Je Suis Human

He said,
"No man is an island, entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent, 

A part of the main. 

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less "

He said,
"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, 

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee."

His name was John Donne, he wrote Meditations

Dear Sir,
Darling,
Allow me a moment to say that if you could ever come back to life
And venture to take a stroll among the living
If you stumbled into a typical household of this century
Or attended a gathering of any coterie
You'd surely take back your noble statement
When you see how every single one of us is living on their own island
And I'm pretty sure you'd realize the extent of your naivety
For elevating the human nature to your high standards of goodness and decency

I say, perhaps folks hastened to give, and hurried to feel

In the old times, when a believer was willing to share his bread with his 7th neighbor 

But today, my good sir
We keep human bonding to the bare minimum advised by social norms 

Only mourn for a stranger when our civil depection is at stake

And this is quite evident in its simplest forms
At بيت العزا (a funeral)
My good sir, ever been in this situation where a distant relation passes away
And your household receives flocks of mourners offering their condolences?

You are just standing in a corner
Unable to shed the tears expected of you
Because you can't fathom the extent of your loss
And it's just so overwhelming how all these strangers sound more bereft than you do
How you'd hear the whines and see the tears but when you look closer
Their gazes would hit you as dull and austere
And you try to appreciate their nice gestures but deep down you'd feel pestered
Because you can't divine whether these good folks are here because they are genuinely sorry for you
Or whether they are just too good at pretending to be clement
And if it isn't so, why would they ever feel the need to display a sentiment
That isn't real
Nay, at such moments of great peril,

Why would you take the time to evaluate someone else's sincerity of emotions

When you can't even fake a squeal ?

It so appears, we are an apathetic generation
We would rather send a text than call a friend on their birthday
Yet we venture to transcend situational boundaries
By displaying our protest to an unjust fatality half way around the globe
When sometimes
We don't even care to know the names of the casualties
And we can sleep content at night
Because we think we've paid our dues to humanity
When we've made a sympathetic Hashtag trend
That we've fulfilled our share of charity
When we've unified our display pictures in support of some cause
Or when we liked a philanthropic page on facebook
We all agree that technology has made displays of solicitude so commonplace

Except that the dead don't mind how many retweets their bloody photos get

We can only pretend to care when it's not our skin that is cut

We only dare to communicate our deepest emotions ,share our brimful compassion
With a bunch of strangers that can't judge us aught
Don't we all pretend to sympathize with fellow humans we haven't met
When we aren't even able to connect with folks dining with us at the same table?
So with all due respect ,Sir Donne
You are a big fool
And it pains me to differ
But every man IS a continent of its own
We don't actually feel deprived when some sorry soul in Europe is diminished
In reality, a little goblin is growing pests at the back of everyone's mind

"You don't know them, therefore they don't matter"

And the funny part is ,we don't even realize the absurdity of it all
When we grab a newspaper ,only to find that Kim Kardashian's behind took over the front page
While the massacre of a few innocent souls was pushed way to the back
Though you may argue that the logic here is to keep people entertained first
And informed next
Because looking at a body ain't appealing
When it's not naked
But look, I'm not here to criticize, ladies a gents
We are all humans in the end, with built-in flaws and dents
Convicted of the same crime
Of basically living our lives in selective oblivion
I'm just here to ask you whether it is really so gruesome
To live happily, ignorantly, basely, contently,
When we know that someone else is suffering in another part of this vast world ?
And that perhaps this happiness is built on someone else's misfortunes
Someone else's tears, and sweat
Someone else's time and blood
Someone else squalor and twit ?
While we keep living, and breathing,
Preaching our fake humanitarian slogans
As we cower behind the excuse that it isn't our fault
The way this world is wretched and unfair

And it's true; ain't nobody's fault that the other side of the moon is so drear

So dear sisters and brothers of the human race, this is a cordial invitation :

Not To Behead the last buds of our virtue
But to embrace our Gnostical Turpitude;

To shamelessly cover our eyes, and plug our ears

So we won't hear of the morbidity of our reality
I invite you all

To be ignorant human beings, without a spec of indignity 

The Expats

We, in the land of expatriation

Just like dandelion seeds

Have bid our motherland farewell, when her veins could no longer bleed

Scattered by the gale, trampled and crushed by the trials of time

But as they say back home, "Akl Al A'aish Jabbar" 

We don't join the chants on independence days, "what has mother done for us ?"

