sexualized) paintings of brown bodies and "different" looking people (especially the tattooed women series) are part and parcel of an Orientalist discourse. Which enters a highly problematic terrain for me. Having said that though, I'm still drawn to her paintings. So how is it possible that I am vomitized by the politics of these images but still appreciate the poetics??

(Decolonization of the mind. An endless process.)

Piecing it Together

(7 times out of 10 we listen to our music at night)

in bed with the laptop with pen and pad surrounded by books more books
don't know where to start
poems to read poems to edit poems to write

too many late nights too many early mornings
not enough time to dwell in my head
in my body
in words

synchronicity is fading i fear
i am fading
so i must stay up

i put on my headphones
i lay back i listen
and the boom bap the bass line remind me
of the sun

Syncopated

been away from blogging. sorting through heaviness. shifting priorities.
been wanting movement. to pack my things and go. the rhythm become too familiar.
then i remembered what a friend said,
bring movement to where you at. No need to go elsewhere. word.
but what's movement without sore limbs?

words no longer bring comfort. i need touch. (the good kind)
he said, let's make this work. cuz we in sync, flaca.
but no poetry here. so I walked.
plenty of words. still no touch.
(the good kind, I mean)

been writing. to watch pen on paper.
holding on to it tight. this pen. this paper. these words.
for what, she asks.
a different flow, I say.
for love.

but who will kiss my hands
hold my tired feet?
who will walk with me
touch me good love
me off beat?

Grandma's Hands



Thank you N for reminding me of this.

Stopover in Rome

On my way to Toronto. Leaving behind pieces of me. Scattered across miles of broken earth. Healing began with grandmother's grave, then the desert. The new year began with home. It also began with death. Muharram, the Shia' month of mourning. For the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. In his memory. Self flagellation. Blood. And then came the atrocity in Gaza. More blood.

I arrived at the airport in Rome. Dislocated. My heart sore. My thoughts with family I left behind, and the people of Gaza. I went through an intense security check (shirt lifted up to my bra, his hands touching my bare skin). I got to my gate only to find out there was a 3 hour delay, and a connecting flight from Tel Aviv joining us. I sat and waited. Watching tanned bodies fill the area. Conversations about biblical history and homeland echoed around me. An old man showed another photos of his trip to the Dead Sea. Proud. The beauty of home. His home. Their home. I felt like throwing up. And I did. I got out of the bathroom stall, and an older Arab woman asked if I was alright. Alhamdulillah, too much traveling, I said. We walked back to our gate, in silence. All around us the weight of injustice, of dislocations, sore limbs, death.

I eventually made it back to Toronto, minus my (lost) luggage, with a heaviness on my back and in my heart. My thoughts broken. Scattered. Life continues, for some of us. Work. Eat. Sleep.

Still the heaviness remains.

Where does resistance begin? When does privilege end? Miles away from death zones some of us call home. Miles away from exploding limbs. Endless bleeding.

In this new year, where does our resistance begin?

Landscape Longing

When I go home, I will kiss the desert for you.

Rest in Peace, Butterfly

Your Spirit dispersed the clouds
of my darkness and profanity
Now, in the light, You sing in my heart
and dance like wine in my head.

(Rumi)

the tulip holding a machete was her. my grandmother.
her music in my words. always.

Slingshot Hip Hop

Finally saw this documentary after a few years of anticipating its completion. It screened at the Palestinian Film Festival in Toronto tonight. Sold out show. Incredible Incredible Incredible. If you get a chance, see this brilliant piece of work by this brilliant artist, Jackie Salloum.

Psychedelic Operatic Goth Metal Vibes

Tongue/Tied

I spent the morning at the juvenile courthouse. Speaking in support of a student with serious charges against him. I swore on the Qur'an and took the stand. And spoke more eloquently than I ever have.
(the privilege of language)
Later, his father asked me to explain the sentence.
Alhamdullilah, I said. Its going to be alright.
We walked together to meet the probation officer.

***

You seemed nervous today miss, were you?
Yeah. My first time doing this.
Yeah. Mines too.

(Enshallah this will be your last habibi)

***

He and I came to Canada at the same age. Both of us familiar with the sound of ADA’s. And the beautiful things too. Like cardamom in cracks of concrete. Our bodies/dislocated. Mis/placed. Fear of losing home. So we keep it in our cadence.


***

you don't really have an accent after 21 years of being here, said the guy at work.
don't really? what are you implying? that I have an accent?
no, i mean, well, you speak well for a...

