Tag Archives: Hind

Apr8

April poetry month- Stephen Dunn is beautiful. (exquisite)

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I hate the word Beautiful. It’s always the first word to come to mind, but I try to fight it often and use others. I discovered Laura Marling and her music recently, thanks to poetician Nigel Holt, and I have been addicted. If you dont know her, check out “My manic and I”, an excellent song.
I am happy that reviews/blurbs/ and a forward for my book are in the works. I should have all the material collected from various kind writers and sources…I wont reveal who is writing about the book, you need to see the actual book to find out! But I am super grateful for this wonderful community of Arab and American authors and editors.
I still dont have a title for the new book. It’s been called “The new book” for months now. Dammit. Its bordering on disaster, since the cover cannot be finished without it, nor can we get an ISBN number. Suffering.
To stop rambling about nothing, Im gonna go back to my coffee (with soya, hmmm) and leave you with amazing poems from Stephen Dunn. If you dont know him, google his name now! now! He is brilliant. I love his work and wish that one day I could squeeze tons of meaning into simple short lines.
Enjoy. April is such a GREAT month!

Landscape At The End Of The Century

by Stephen Dunn

The sky in the trees, the trees mixed up
with what’s left of heaven, nearby a patch
of daffodils rooted down
where dirt and stones comprise a kind
of night, unmetaphysical, cool as a skeptic’s
final sentence. What this scene needs
is a nude absentmindedly sunning herself
on a large rock, thinks the man fed up
with nature, or perhaps a lost tiger,
the maximum amount of wildness a landscape
can bear, but the man knows and fears
his history of tampering with everything,
and besides to anyone who might see him
he’s just a figure in a clearing
in a forest in a universe
that is as random as desire itself,
his desire in particular, so much going on
with and without him, moles humping up
the ground near the daffodils, a mockingbird
publishing its cacaphonous anthology,
and those little Calvinists, the ants,
making it all the more difficult
for a person in America
to close his office, skip to the beach.
But what this scene needs are wisteria
and persimmons, thinks the woman
sunning herself absentmindedly on the rock,
a few magnificent words that one
might want to eat if one were a lover
of words, the hell with first principles,
the noon sun on my body, tempered
by a breeze that cannot be doubted.
And as she thinks, she who exists
only in the man’s mind, a deer grazes
beyond their knowing, a deer tick riding
its back, and in the gifted air
mosquitos, dragonflies, and tattered
mute angels no one has called upon in years.

I will post some more of his more accessible work tomorrow. He is so good. This last line was amazing, no?

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Feb6

Friendship.

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A very dear, very old friend of mine is on my mind a lot this week. He is going through some difficulties and it makes me realize how important basic communication is. So many people I know do not connect with others. I do not know how they do it. People are important.

This next poem is for my wonderful, brilliant and unique friend. He knows how much I love him.

Do your friends know you love them?

Friend

01/02/2009

Dubai

You knew me before i was this woman

poet scrounging for words

elusive

witnessing together the triumph

of that journey we took to

become us, in the making, ever and

again, unmade and replaced by

a newer carcass

lost to our youth, how your smile still dazzles

me and sends me letters in silence

across distance we

never paid attention to,

you knew me awkward and afraid

attuned to the tacit agreements we

signed to love beyond the

geography of convenience

beyond the shape of the atlas

beneath the earth that separates, to dwell in the

quickened internal rhapsody

of your fleeting poems, a prayer, an amulet to protect our laughter

burying the days of despair we count over and over

brutal score keepers noting each other’s failure

fingers unclenched to protect you

from yourself

i am bare,

that hideous form i cower from dispelled in the mirror

of your hands, for

to you, i am no shape

i am no matter

but a collection of stars free in your night

a simple sun ray beaming through a window of time

stretching to where you stand solid

that lights the horizon of memory

from here

to there, to you. And now i am tempted to cup my hand

across your face, to lean in and touch

the absence of distance, to mold

my thoughts after the

pattern of our speech, frazzled,

connected through stutter and the singular way

there is no other like you,

none ever. You keep my past safe in renewed breath,

i forage the world to dream close to you

willing this life to break

gently

a tumbleweed of love fragile

to be swept up

in the free wind

together

Feb5

Dubai nights, private mornings.

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We went to a party on a boat last night. Drove a long time to get there, with fantastic music blaring, and a great friend singing with me and laughing. I often think that going out and meeting people is a great solution to being alone, feeling marginalized, needing human warmth, finding love…all of that.
Then you realize that if you feel that way, you are going to feel that way even amongst dozens of people. Even dancing on a boat. Even in the gorgeous breeze of the waterfront.
I prefer my own company. Sometimes.
At 5 am, bad poetry happens.

5 am, Dubai is a highway.
For me, where ever I am.
Dubai,
5/2/2010

Her short ruffled skirt flew in creek breezes of paper cups lounging
vodka is finished and thin is this attendance
people do not converge
on boats we visited after late late hours of
forced laughter
everyone wanted to touch her breasts
curves fake and pointed perfect, she was cigarette tipped in this night
plastered a smile on glossed pouts
where those who are lonely looked for too
many bottles
and we don’t have enough bottles
and we don’t have enough breaths for these cigarettes
and I don’t have enough years to keep my smile on,
to nod at strangers on boats who do not
look past what we cannot offer each other

I remember you on a couch, lean legs stretched, a face to haunt all that comes after
I burn slow with mornings of sheets like maps to eternity
I burn slow with conversation like water, ebbs
and wanes in streams of thoughts you
could slaughter
and be rebirthed in your arms, a habit accepted
a home beyond the rivers of Dubai
dry
with no movement
we dance on a docked boat
stagnant like my curls trembling
the heels slip on cheap spilled red wine I retch
solitude and drink in breath of those stars
we share regardless of
travel
look at her ass we say
I’d like to touch her tits we say
she wants to come home with you, he says
lick his neck in a gesture of plea
accept the rotation of bodies in and out
of momentary rapture
and I burn slow with your eyes dark
your glances heavy
the weight of spoken ruptured flesh we made poetry
the creek ripples to taunt and say
I reflect light
I flow unhampered by desire
and I
I shatter at fleeting aches in regions hidden

and there is no love here
and there is no love here
and I drown slow with the tides of departure.

Feb4

Blogging from Ajman.

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On the road this week. Myself and a whole bunch of cool guys who work with our TV show. Thank the universe for some laughs, lots of laban,sea water all along the horizon, many a sunset shoot, aircon when we need it, a tripod I can carry to exercise a bit, strong muscles moving in the sun, mountains with cold breezes and an oud player whose voice still echoes in spaces of memory I hold with me amongst the skyscrapers. I should start adding pictures to this site. I promise to do so soon.
The guys are setting up shots inside. We are talking to an older photographer who reminds me of the politeness of my father. I am missing poetry, here is one of my favorites, as a lovely young man brings me orange tea steaming and the mosque starts its prayer. Caffeine, poetry, film.
Still waiting on the Poeticians to send me more of their work and bios. Ahh, I have become nazi like in my virtual stalking of them. I’m hanging on to their promises, promises.
And now, a poem.

Lovesong
by Ted Hughes

He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His word were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assasin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon’s gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other’s face.