317/365

i had no choice but to be a poet
beneath the veil and angry scowls
they showed you about us on tv,
we persians have long worshipped
the rhyme of verse and the winelight
under which it is written and read.

in our home there was a threadbare
copy of the hafez revealed on late nights,
illuminated by candle glow, hand to heart,
read it slow-to the guest waiting
for their fortunes told.

my parents reveried this tome,
to me as a child it was magical,
i’d thumb its pages when they
weren’t home, admiring the calligraphy
wondering how it was that this script- that so
effortlessly fell from their lips had become
so foreign to me.  

years later my father and i would share a bed
in shiraz outside of hafez’s tomb. laying awake
in the darkness i wondered how it could be
i felt so foreign even there, which was meant
to feel like home.

270/365

248/365

how much of who we could have been
melted in the pot we were thrown into,
in those early days- new to the diaspora,
singing yankee doodle dandy, all of us
repercussions of american imperial yearning:
wide-eyed boys and girls from:
lao, vietnam, nicaragua, el salvador, haiti, iran
disappearing in the monocultural metaphor
for the heterogeneous society we witnessed
on the great eraser of selves-
leaving it to beaver and dreaming of genie,
ensuring otherness and denigration.
the only way to survive
disappearing into the white.

everywhere we went
we were together
marginalised and othered.
picnicking with our strange foods,
living blindly, unaware of the rules.

sometimes even the disappeared
can hear the echos of their ancestors’
voices, whispering in strange accents.
what they’re saying too foreign to be understood.
we are americans now with our tongues
coerced to recite the pledge of allegiance
and the merits of capitalism and melting pots.

200/365

wouldn’t things be different if nothing was an it?
why do you insist on the poet solely enduring
the depths, bringing back mud, forgotten pebbles
and broken glass from the bottom of the well,
hands covered in blood and mud,
dilated pupils and ashen faced,
swinging on a dilapidated bucket
the rope barely holding weight.

once again i’ll need
saffron and rose water
to reconnect to language
wilting on my tongue.
the recipe too complex.
the outcome untold.

i’m tired of making sense for you
carving meaning from pain or beauty,
from these mundane twigs i sweep up
from the floor while you participate
in the economy, go on vacation, post to social media.

my friend is an addict and baring the brunt
of your art in his basement in seattle.
the roots of a blooming life in the sun,
a broken heart wall on guard for clots
that could kill him.

wouldn’t things be different
if nothing was an it?
read that in a book today
not sure what to do with it.

193/365

silence is a type of language
that’s a stolen line
will you forgive me?
reading the blind owl
by the iranian kafka.
there’s wine and opium
and symbols about the
achaemenid dynesties,
morning glories,
bruised lotus flowers.
sifting through the lines
searching for a glitter of gold,
the dense mud of surrealist
meaning, making it difficult.
a pellucid glaze,
purple and green
like a greenbottle housefly-
that’s a nugget. hold on to it.
books satisfy many needs
perplexion just as valid as the next.  

my only fear
is that i might die tomorrow
and still not know myself.
grateful that even in my own
garbled manner, i can still hear the
words in farsi, like whispered echos
and my grandmother’s stale breath
and she recounted fairy tales of
rostam and sohrab as she rubbed
my frail back under the covers
coaxing me to sleep. her entire life
a few fading polaroids in the mind

and if now i have decided to write,
it is only to introduce myself
to my shadow.
who can tell
what we steal
what is ours
and what is simply us
through the delicate transfusion
of language. culture. history.

97/365

the bankruptcy
of language
is most evident
in translation.

how else can the
rents of human experience
be recognised
when there are words for
some things
in some languages
and not in others.

kecel is such
a word in Farsi:

bored, lethargic, inertia, inactivity, inaction, slowness, torpor, torpidity, lifelessness,
dullness, listlessness, languor, languidness, stagnation, laziness, idleness, indolence,
shiftlessness, sloth, phlegm, apathy, passivity, ennui, weariness, tiredness, lassitude, fatigue,
sleepiness, drowsiness, enervation, somnolence.

Even all these words
don’t get it just right,
or maybe they do—
i’ve been feeling
too kecel all day long
to think about it
too deeply.