3 weeks since my last confession

Realized that when you google my name (yes, I google myself), I get most of the entries I have been blogging - alongside the patent I filed, the Entrepreneur show, my IDC report on the IT Services market, a summary of my novel, and my linkedin profile on being a Knowledge Manager/Tech Writer.

I realize I am a google mutt- no real specialization, all over the place- (really ?!) with this blog and my poetry- and really just a collection of things that normally do not go together. I like it, it is eclectic.

The google images are even more eclectic - one a suit, and the other wearing my turquoise bellydancing outfit-- ah --

So, here I am. It has been about 3 weeks since my last confession.

Not a lot to talk about. Have a friend staying with me- I am doing my best to be a good hostess (pudding snack) but how I do love time alone - I have become so very anti-social. No, I was always anti-social but now I am just old enough and wise enough to let people know so I don't secretly resent them and create uncomfortable emotional atmospheres. Yes, I can do that.

Have been doing healing. Meditation. Still on the paleo-diet, still not eating sugar but rarely a craving for it anymore. I think my skin looks better as a result. I think I am a little thinner. It is good.

Reading about Syria. Trying not to cry. I did cry the other day. Translated something from Arabic (using Google translator because when I try to read Arabic, it usually doesn't make any sense to me until someone reads it for me with the right accents in the right places, Arabic is so complicated, like reading music) ... anyway, translated a status message written in Arabic from my dear friend whom I have not spoken to for almost 2 months now and it said :

If someone gives you a false reason to leave, give them a hundred thank yous for not staying.

Of course, since this was written in Arabic (and he knows how hopeless I am in Arabic), it was probably not directed at me. However, since I have not spoken to him so long and that was the only thing I have seen or heard of him in months, it made me cry all day. Not cry because I am feeling sorry for myself, because I have done that before, but cry because not to cry was an impossible. Just impossible. Incredible. I even re-directed my thoughts and my body was still sad.

Anyway, changing the subject. Not inspired to poetry lately. A certain someone whom I shall not name is pretty much out of my system. Thank God.

Moving on ...

Letters to Nizar

Am a very big fan of Nizar Qabbani, the Syrian poet- I always knew of his political poetry, but never of his romantic, erotic poetry. I recently even once wrote a love poem to him- it was an accident- an accident of sorts. A long story. Perhaps one day I will tell it -- when the heat from my cheeks has cooled.

How do I describe my attachment to Syria and all things Syrian ? I am nothing but an exiled pseudo Palestinian who has lived in the US for most of her life, grasping at anything that would make me more like those Syrian Arabs or those Palestinian Arabs or those Lebanese Arabs - those magical Arabs from Al Sham, whose language eludes me and whose minds I never entered and whose hearts were always closed to mine. I am in love with Al Sham but that love is unrequited. How sexy the men! How beautiful the women! How lovely the sentiments expressed between the sexes - all of those rules that are meant to bring the society to a complete whole - to ensure the cycle of life - to ensure the perpetuation of the culture. How all of that has eluded me. How it has my whole life.

I wonder if Nizar, if he were alive today, would have it is in heart to love me, as I am, a woman who has lost her language and her heart. I believe he would. Perhaps he would be able to read the grief in my eyes and love that grief - a poet must love grief or he does not love.

I had a dream that a former lover of mine was underwater. I remember the dream very clearly. I remember he had a camera with him and was desperately trying to take photos of the water - he wanted to get out - he was so tired - I helped him out. I had the dream before the I read the poem by Nizar - the one below - it is so beautiful, it takes my breath away.

Letter From Under The Sea

If you are my friend...
Help me...to leave you
Or if you are my lover...
Help me...so I can be healed of you...
If I knew....
that the ocean is very deep...I would not have swam...
If I knew...how I would end,
I would not have began

I desire you...so teach me not to desire
teach me...
how to cut the roots of your love from the depths
teach me...
how tears may die in the eyes
and love may commit suicide

If you are prophet,
Cleanse me from this spell
Deliver me from this atheism...
Your love is like atheism...so purify me from this atheism

If you are strong...
Rescue me from this ocean
For I don't know how to swim
The blue waves...in your eyes
drag me...to the depths
blue...
blue...
nothing but the color blue
and I have no experience
in love...and no boat...