***

His father sat next to me in the waiting area. Fidgeting with a piece of paper. The crease around his eyes tightening. He looked at me. Smiled awkwardly. Looked at the door, for his son.
It’s ok, I said. He’s with the lawyer, they’re coming soon.
I wanted to hold his hand. He reminded me of my dad. The look of concern familiar. Contained. He had the same kind eyes as my baba. Love.
He has problems for so many reasons, he said. Seven years I wasn’t there.
But you had to come to Canada to work. To bring your family here.
He needed me there with him. I wasn’t there to protect him.
You did what you could.

That’s what I said.
But I wanted to shake him. Scream.

(IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT! IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT! IT WASN'T YOUR FAULT!)

***

Regurgitated words trapped in my throat.
(the absence of language)

***

For Baba

i breathe this air thick
your cologne cigarette
smoke the past:
absent language scent

across miles of broken earth
daughter translates sore
limbs, travel new terrain
your splintered feet
your tongue tied exile

dettol rose water
home spills
you walk

tell me how my hands unclenched
with every pause
between explosions

Valid Concern

I'm scared to date writers.
Why writers?
You'll write about me in a poem or something. Especially if things get bad.
You're probably right.
I was hoping you wouldn't say that.
Then I'd be lying.
Would you at least try to make it discreet?
I don't know. Probably not.
Well I could sue you. For defamation of character.
Are we really having this conversation?
Umm, you're not going to write about it are you?
...

What is the Look of

Soda water with a slice of lime. Bass line hips. Dilated pretense. Glossy.

give me two minutes and I got you, love.

Articulating Absence

Her heart is going to explode, she says. That's how bad she misses her lover. I picture chunks of magenta strewn all over my kitchen walls. Dripping thick. Flesh scent love. Would you like more tea, I ask.

*****

What's longing if it doesn't grate your skin?

*****

my palms kiss pavement,
drag me bare across miles of
absence. skin rips raw

On Love, Lust and Longing

Dating is a waste of time. But how else do I get what I need?

*****

What are you views on Palestine/Israel? Do you know who Chick Corea is? What countries border Iran? Do you know any Shi'a Muslims? What do you think of the clarinet? Who's Molaana Jalaledin Mohammad Balkhi? Can you pronounce my name correctly? What do you think about women with hardcore ink? Have you ever been to a rally? Who's your favorite member of DITC? What do you know about invisible disabilities? What are your 3 favorite Bowie albums? Have you ever dated queer women? Or men? What do you think of "true love?" What's the last book you read? Major chords or minor? Curly or straight? Name 3 ingredients in a Tabouleh salad? Are you into vinyl (I mean all kinds)? What are your views on abortion? How often do you clean your bathroom? Dettol or baking soda? What was the last gift you made someone? What rhymes with spit?

*****

grandma says i'm too picky. she's worried i'll never find anyone. time is running out, my eggs are rotting. the womb is wasting away. too much education does this to a girl. so does living in the west.

*****

touch. never enough.

*****

"I can't believe i'm sitting here with you right now," he says as he takes another swig from his third bottle of beer.
"Really? Why?"
"A hot eye-ranian girl sitting here, talking to me."
"And why wouldn't I be talking to you, eye-talian guy?" I say, ready to get up from my seat.
"Because everyone knows you ladies only hang out with your own guys. I can't wait to tell my friends! You're like a trophy."
"..."

*****

Can I talk to you, desert woman?
You are so sexy with your hooked arab nose.
How do the morenas feel about you and your lighter skin?
Don't think I haven't been noticing your ass.
Your hair is so black.

my racialized body sexualized. consumed.

what am i, you ask?
i am a red tulip holding this machete, asshole.
what are you?

*****

Longing. Desire. Imperfect Love.
I want to love you in the moment. In between details. Syncopated. Raw.
If I ask you, will you come?

*****

barefoot on the balcony
body curves into night air
waiting
across miles of skin
promise of you seeps
into my spine like molasses

(an ode to) Imperfect Love

The Stoning of Soraya M.

There is a movie being released about the stoning of women in Iran. Based on a real story, the synopsis of the film is as such: a French journalist goes to a remote village in Iran, and is approached by a woman who tells him about the killing of her niece. Through the story (and I quote from the film's website) we're expose[d] to the dark power of mob rule, uncivil law, and the utter lack of human rights for women. The last and only hope for some measure of justice lies in the hands of the journalist who must escape with the story--and his life--so the world will know."

Sound familiar? Remember, Not Without my Daughter? Yes, this is another one.

This movie is embedded within a wider racist, colonialist discourse that's rooted in a long history of power and domination between the "west" and the Middle East (see Said's Orientalism). Today, this discourse is part and parcel of U.S. (and European) imperialist, war-mongering efforts to occupy countries like Iran. All under the pretense of "liberation" and "democracy." They want to save us from our barbaric selves! The only hope and measure of justice lies in the hands of our oppressors! Yes, by the very people (and their systems and structures of domination) that actively work against any possibility for our people to liberate themselves.