We whisper in shame ,having fled the ship before it sunk

We, in the land of expatriation, spend our youth looking for a place to belong

Those who have wandered for long, realize, quite languid and old

That a homeland, unlike a plot of earth, cannot be bought with silver and gold

That acting like Romans while in Rome did not eventually make them Romans

And for years, while drenched in drudgery, longing seeps from their skin

Mixes with their sweat, drips across their temples  

That old man with sunken eyes, silken gowns and apparent wealth?

Must have spent his youth collecting dimes in a trunk of patience

Dug in another man's junk and took what's usable

Kissed shoes and committed many a crime he found excusable  

Only carried through with the thought of his mother in his heart

Her scent as she embraced him at the door

"Ya Waladi Lalob Baladna Wala Tamr Alnas" 

You were right, mother, we were poor when we left,

But we're back, much poorer

Mother, we have docked our Dhows at your shore to spend our old age

Threw our heavy sacks of fortune on your dry soil

But mother, we are still expats at home

Our stranger children, our abandoned brothers, their faces recounting stories of toil

Meet us at the door with packed cases, and the ones that remained behind, stand in line

To collect the dues that they think we owe them

Back home, we are the bad seed with an alien culture, the enlightened breed

That tramples on the norms, and makes amends that no one asked for

Lo, for a reason obscure we so believe that our heaven on earth lies beyond the borders

Far away, where we can't remember the smell of the sprinkled clay of the Hoash

The petrichor after a drizzle, washing the sky, and the ashen faces of the homeless

Filling the cracks on their palms,

Stretched to the windows of foreign cars at the signal stop, begging for alms

Far away where we can't hear the grunts of helpless fathers, the coos of careworn wives

The squeals of abandoned foundlings, the sighs of Settat Al Shai

Somewhere beneath a void trunk of Tabaldi, in a barren outskirt of Tangasi

One of us dug their tomb, and tucked their heart in, while Mother wept bitterly 

A resentful existence that devoured her children, trying to get them back inside her womb.

Prelude, Op. 28, No.4, in E Minor

A Eulogy 

I'm not accustomed to crying ,which is why, it seems,
My body isn't accustomed to the aftermath of a crying fit
It has gotten so bad recently that my vision blurs for a while
And the headache lasts for a few days..
I dare say this year i cried more than I did in my entire life;
Excluding my few years of infancy

Yesterday, though, i could't breath.

I couldn't see, i couldn't speak, was shivering alone, weak
Gasping for breath in a side parking, holding my phone

News of sudden death hit you hard.

And your instances of contact with the deceased
That have been slowly reducing start to loop in your head
And then come the cycling pangs of guilt and denial
Then a few seconds of regained composure followed by another crumble
Of dementia

I know now ,more than ever
That life is truly too short
To not lay your heart on the table.
And we, humans, are way too weak.
Too weak
Under the hammer of quietus
I wish i stayed in touch, i wish i made the effort;
I wish we talked more, i wish i didn't think of trivialities like prestige and formalities,
I wish i took you up on that offer, instead of playing hard to get
I wish i've been there for you, i wish i dropped by at the hospital
When i was there by chance
I wish i knew..
I wish i got to tell you ,before i brushed it off by saying
"i'm usually weird like that at first encounters";
How I was so jealous of your agleam person,
And your casual jest, and the easiness by which
You could slide into someone's comfort zone

I wish I got to tell you what color your vibe was

I wish i saw through, when you spoke of the simple joys of life
Instead of shrugging your shoulders like the rest of us do
Spreading good vibes and light humor
When i did exactly the opposite because I thought that
My life was the epitome of misery
I wish
I was half as strong and proud as you
Were
Still are
In our memories
In my memory
You said my poetry was beautiful
But it was you; it was you who had a beautiful soul
That could spot grace in pain and revel in it

I wish you could read this

It would have had the least bits of meaning
Had I actually gave you a good piece of my mind instead of
Convincing myself that everything turns out better taking its right pace
That we could take our time to find each other
When the tides have calmed and the clouds in my head have cleared
But you had none
You were leaving
There is no more of you now

And these lines echo constantly in one breath ; too late

Too late.

Too late.
Too late.

