bassam
Canadian
Within the space of a few years, Toronto-based poet, writer and performer Bassam has grown into one of the most interesting and respected artists within the Canadian spoken word landscape. / / He is the grand champion of the Guelph Poetry Slam (2016) and the Burlington Slam Project (2015), and has competed internationally at both the Individual World Poetry Slam and the National Poetry Slam of the United States. / / He is an artist whose creative forays as a performer, writer, speaker and organizer, each present, in beautiful, nuanced, and sometimes gnarly ways, a vision of hope and justice for the world. Bassam’s love of social justice is reflected beyond the bounds of poetry: he is an advocate for the rights of Palestinians and an active member of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) Canada. Bassam also advocates for eating disorder awareness and recovery as a regular showcase performer for the National Initiative for Eating Disorders (NIED).
Stop the bus!
It's great to make new friends and
Great to indulge in conversation,
Hanging out for beers, no tears
No fears of pending annihilation.
But once you leave the party and
The people are behind you,
There's something waiting that's
Got to give and make you see
And blind you.
It's truth that waits in a taxicab outside
And smells funny. You don't know know who's
Driving, only where you're going and how you're
Getting there.
It's a sad certainty.
You're going home, alone tonight.
The ceiling is too low to hold a noose.
There's a message to be heard, although,
It would fall on your deaf ears of
Annihilation once you've got nothing
Left to part with, there's nobody behind you
There's something waiting, God is to
Give you, take your seat, get
off the bus!
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 5:05 AM UTC
Rolling feet, these walking wheels
Are impartial to such matters.
Uphill roll down
Spiral and fall into
The secret and widely-awakened.
It all comes down to politics. Never
Part of the partisan, always
Independent of mind control.
Conscious fatigue, future is bleak. No skipping to the next line.
Too afraid of tomorrow, enjoying the moment,
Why spoil a good thing? Become accustomed and appreciate
Today,
Tomorrow's sorrow hasn't arrived yet.
Poetry always comes out better when there's something on your mind. She's
Seeing someone else and it hasn't been that long since things ended
Between us.
That was quick.
I wish you the best. No awkwardness, I promise.
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 5:05 AM UTC
I tend to forget to tend to my wounds, forever failure in focus
Self-improvement is out of scope.
You make me feel as if I should have succeeded, that the happiness came under false pretenses.
I tend to forget that laughter cannot be measured, neither the grounds on which they occur,
Nor the amount in which they are manifested.
All the happy times are irrelevant, because the ends don't justify the means.
I tend to forget that everyone, including the mentally disabled, desire to advertise their strength,
Their resolve in the face of the adversity between two people who
Claim to love each other, long after the love is gone.
I tend to forget that no one is as naive as either of us make them out to be, that none will
Absorb the previous problems at face value, and
That there are two sides to every coin, as all life suffers from the conflicts of dualities.
I tend to forget that your constant quest for social acceptance is what
Has made you a person uglier than you truly know.
I see through your act; an addiction to be validated, and your pretty portrayal to the spectators.
I tend to forget the analogies between dirt and flower, but no one stops to think that perhaps
The soil from which nature grows is more beautiful than what it blooms,
As it is the foundation, the core, the element, which is hidden from the pretension of the colorful.
I tend to forget how much I once desired to be the voice of reason, now the voice of rhyme.
Forever cursed to be well-versed in poetry. And I know the reason why,
It is just a hypothesis, but I truly feel that there is method to my madness.
I tend to forget the discipline involved in making dual voices similar, one in sound,
Other in beat. Like two hearts in conjoining cadence. Reason
Does not do it all justice. This is my way of making sense of it all.
I tend to forget that anything that grows together, flows together, such as the written words in verse.
The flowers may distance themselves from the dirt from which they arose,
I will remain below the sunlight, hidden in obscurity, watching the Heavens of your lies from the Hell of reality.
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 5:04 AM UTC
Proceeding in the wake of mankind's scourge,
Spoken are the words of this great demiurge,
At dusk the cowled of the night shall emerge,
And convey a true evil on God's Earth to resurge.
Unleashed and unfathomed, behold the words of a phantom
Turning cities into craters and the oceans to chasms,
Imagine: a picture perfect world, can it exist,
Without the plague of the human race, lost without a trace in abyss!
Ignorance tragic, the magic of bliss,
Static damage to the rabid on this planet of ****
An example of this: the progression of time
Deteriorating in abundance, a final judgment for mankind.
Exterminate the population, man, woman and child,
Convictions, the arrival, apocalypse nigh!
None will survive, total disaster, blood stain alabaster
Abstain, refrain, salvation from a heavenly ******* shall be sought in vain.
Unexplainable cataclysm,
The missing piece of the puzzle unseen in catechism,
But it was written somehow and somewhere
And the emergence of its purpose was unclear, deny what you fear!
The end is near, malevolent seraphim invade,
The end is here, a feeble humanity kneels and prays
It was revealed, none prepared and none spared
And act of evil, fitting for the slaughter of a people.
Mephistophelian ascension,
A requiem for the souls of the ruined be sung
For a destruction, beyond all human comprehension.
Alarum with no human intervention!