If I am dear to you
then take my hand
For I am filled with desire...from my
head to my feet

I am breathing under water!
I am drowning...
drowning...
drowning... 

Nizar Qabbani

if your eyes were books

If your eyes were books
I would take each one down--
from high stacks or low-
dust each one off
with love,
handle gently the yellowed pages,
decipher smudged words-
with patience and care,
and memorize each word
as my my magic -
my meaning.

But alas -
I have not seen your eyes
for ages- and cannot read
them -
and
I have even forgotten your
face- and
remember only your kiss.

Beirut - The Last time I Saw You

Even as
you fiddled with your phone and
avoided my eyes

Even as
you sat stiff on the edge of the chair and
didn't touch me

Even as
you swore you wanted to stay with me but
had to go

Even as
I hugged you with trembling arms and
you walked away

Even as
you looked away from me as
the taxi drove off

Even as
my mind screamed in protest and
my logic
squirmed in agony

Even as
my intelligence was questioned and
my sanity
was discussed

Even as
my eyes turned red
and my soul
shattered

Even as
Faith itself thought me a fool
and Fortune
laughed

I believed u loved me.

Bonfire

Bonfire

throw in shame
shame does not scream -
no
it only moans

loneliness?
loneliness isolates
each flame
to devour itself

anger?
anger spits
flashes, fumes
and perishes in a hiss

hurt?
hurt, oh how it endures
suffers
and slowly deteoriates

despair?
it gives in
quick
and chokes

loss?
it blazes
brightly then
disappears

worry?
it unfurls into
a giant balloon
and busts

hatred?
it burns
in scorches
then suffocates

and if i toss in love ?
love does not burn the fire
and the fire
does not burn love

Okay, so I sent this chain letter thing to 22 of my friends and I was supposed to get my wish today. According to the chain letter, your wish is granted 72 hours after you send the letter. It has been 73 hours and (surprise?) no wish. I even threw in an extra hour before I threw in the towel. Where does that expression come from? Throwing in the towel? I guess it means you are done with something, but I guess it would have to something to do with water-- a bath, a shower, swimming?

I don't feel like googling it. Google and I are not on speaking terms nowadays.

On the topic of these chain letter things (which I usually don't send because I don't live in la la land but god, I wish I did) what is up with all the people of FB who enter numbers or words to see a picture change? I mean, these pictures get tens of thousands of hits. I feel sorry for the people who do it. I feel like their names are being gathered into a database to track stupid humans.

Super grumpy today. Deprived of regular human contact and food. How much longer can this go on? I should sprout wings soon and ascend to heaven.

But even heaven
in all its glory,
still seems to me
a little boring.

Last lines of a poem I wrote a long time ago.

I still think about my friend in Syria. We are also not on speaking terms- no drama- it all ended with "not a bang, but a whimper". I guess that is the only way to end a thing like that, which I so don't want to get into here but have alluded to before. I have written enough about him. He was my muse, I suppose. I don't need a muse anymore, I can a muse myself.

would you have loved me ?

if i hadn't spent days in the sun
with my mouth open, drinking heat-

would you have loved me ?

if i hadn't spent nights under the moon
with my heart open, bathing love-

would you have loved me ?

if i had sewn my mouth shut
in jagged lines
with black thread

if i had sewn my vagina shut
in jagged lines
with black thread

would you have loved me ?

if i had sewn my ears
my eyes and my brain
and my heart
in jagged lines
with that same black thread

would you have loved me ?

if i had wrapped myself
in black fabrics made of black threads

would you have loved me ?

it is no matter my love

i need the sun
crave the moon
and cannot sew

and need myself
more than you