I wish you could read this
Or at least that I had the audacity to recite it out loud
In your memory
But i don't think my broken voice and shredded gist would be audible
And it's not my place; there are people that knew you better
And longer
Though it still hurts, I will pray for you instead
Because tears could never condole the dead
November second, 2015, is a celebration of your life, my friend
Not a commemoration of your departure
And may Allah grant you mercy and peace
And the grace of cleansing your soul of mundane sins
The constancy at The Question
And to ever lighten your grave
The way your heart was

I will remember you, mate

The Fall II

It took me seven years to break apart

I've got to give it to myself, it's quite admirable that I held it together this long
Whipping the diffused bits of my willpower back to the confinement of my heart
When lovers and mentors have left me stranded
Mid air
It was solemn, in a dreadful way
A tight knot eventually snapping when pulled from both sides
A bleak kitsch of confused essence, finally taking a conceivable shape
Splashes of chaos on a grand canvas
Of despair

That I don't remember when i started painting

Have you ever done this, to concurrently cry in a trembling spaz
And laugh at how easy it was to let go of your firm grip
On sanity ?
When no one else is bearing witness to your pathetic display of weakness
In a demented frenzy of madness that you knew in your bones was inevitable
See ,pride in your strength is commended
But the faintest treads can shatter a glacier
When it's conquered with a thousand veins of frailty
It would've been truly terrible, had I not been a muser
One that never ceases to admire the pictorial facet of desolation
And observes with a smile as it all comes down in slow motion
As the deep crack in my being expands and reaches to the core
And all my pillars of reason crumble to the floor
Unleashing the scattered beams of light curtained before by my bulk
Standing erect against the blows of time
Rigid as a mountain from the outside

Fragile as a newborn from the inside

Never thought I'd ever stop in awe before the grandeur of
My fall

Death In The Afternoon

My grandfather's 30 years old Oud falls from its display stand
And breaks in half
Suddenly, like death, interrupting heedless felicity

Father said with a sad air that it was its day and there was no helping it
Mother said it was pro'lly a deflected 3ain
And I just stood there looking at the broken instrument
Older than the walls it used to grace
A treasure once kept away from my curious hands
Its remains now carelessly collected in a box
The same way you'd throw the guts of a slain cattle

Lo, across the neat cut between the Neck and Ribs
Is a cluster of muddled strings, aghast and confused
Like an offspring of a divorced couple

That doesn't know with whom to belong
Makes you wish it was cremated to the bones and got blown with the spring breeze
To save the last bits of dignity it had
When it used to sing
It was one of these symbolic ends,
A full stop at the end of prose
The withering of a blooming flower in a dark nook
Death in the living room, ironically
Without a warning shot
In a quite afternoon

Did you know ?
Some losses scratch your heart gently, like the blink of a maiden
And others drill at your chest like a trapped rat tryinna escape a flooded tunnel
Some losses crack you a bit from the inside, you don't notice it then
Nor do you feel the ache
Not at the time
But one more blow, harder and more spiteful
Would shatter the fragile mirrors you keep in the boudoir of your heart

In my melancholic pondering i thought...
Perhaps if it was carved with the same piece of timber
It wouldn't have broken in half
Because joining two antithetical parts that don't belong and esteeming the union
Far above expectations
So they would look like a fine, perfect,untouchable piece of art
To the idle attendant looking from their stand on the dirt of mediocrity
Is the reason all things fall apart
And it struck me then
That I wasn't affected because the old damn Oud was suddenly no longer
It just got me thinking, though arguably it was unrelated

Are we, too, gonna fall and break into pieces out of the blue ?

Are we gonna fall from our polished throne of fictitious happiness
And shatter into convulsing fragments of hopelessness
Still clinging to the hem of denial's dress in a despairing fit
A splintered set of Chinese that can be easily glued back with 9oba3 Ameer
But it will never be the same

A limp instrument, presented with shame
Rendered inept of producing a sound without the dormant fear

Of ever crumbling again

Anarchy Of The Heart

I wasn't used to being addressed as a girl
Still am

Being told things like "you are pretty" and "graceful"
Or that i'm "wifey material" and all that flirtatious crap
That boys use to trap the girls of their dreams
I know the drill
I was the chill girl, back at school
Had a mountain bike and a pair of skaters
Read comic books and rocked in sneakers
Attended a class full of chaps
I grew up surrounded by boys

