Poetry
the painting of a thought.
There is power in pictures
Telling us stories
no words can convey
Revealing atrocities
the world hid away
The pain in their eyes
The death in the air
The blanketed numbness:
an innocent’s stare
They lay on the streets
Exposed and abused
Their bodies are broken
taken, then used
Pawns in this fury,
Chess pieces at play
Innocents consumed
engulfed within flames
What right then have we
To sit drinking our tea,
Settling in
to our safe-space routines?
When out in the real life,
The dirt is still riddled
with fathers and sons
mothers and littles.
Bodies are left.
Children are shot.
All for whose profit?
Was it pleasure or not?
Who knows what to do?
“Not I,” we all said
here we still sit and
look past the dead
Is it pleasure or profit?
Perhaps all just the same,
The grossest of outcomes
in our world’s selfish game.
Look past the dead
-
She holds me
Softly, kindly,
Mossy warmth embraces my head
Veiny paths capture my feet
I feel her rhythms breathing
Her waves, they’re breaking
Ebb and flow,
Her moon is waning.
Listen.
Her quiet asks:
Are you awake?
-
Summer will come again, dear one
keep your love and light
though we reside in darkness,
keep tender in the night
you are not alone, my love
your friends are all around
rest within their wholesome arms until the light is found
-
Numbness - settling around you
memoried wisps
floating past us
a vague sadness
it is what it is: Numbness
Once we accept
sit in this nothing
maybe we’ll see
when moments are shining
though this moment may be
numbness
Be present in pain - as present in joy
we live what we live,
the course of life’s story.
Though this moment may be
numbness
Hold tender your heart,
when emptiness sits
Time is a healer
She cares as she ticks
Though this moment may be
numbness
Pleasure, pride, pain:
take it all in
For we never will have each moment again
-
My soul is heavy—burdened
With thoughts of loss and love
It weighs upon my brittle bones
Like those shrouds we’ve all heard of
This world feels much too large for me
My smallness strikes me now
A painful wind blows through my heart
I shudder at the sound
“The children, they are freezing.”
This one thought in my mind.
How could we just keep being
When so many people died?
The warmth that we can give now
Our love, our care, our mind
These are people of our world
Why do you pass them by?
I feel the anger of the country
“It didn’t have to be this way”
But earthquakes are just politics
That the big men like to play
Geçmis olsun Türkiye
Kendine iyi bak
Suriye, Türkiye, güçlü kal
Çok şey var—yapacak
-
I have been preparing the garden lately.
Digging the manure from its rotten grave and carting it across the fields to dump upon old soil.
A taxing job, filthy
the garden has a new face
of muck, mire, and decay.
Soon I will tear through the dirt, intermixing the shit with the soil
destroying what has been a building itself there for months.
somehow, decay and destruction is the key to its growth.
If I don’t destroy it now, it won’t develop later.
The vegetables won’t sprout, the flowers won’t bloom, and I will have nothing to eat.
So I destroy and defame what always has been
creating what will be, remove what's within
knowing this act will propel me towards sustenance: A cycle of struggle that produces sufficiency.
-
He with the bright eyes
When he smiles they shine
Who knew that brown could be so bright
holding meaning
your soft wells
they capture me
make my soul sell
all of its past pretenses
to simply watch
while my heart is captured
by all of your realness
I long to see what those lights see of the world
when they measure the perimeters
of truth
how they’ve grown past their youth
to become all that you
seem to be
in a riddled world of falsity
you oddly resemble
reality
-
Drawn together.
Our struggles bind us
shoulders to shoulders
Stuck in the shattering
world's unstacking
pain spread across the back
of us all
We are Atlas:
link arms
So no more will fall
Unbuilding of the walls
that are broken by our breaking
Safety lies beyond quaking
and does not beckon to our calls
link arms
So no more will fall
-
We claim ourselves
Lay siege to the lands of our souls and cultivate them
Burning the demands of those who have trespassed our soil
It’s violence to become,
Fury to unfetter.
Bold brutality,
We fight as stormy weather
to become
ourselves.
none
can dwell,
upon us.
Upon these lands
We grow
With our hands
We sow
Seeds of life
amidst the charcoal of their burning
uprooting their insidious sojourning
Becoming
a storm
a viking crown is worn
destroying those who never learned to sail
She is Still Here
I have a deep well within myself
that is full of care for others.
It was my role to keep the warmth
for father, mother, brother.
Since I was way too young,
I could feel their hopes, their fears, their hurts.
At some point, I began to comfort them
with actions and with words.
But that little girl had no idea,
that she could have warmth too.
And slowly over time,
She forgot she was allowed to.
She was a glowing, burning fire
Enlaced with warmth and care
How strange that so much love,
Kept forgetting she was there.
She’s older now and stronger,
Wiser, one might hope.
But still she forgets often
that she is worthy of that glow.
Sometimes I need a moment
To remind me that I’m there
She who is so used to freezing,
Please know your welcome here.
White Noise
Everything fades into gray
Simplicity bound by emptiness
Encompassed with a drumming white noise of
sadness
Am I unfeeling?
Too buried to express
I am waves crashing
tossed, unrest
Overwhelmed
I am looking for myself
here
yet seeing nothing
blindly running
Only time will tell my story
waiting for you
seeking you out
Yet you, indelibly missing,
somehow
Can you feel me?
Do you know me?
my soliloquy to the mirror
why must I drown
in moonlit mourning
Holding Space
It is the light that binds us.
Wound together,
wounded together
We build ourselves
up
We hold space
for the other,
empathize with
each other.
Collectively
in empathy
we light
fires of change
warming our hands with well-being
through the darkness
light bringing
being
together
Our darkness
transforms
to light
we hold space for ourselves
in the night
I hope to always be
One who finds beauty in small places
A person who can see
That every darkness has bright faces
A flower grown from dust
An uprising from injustice
In humanity I trust
We will build our safer places
