reasons why I am a shitty best friend:
I haven’t told my best friend
about all the boys I’ve slept with
or how much her boyfriend bothers me
and I think she deserves so much better than him
and she doesn’t know that my scars aren’t fading
but growing
she doesn’t know I went to the hospital because I stopped eating
and I keep my cigarette stash a secret from her
because her father is a smoker
and I know she disapproves
and sometimes I don’t reply to her text messages
because I know she’ll know something is wrong
but she’s still my best friend
and I know she’d still be my best friend if I told her all of this
but sometimes it’s easier to keep things a secret
god shoots heroin and
every time he pushes down on the syringe,
the sky lights
up.
it is just a shame i can’t feel the same euphoria.
i can only feel the rainclouds spilling their cold
guts.
i am writing songs about the rain like children so often do
but nobody will write songs about me.
aren’t i just as cold?
aren’t i just as desperate?
You will forget my favorite color.
You will forget the sound of my voice, or the touch of my skin.
You will forget my favorite books,
Or my favorite movies.
What I loved doing
The way I walked. The way I talked
The butterflies I had whenever I saw you
The way I did my hair
You will forget it all
You will forget the time at the lake
The time we cuddled for hours
You will forget many things
You will forget how one of my tooth is longer than the other
Or how I can’t pronounce some words
You will forget the little things
The way I wore my clothes
The way I was so shy
The way I held you
It’s all memories that will fade
I will fade away
I promise
“Sometimes, there are moments, pockets of time where time stalls and the space between us is drawn into insignificance, as if fate’s very own hands had created a black hole and swallowed the distance between us. In these moments, I sit and watch, not with my eyes but with my heart as you sculpt the silence into something so beautiful, it tears away all shreds of reason leaving the sweetest sense of belonging to crawl beneath my skin.”
—“Write down: I am Arab my I.D. number, 50,000 my children, eight and the ninth due next summer --Does that anger you? Write down: Arab. I work with my struggling friends in a quarry and my children are eight. I chip a loaf of bread for them, clothes and notebooks from the rocks. I will not beg for a handout at your door nor humble myself on your threshold --Does that anger you? Write down: Arab, a name with no friendly shortcut. A patient man, in a country brimming with anger. My roots have gripped this soil since time began, before the opening of ages before the cypress and the olive, before the grasses flourishes. My father came from a line of plowmen, and my grandfather was a peasant who taught me about the sun's glory before teaching me to read. My home is a watchman's shack made of reeds and sticks --Does my condition anger you? There is no gentle name, write down: Arab. The colour of my hair, jet black-- eyes, brown-- trademarks, a headband over a keffiyeh and a hand whose touch grates rough as rock. My address is an unarmed village with nameless streets. All its men are in the field and quarry --Does that anger you? Write down: Arab. You have stolen my ancestors vineyards and the land I once ploughed with my children, leaving my grandchildren nothing but rocks. Will your government take those too, as the rumour goes? Write down, then at the top of Page One: I do not hate and do not steal but starve me, and I will eat my assailant's flesh. Beware of my hunger and of my anger.”
—Identity Card, Mahmoud Darwish (1964)
Written when the poet was 22 years old.
(John Asfour translation)
She Told Me She Was A Writer
She fit the bill.
and had an artsy tattoo ripped around her shoulder
and a slim pair of ugly glasses.
There was a decayed corner
preserved
in a clean house
where she created her art.
She took me there
and insisted I look at her book case
“ Have you ever read Kerouac? “
not for a long time I said
“ What about Celine?”
Celine was to much of a man for me.
“Well what are you reading now?”
I read the newspaper from time
to time.
but its just to make the coffee taste better.
She had this benign little ass
and cared too much about how it looked
to other men.
She had not learned the secret
of turning and fucking any guy she wanted
If I was younger
I would have taught it to her
but not today.
when I used prescription drugs to get high
my hands would go numb
and my vision would blur
as if I had been spinning in circles
like I did as a kid
and there’s nothing like the feeling
of not quite knowing your limbs
and having each movement you make
be an adventure
I miss the heaviness of my tongue
and the numbness of my lips
which only you could kiss away
but I do not use prescription drugs
to get high anymore
and you do not kiss my lips