So I didn't think I needed to be with a boy,you know, that way

No homo
And I thought I was immune to this shit, man

A racing heart, a crimson-blushed face, an awkward wit
I thought I was too fulfilled to text first
Too wise to get swept off my feet by common courtesy
That Platonic idea of people being created in pairs
And had to set out looking for their missing parts?
That was way too ridiculous to me
You know, you can either force the pieces of a blank puzzle to fit
Or you can wait an eternity to figure which lays where
And some wolves are meant to stray alone
And thus I have led my life
Until I met you, you insufferable
And I came to realize that when the time is right
It appears that love is the awakening slap of a maiden's heart
I don't do this,fam, secretly writing our initials by the shore
Leaving them there, knowing that the waves will wash my embarrassment away
But still looking back to make sure that the ocean has collected my secret into safe keep

And I never had before, to stop and think if I should type "Hahaha" or "lol"
Or if i used way too many emojis in my text
I never do THIS,
Setting down to write a damn poem
About..
About feelings

About....love

How did it come to this ?

Wish this was actually a love poem
But it is not, alas !

I don't know how to write love poems even
And this is a grievance letter, mind you
Though I'm not in grief, I'm cool
Cool as in dead inside
But there is a pool of darkness within me that needs to overflow
Come, I met you, you cruel, and you crowned my unconscious search with a meaning
You treated me like a princess, without having to bow
You flirted with my nerves when you blinked ,without realizing
You brightened my life when you smiled, innocently
You changed me
You made me blossom
You made me love myself before I fell for you
You calmed my intrinsic commotion
You made me believe I could love, and be loved
With an equal relish of passion
But classically,
Would like to say sadly, but i
Regress
Oh, it was bound to end like this
And I don't wish to reminisce, but it had to be lain out here
So, classically
You took my heart and left
Leaving me bereft, and in pieces
Because
You were like me, a incurious wanderer
Accused of hearts theft
When you don't even care for collections
And I don't even need my heart back
You can keep it
It stopped beating when your eyes told me you loved me
And it withered and crumbled like rotten petals when I saw your eyes courting hers
That was me there
Did I look this vulnerable up against your evil spell? how gross
I can tell you are planning to toy with her heart then stomp on it just the same
Apparently to you it's just a game
Perhaps you could give her my heart ,as a final display of courteousness
And she could use it as a spare
When hers doesn't work anymore
For ,we don't need another walking corpse now ,do we ?
But nevertheless, thank you for the experience, Kindred spirit
I'm not bitter at you
I don't loath you
In this hollow where my heart was
There is only tenderness

The last remnants of the short eternity of bliss
We had

Atlas Shrugged

Heaviness

Is a concept your hands won't entirely understand

Until the weights you are carrying slip from your grip

And fall to crush your feet

A weight you don't need to suffer
But you do, because you love them

So you load yourself with their secrets and sins ,reeking of pain

Told in whispers reflecting off the smudged panes

In a parked car, past midnight

And as they invade your heart and make it their home

Out of concern, you willingly flip through the pages of their unspoken tomes

And accidentally read the cryptic avowals

Scribbled on the quires of their eyes

Because you got just the right face that vibes of benevolence

And trust

It becomes a tiresome must

After years of working full time

Fussed, with no pay

Even though it's vexing , you nevertheless stay to plaster their wounds

Patch their cracked selves, and dote their feelings around

There is no emotional gain even

They slash you because you are the closest to them

When they can no longer bear with the shame

Of being vulnerable, and  the guilt of being a burden

Well, Atlas has an itch

Somewhere in his chest

One he can't relieve, because his hands are busy carrying your grief

And he believes you couldn't scratch it for him

Since you didn't even notice the twitch

You don't have the time to search, and you are not an expert

In guessing, nor a huge fan of caressing someone else's hurt

So Atlas has come to this conclusion;

He thinks it's time to dump your wreckage on your head

He thinks it's time to redd his own life

He's been held back by kindness for too long

And with every stop, passers-by added more to his junk

As if his tolerance was a bottomless trunk

He's so done collecting your tears in a jar

So tired and sick of the constant din in his ears

Of being consumed

Expired

Wrinkled, like tiny flumes carved on a shore repeatedly visited by the same waves

Leaving nothing behind but vain spumes

Listen to me

I need you

I'm sad

I'm crushed

Here is some pain, would you carry it for me?

You never thought that, perhaps he needs you

Perhaps he wants you to listen to him

Perhaps he 's more sad and broken than you will ever be

Perhaps your constant need for a wall to lean on

Is the reason

Atlas has mastered the art of supporting the world

While faking glee