Regimes such as the one in Iran do not exist in a vacuum. There are power plays to consider, by imperialist nations such as the U.S., which benefit from the existence of such regimes. Just look at the history of U.S. relations with Afghanistan (Taliban) and Iraq (Saddam). And who was responsible for the '53 coup in Iran? Who prevented Iran from potentially having a democratic government? Right.

The issue of stoning is real. Under the Islamic theocratic regime of Iran, women have little to no rights. This upsets me more than I can express. But there is resistance in Iran. And there is support for that resistance here, from allies and those of us in the diaspora. So my issue isn't with the subject of the movie. What I am severely concerned about is that which is missing in stories like this one. Stories which are told from a colonial discourse of domination. With missing layers, like wider global relations of power, and the resistance that's actually happening. The layers are missing. The discourse is oppressive and dangerous. This is what I'm concerned about.

I don't have time to get into heavy analysis here. I just want people to be aware when watching movies like this. There is an impending war on Iran. And that's what we need to remember.

Iran: A People Interrupted

This book by Hamid Dabashi is a must read. Through a historical analysis of Iran from the 19th century to present day, Dabashi highlights his premise of an anticolonial modernity. This book was a breath of fresh air in so many regards. First, Dabashi's political historiography is multifaceted and takes into account movements within Iranian literature, cinema, art and so on. He brings Iranians to the core of their history as agents of change (resistance) both in terms of domestic tyranny (absolute monarchy or theocracy) and foreign intervention (colonialism and imperialism). Dabashi refuses to essentialize at any given point in his analysis (even rejects Spivak's notion of strategic essentialism), choosing to present an alternative, more complex (and ultimately politicized) historiography of Iran. One that rejects both the imperialist colonial discourse of "western emancipation" and Islamic theocracy, while seeing the interconnection between the two vis-a-vis European colonial modernity.

"Iranians (like the rest of the world) received the universal promises of Enlightenment modernity through the gun barrel of European colonialism...We became modernized and colonized at one and the same time. We cannot be modern without speaking through a colonized mind, and we have not learned how to decolonize our minds without abandoning what Jurgen Habermass still insists on calling "the unfinished" project of modernity...Without a systemic critique of modernity...we cannot achieve that radical decolonization of the mind." (Dabashi 46-47)

"We have become a nation not by virtue of European colonizing or Orientalists writing about us, but by virtue of resisting colonialism, talking back to senile Orientalists, reminding them of where we come from, striking back at the imperial hubris that has denied us agency. We are a nation by virtue of our collective will to resist power, and we are a modern nation by virtue of an anticolonial modernity that locates us in the defiant disposition of our current history." (Dabashi 25)

There is much more going on in this book than I have summarized here. If you have a chance, read it. This is a critical book not just with regards to the current situation in Iran, but also in terms of anti-colonial/imperialist historiographies, discourses and movements in other parts of the world.

Bike Boy

I went to pick up my bike today after work. It had been sitting in the bike shop for over two months. I had taken it for a tune up just before my trip, not knowing I would be overextending my travels. The guys from the shop called me a couple of times while I was away, wondering where the hell I was. I felt bad since their little bike shop didn't have a lot of space. But knowing they'd be making money off storage fees lessened my guilt. I approached the shop and suddenly got self conscious. I remembered the cute guy who worked there. Nerdy Bike Boy with green eyes and beautiful tattoos all over his arms. I smoothed my fringe bangs and put my straightened hair into a pony tail. I walked a few steps, stopped, and took my hair out. I looked at my reflection in a parked car window. I wasn't yet used to my new haircut. I slowly made my way to the front of the store, discreetly, but Bike Boy came right out and greeted me. By my first name (which to my surprise he pronounced perfectly). We chatted while he got the bike. He kept asking me questions about my trip, extending the conversation. I held it together. Didn't stutter or trip over myself. Except for one dorky comment about his tattoos being "beautiful." (God. Who says that??)

The shop owner ended up giving me a deal. All the while watching my interaction with Bike Boy. The flirting was over the top. Or was it? I don't know. I just remember playing with my hair so much it started to frizz. We all talked for a while longer, I told them about my writing. They talked about bikes. Eventually I made my way out the shop, walking my bike slowly, steady. And a few steps onto the street, Bike Boy ran out and told me I should come back in a week so he could oil the chain again. I smiled and said thanks. And I continued walking. Slow. Steady. Trying not to trip. But knowing damn well how bad I was tripping. I don't know what I am so afraid of. When I became so hesitant. When I became an impediment to myself. All I know is at that moment, in that instant of instability, shaky legs and all, I felt alive. I felt good.