Flowers are blooming
earlier each year, while seas
are on the rise.
Writers are busy building
their online portfolios.
Readers cherish
their own truths, enjoy
new communities.
Belonging is now a digital right.
Poets surf horizons
and navigate wounds.
They burn verses
to warm the night.
I listen to the East and become unsettled.
A sad ire overtakes me. The wide black eyes
of Eastern women become home and exile.
I dig deep into the past, a time when we held
onto our struggles, rose to the challenge.
Back then shepherds carried bread and flutes,
literature censured false promises,
and idealists were the only warriors.
For the migrated birds, nostalgia is an escape.
I choose to be hopeful and listen to music
in my backroads travels. I dream of reinventing self,
befriend lovers and sunbath in secluded backyards
I am thinking of neighborhoods in cities
where the sun rises out of duty and boredom.
Of dusted streets and deserted schools
named after kings in Africa’s rural towns.
The more pretentious the name of a place
the more likely it resembles a dump.
The names try hard to make up the difference.
Mask the realities, project pompous claims.
Like entries in a journal of unfulfilled desires,
or attempts at promoting unhealthy diets.
If we examine a name long enough, a meaning emerges.
Sometimes a name yearns for things to be better.
What does it mean to be violently displaced? Your roots cut.
To become nameless; faceless as you blend into a sea of faces
around you. What does it mean that your home is no longer safe?
That your savings have evaporated, your job vanished,
your house flattened, your family killed? What does it mean
to walk a thousand miles, cross borders, and take refuge?
Memories vanish as you struggle to stay alive at dark.
Being stuffed in camps, living under tents…
Indefinitely postponing your medical needs.
No phone calls to make or emails to send.
No papers to read or news to watch.
You are the headline; the show others are watching.
What does it mean to survive a war? To be denied entry?
Turned down, refused, rejected once more? I don’t know.
I wish to never know. I can’t even ask a refugee to tell me.
If you are angry, I understand. If you hate me, I understand.
Bureaucrats at the borders, in consulates, parliaments,
and some protesting on the streets may not let you in.
I will do my best to change that. Until then, I will think of you.
I watched the movie and I did not recognize you.
Your name was in the credits, though. I checked.
“Yes, Mom, the makeup artist is a genius.”
You did not make it to the cover of Vogue.
They put up another woman, younger
with sexy, hungry eyes,
like those of a wild wolf looking for a mate
in the middle of the night,
or an English princess forced into celibacy.
“That’s me, Mom; it is just a different angle,
dim lighting, and a few brushes of Photoshop.”
I drive a long stretch of a narrow road,
pass abandoned gas stations,
and houses half standing
like sunflowers kneeling at sunset.
As I brace the road,
the dry land keeps closing in.
Then a flag appears, flying high,
planted by a proud young woman
to remember we are in the land of the free.
We were not destined to toast beneath the moon —
pure and high at night, emitting light.
It makes the curves of lovers glow,
their naked bodies grow, from midnight to noon
against the sands of a faraway desert. A playful sight:
laughter and concert, light and shadow.
Our future
is our only option.
Butterflies precede us,
rejoice
in a forthcoming
spring.
When you fly, you make the sky happy.
You entertain us with your songs.
When you land, you give earth a new perspective.
You keep us company, ponder our origins.
When you dive, the water may be cold,
and the depths strange.
Your dives make you stronger, and make us wonder
about the secrets of the undersea.
Alongside ghosts
I walk the alley of murder.
On the magazine cover my friend was dead.
But I will deny the killers his burial.
I will walk with him
across the bridge of light and feel
the warmth of our tears
escaping our exhausted eyelids.
Our trees will shade their walls
and our rivers will clean their hands.
I will celebrate
his birth and plant his
favorite orchids.
I’ll celebrate twice:
his birth and his death.
As I grieve, the rivers mourn the shooting stars
and the trees drop their leaves.