Wilted jasmines look like popcorns
… that wasn’t very poetic, right?
I was just watching the bushes sway outside my window.
There is no wind today
Just the hot air breathing
I have turned on the A.C. and the fan grumbles quietly

I feel as if my heart is in my stomach
Huh.
**** it,
I really am forcing it out today..
Whatever
I rested my palm on my stomach
As Faizan’s strange playlist chattered nonsense
Outside the blanket shroud I had built
Around myself
And I could feel the beat
The rhythm
Like a drum or a gong
I don’t know why it matters to me
Maybe because I feet as if nothing else does
Right now
I know that sounds exactly like something
A sentimental teenager would say

I don’t know
I want to talk to myself
A heart-to-heart
I want to ask that *****
What is going on
What is wrong
What the **** is wrong, girly!?
I want to hear her ramble on about stuff
Be bored of her talk, but feel kind of happy
That I’m the one she’s confiding in
I wanna give her a hug
To show I don’t have words good enough for comfort
Which I probably do
But am too lazy to fish them out my gooey head
(Besides
I think the poor **** needs a hug)

I wanna zone out and nod along to her words
Just so she can let it out for once
But that *****’s a *****
She acts tough and all smart
But she’s a sappy preteen girl inside
I say,
“Yo, Ayesha, you can cry, you know—”
And she goes,
“Yeah, I know.”
A flip of that inexistent hair
That she long ago butchered
And, bam, she gone.
She tells me
"Yo, Ayesha, you can cry too, you know?"
"I know" I tell her.
I don’t know what to do
So I lie around
Feeling this stupid ***** dance in my stomach
In my wrists
In my temples
I run my fingers down my neck,
Feeling for the echoes of the gong
That keeps talking, talking, talking
Untiring
As if calling me to my people
gathering us together for a battle
that is yet to be fought
yet to be fought—
yet to be ******* fought

And, hey, my
Money plant doesn’t even look rich
That *****—
(Hey, I got a rhyme!)

I heard you like to sing
In broken, barren places
Well, I have found us a mansion
Old and rotten
And, say,
Will you not come over for a cup of moonlight?
I have built us a garden
With twigs and weeds
And hung up a swing
From the black, velvet sky
Will you not come by
In your wildest gown and brightest jewels
Bring along the gossips
Bring along the feathers
And all other abandoned things

Spare me the news of Palestinian wails
Or how a young girl was stolen
From a loud street
Put aside the talks of rising waters
Or how the things that are legal
Aren’t always moral
Do not bring along the laughs of explosions
That are known to bloom in
most arid of places

Tell me about the stars
Tell me the talk of the sparrows and doves
Or did that slender lady
Finally dye her hair green?
How are the dolphins?
Sing me the songs you wrote for fire
Sing of the ocean
And her fluttering veils
Make me forget I am not a gust

Will you not come by?
I have sought out a trapdoor
That leads to the purple forest
We will play hide-and-seek
In our frail, little world

They say the place
Was home to a lady who,
One day, washed her body
And hung it to dry
Will you not help me wake the dust
That sleeps all around?
We will hold a slow dance
With scared spiders and rats
Bring along the tired stars
and all other extinguished things

Bring along the debris
And maybe a ****** shoe or two
But do not bring the stories of still children
Or the shivering ones
Leave behind all the prayer mats
All of the prayers

We will swim in the shadows
And feast upon wilted blooms
Sing me the ballads of the clouds
I’ll sing you those in my head
And when, in the morning
The town’s folks will talk of the dead lady’s ghost
Swaying and singing
I will pretend the mansion
Never knew of us.