An apoplectic annihilation, fed lies by inhalation,
Microbial immolation, infected detestation,
Evasive evasion, catastrophic, melancholic
Leaving mankind intoxicated by his own narcotic
Whilst hypnotically induced, the demons invade,
Equestrian quartet lead the massive evil brigade
A battalion of stallions, on fray to slay grace
Laid to waste in the face of the inhuman race.
To keep pace, without a trace, Messiah on Fire
In dire need, erase calumny the Heavenly liar feeds
Desire breeds and hatred grows
Within those a crueler fate chose the pyre to bleed.
An ascension to an unknown throne overthrown,
A crown adorned in thorns be thy Kingdom's scorn
To the Black, I am sworn, prophet to the swarm,
The scores of the forlorn born to battle in the storms
Of Ragnarok, the magma rocks rain from the sky,
The Earth will end in fire, watch the genesis die.
Terrestrial crucifixion, the mortals' last affliction,
Desperation bringing forth a dogmatic dereliction.
Infliction of pain, deadly diction to the slain in vain,
A spoken name, confliction causing friction
An addiction to the wicked, auspicious yet pernicious,
Foreboding a sinister outcome of ecumenical wishes.
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 5:04 AM UTC
No right to exist, I feel happy here
I don't belong, loved by everyone
Tormented forever, free to be myself
Nightmares so cold, the warmth of God
Satanic ritual, keeps me alive
Death confined, dreams of beauty
Psychotic screeches, songs of saints
And demons growling, echo in the cathedral
Of unholiness, praises to the purity
Unclean and unseen, the soft light of Heaven
The wrath of Hell, come down in the form of a Messiah
Lies and deceit, sanctity holds the glory
Vile guise of brutality, vitality cleanses our spirit
Gagging on our sins, in the Kingdom of our faith
A prison of the wraith, the harmony of meadows
Unlock this world of shadows, shines bright in the Sanctuary.
Dec 14, 2009
Dec 14, 2009 at 5:21 PM UTC
The sleep sentence ends in a period of vivid imagery.
The ****** is how the end of the dream resembles reality.
There is no denouement, but always something to be learned.
The conclusion is always the same. Awakening, using what has been
Experienced in the dream to influence the journey in life itself.
Wondering, what are the purpose of dreams? It is not a question that is worth pondering.
Walking the tightrope of lucid dreaming, risking the fall into consciousness.
Opening of the gates to hell from confinement, losing the battle to find meaning.
Crying for the dream to return, left in hopelessness, despair.
Reality is the ***** of life, and dreaming is its procurer.
Constantly controlling the outcomes, the path of life is always forged
Between the forests of dreams.
Dec 14, 2009
Dec 14, 2009 at 5:21 PM UTC
Sin of gluttony
Bathroom stall confessional
My purgatory.
Dec 14, 2009
Dec 14, 2009 at 5:20 PM UTC
O Holy,
I beckon a folly
Of grandeur, delusion
Or Illusion of not, I fought
To question a purpose
A burden, bore alone
To awaken the masses
To fire and fate.
Once earth and twice air
And water between
Divides, O Divide
Depart to the other side
Things that are
And things that are not
I sought to conquer the answer
A problem, solitary
To enslave the masses
To fire or fate.
O Fire, below us
Between us, besiege us
Killing, blood spilling
A rage of consequence
If only one death
Were enough, if only one
Life, to explain the
Eternal equation, solved.
O Fire, cease to burn!
Allow us to comprehend,
All existence and yours, we
Are all but tiny ores of sores
Imperfection, to die at our own hands
By a fire and fate
I contemplate a dismal
Perpetual, eventual
Consensual, death
At any rate.
Dec 3, 2009
Dec 3, 2009 at 1:28 PM UTC
Speed on the
Mirror highway
Lanes and lines
One after no where
On and off-ramp
Stuck in traffic
Lucid acid
Flaccid masses
Classes filled
With stupid *****
Crooked cops
And ******* crashes
Head-on collision
Illusive vision
Elusive division
Intrusive mission
Through a tube
And up your nose
**** who knows
Where nowhere goes
How to get there,
Why I'm going,
What I'm doing,
Who'll be there.
I have no plan,
Nothing is written
In stone.
I'll
Figure something out.
Of sight and in
My mind. I'm coming
Short of coherency. Free
Writing poetry never works
In my favor. I'm just drifting
Away into the
End of the dark sideline.
Through a tube, spiraling,
Stumbling mumbling,
Blundering blindly and
Mindfully striding
Across infinite tiles
Endless, black and white,
Checkerboards. I am the
Grey area.
Dec 3, 2009
Dec 3, 2009 at 1:21 PM UTC
Life has
Wounded my body.
Eyes, ears, nostrils
Mouth, all
Lacerations
for my soul
To bleed.
A leap
Alive
A dive
To one
Become
Forever numb
If it's any
Consolation
I wasn't
Jumping
Away from you.
I'd run
A hundred
Thousand
Miles away
Before I made
The decision
To fade
Into obscurity
Insanity
And immortality.
The best of
Us fail
The test of
Faith. I would
Certainly study
Life in
Order
To succeed
Myself.
Dec 3, 2009
Dec 3, 2009 at 1:19 PM UTC