In retrospect

With just one touch I had stolen your heart beat, it moves under the bones of your wrist. I feel the art of your hands, soft on my skin; the slim turquoise veins under your wrist tremble. A small pulse under my thumb, tingles, as I count the beats in my mind. Close your perfect limbs, stretch themselves over my skin. Look how your fine hair runs through my fingers, sieved, you have touched my soul. A soft ounce of your breath lies in my cupped palm and you are balancing the perfect weight of your head on my numb arm. This starless moon means I cannot sleep, even now.

In the morning, I am walking through soft electric rain. No longer feeling the art of your hands. Fine drops of time run through my fingers, lost. Like the small pulse under your wrist, there is a beat, which my soul cannot forget. Perhaps, in retrospect it was a reminder that I loved you. Tomorrow you will lie to me with the soft art of your lips, they have no pulse. Turning from me with head bowed, It feels that love is running through your fingers now, they gesture a wave. My mind feels numb watching your perfect limbs being splashed in the rain. You, as always are wearing your lovely garments just to pleasure the air, I can scent your passing from me even now.

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An overused word

If I could touch you in this moment

We might fall in love

The lightness of your body need no longer be alone

So I am listening to you now

Quietly in my heart

Your arms holding me in the night

Against the line of your body

Each soft breath kisses me through your sleep

Radiating love

I am careful so as not to miss them

It is our connection to each other

Until I can kiss you awake in the morning

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Waiting for the polar bears

I can remember the sparkle of your reflection even now; but the coldness of your words often makes me sad. Then I ask myself, why were you so cruel to me? However, it is too late in the year to care just now, as there seems to be a lack of colour in my life, it’s like that empty feeling when looking at a worn-out photograph. Yesterday, I was waiting for the rain to pass, but it didn’t, not for a long time. Sometimes when I am waiting, like today outside the railway station, standing there alone in the street expecting, hoping, for a better day, a better life. I like to imagine that I am waiting for you – why is it that I am always waiting for you? Inside the station, there is a room, made especially for waiting in; but I never go there just in case it appears that I am waiting.

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Looking For Your Face

From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it

Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for

Drowning, not waving

Neda Agha Soltan…

Speak to me from silent places and I will hear you, for I will blind you with tears.

Poem for the rooftops of Iran

Friday the 19th of June 2009
Tomorrow, Saturday
Tomorrow is a day of destiny
Tonight, the cries of Allah-o Akbar
are heard louder and louder than the nights before.

Where is this place?
Where is this place where every door is closed?
Where is this place where people are simply calling God?
Where is this place where the sound
of Allah-o Akbar gets louder and louder?

I wait every night to see if the sounds
will get louder and whether the number increases.
It shakes me.
I wonder if God is shaken.

Where is this place where
so many innocent people are entrapped?
Where is this place where no one comes to our aid?
Where is this place where only with our silence
we are sending our voices to the world?

Where is this place where the young shed blood
and then people go and pray?
Standing on that same blood and pray…
Where is this place where the citizens
are called vagrants?

Where is this place? You want me to tell you?
This place is Iran.
The homeland of you and me.
This place is Iran.

This is called kismet

As the naked truth of the day breaks through the night, summer begins to breathe its brightest moments. I am recalling words from another place, an Elm tree, which at one time was struck by lightning. It gripped the soil with such powerful roots you could dream they ran through the soul of the earth. Tall, grey and blackened by fierce battles; it was a castle made of wood. From there you could see the world and dream how it would end. The crippled arms splintered under the fierce sun, but they held me in its last moments to heaven; it is gone now, long past its time.

So in turn, I cling to your hand, your soul, like a half-remembered moment. I am hanging by my nails, almost like being on a cross, which is only a tree after all. The only difference being it is stripped bare with its heart torn out. The qualitative change of purpose is to inflict pain instead of love. Remember, Judas hung himself from a tree (name its colour; I saw it on your lips somewhere). This cross grips the soil with powerful roots that run through the soul of the earth, into hell. Sometimes I have no nails only blood; it tears my heart, my soul. Your tree crucifies me every night and when I remember the phantom of your kiss, it cuts me like a knife.

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Crisis

Your hands
Like ice, in water
Blue ice

Weather beaten
Rounded, somehow lighter
White satin, stained blue

This angelic
Crystal shard
Splitting my soul

Slipping away
Cast adrift, perhaps migrating
Just ice, on water

Hiding deep thoughts
In your distant polar sheet
Alone

I will carry you for now
Until your heart
Melts

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Better?

If I kiss you where it’s sore, will you feel better, will you feel anything at all?

Walks along the edge of darkness

Do you dream in colour? I once dreamed of a hare, I don’t know why, but it came to me in my darkest moment. From the shadows it looked grey, with petrified eyes that were black like the night, they glinted with silver; it did not pass over the moon. Have you heard this story about hares and their connection with the moon? In the past people used to believe they were magical creatures, who were possessed of a special knowledge, linked in some way, to the mysteries of life and death. Once long ago, in some distant life, I watched the harvest moon move past your home. There were no hares in the garden only bats and stars.

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