Think the saddest thing about this land
Is how hard it tries to live
To hold, to let go— how it
Stills in the middle of a catastrophe
How it sings
Only when no one’s about to hear
How its silence
Is never wholly true

How the clouds go by
And the suns
The crescents grow up and pass
And people—
Yet it, shuddering, remains
And how it struggles
To weave peace out its
Wavering fields

And ever-dancing cities—
The dance of a Persian woman
In shackles
How it slaughters its own flowers
In search of their seeds
How it breaks apart
In the middle of a night
In the middle of a little girl’s question
In the middle of a smile

How the maidens
Keep on hanging their dresses to dry
And children keep hunting
For helpless worms
And snows melt into grasses
Till they too sail away
Yet it, shuddering, remains

How it will gnaw away the town
It carved itself
Feast upon its own beautiful bones
How hard it struggles to stir
In its own queer death
And how it will wither
And wither, and wither
And not tire—

It is its own hateful god.

Do you sense it?
The little men
are mixing up a stew again
They are chopping their children
And grinding all the toys
Breaking the women and
Breaking them on
They will peel colours off the swings
And shred them to debris

Do you sense the moons all hiding
Covering up their silver eyes
And the night is angry
It roars and stomps—
A drunken frenzy; it fights
Its own decayed, black being

Oh, Palestine
You and your fidgeting hands
Fingers fight fingers
And skins are ripped
fingers fight fingers still—
There goes the ballad you never sang
There goes the ballad
You sang all around
There go the plastic dolls
Chaste slingshots, fruits never shot down

Oh, Palestine
You and the lightning
Stumbling through the clouds
You, your tumbling birds—There goes the wind
Mourning a violence unmourned
There goes the silence
There goes the noise
There, all the paintings
Eulogies etched in whispers unfathomed
And there go the stones
Cold and blank

All plunging within the gaping mix
As the *** sits quiet
Upon a fire
Birthed from their own white bones
The little men
are cooking up a stew again
Sprinkled with gold, with ashen stars
It boils and burps
A viscous storm
Never to come
As the *** sits quiet all night long

Oh Palestine,
You, your lovers
Lovers and the rest—
When in the morning
The flames are tired, and bones
Bones no more
The stew will still be stirring
With winds raging on
And no one will be left
No one will be left

With winds raging on
No one will be left

Oh Palestine
Where did the little men go so wrong—

My life is being shredded away.

— my little brother while shredding cheese that he was bullied into doing by mother’s threats of having his Laptop abducted away

Hello poetry
Hello p**try
H'llo poetry

your 502 bad gateways are
freaking me out
I got no copies of
all my ******* man

I wander around the house
Like a heavy ghost
My room.
Turn off the A.C. and open up the windows
Faizan’s room, little brother
Mother’s
My room
It is too barren in here
The kitchen
Open the fridge; I am not even hungry
Drink some water
Faizan’s room
— What up?
— Doom
— Cool. Carry on
He sets a zombie on fire
Hoping around the mountains
Like a wounded bird

Mother’s room
Bathroom for another shower
My room
I might just be passing through the walls
‘Cause man do I not recall
Heading to the kitchen again
Older brother’s room
— What up?
— Hmm?
Exposes a red ear from beneath the headphones
— What up?
— Shut up.
Touché.
Mother’s room
— Do you want my help studying?
— Nah, I’m sleepy

My room
Turn on the A.C.
shut the window
The evening sun pours in through the purple curtains
Washing the room in a faint blush
(not that anybody asked)
…
…
Cannot sleep
…
…
Faizan’s room
— Weren’t you dying? He asks
— Couldn’t
— Ah, sad.
Kitchen
Might just make coffee
Faizan’s room
— Hey! Not here!
— Won’t spill it, chill dude.
He sighs,
Roaming around a darkened cavern
A diamond sword in hand.
He puts on a song he knows I like.
It flutters around us
Like a swarm of frightened moths
I feel I might explode—
Mother’s room
Wait, it’s night already?
But, I just had—
Perfect.
Beautiful.

My room.
The books laugh
The walls laugh, the clock laughs
I feel I might be melting
A night stands dressed up
At the end of the aisle
And I, a bride to be butchered,
Butchered, butchered
Then wed again

Time to study
(not the books,
the ceiling)
Haha.
Tricked ya.
Here, that rhymed, ******
Is this a poem yet?

(Why the hell am I in kitchen again?)