When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
’Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue— to the scandal of The ***!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges— even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

To Jody;
My five years old friend and nephew

I put down the telephone,
entering a nap of elation,
till the echo of your sweet utterance
On the back of expatriation's wind
Swims away, dims.
By then, medusas of melancholy with their thick sorrow
fill up my throat
and my heart
would blindfolded fall on the knees and
die down…

With good and bad big wolves
tracing lost children or stuffing shaking goat kids into their paunch.
With ravenous bears, malignant hyenas
and crude giants,
garrulous  gracious squirrels, laborious ants
and active voracious hares.
With them, the two of us
had upholstered the land and sky of the wonderland,
and with their voices and whoops all,
we had irritated the dreamland's walls.

No matter how many times
we were building the villages for stories of straw, furze sticks and bricks,
I would only visit your house of mattresses and pillows.

Only for you,
I did revived the dead wolf
in order to revenge the "predatory" lumberjack.
With no regret I kept sending "wolfy" to the roasted chicken's shop
to defeat the hunger,
So that he won't eat the trapped little girl.
And before your smile,
the wolf in walrus moustache would play with the girl till daddy comes and takes her home.

And you are …
popping out, never closing the wide eyes of yours,
waiting for grandpa to take us to the village.
Up from the houses' roofs,
with Qarmeetlak's1 rabbits,
beyond the barbwires and in secret,
we stick the tongues out to the Turkish barracks.
Along with goat kids,
in tracking smugglers' traces,
we fool the landmines,
sneak to the other side of the border.
With smiley faces and hidden bleats,
We ****** the poppies and the grass that grow out from the edges of spring and the craters.
We hide from smuggler's ghosts who
in the  labyrinths of landmines
because of the unclaimed hands and legs are grabbing the collars.
We taunt the jackals' yowling and the patrolmen.
And in front of the rumbling sky, we do our best to look prettier;
Isn't  it "God taking photos of us"?
And like coward puppies we flee and go back to the safe village,
just before the dusk's winds could carry our smell to the angry spirit of Salan2
who is scouring the Kurmanj's Mountain3,
pursuing his endless vengeances.

Till the break of day,
with your slim clever squirreliness,
out of the branches of the most interlocked sorrowful stories,
you were shaking the attached laughs and guffaws
on the  hair of the deceiver Ashrafieh and the grumpy Sheikh Maksood's4 night.
Eventually, in taking its revenge,
the night would stuff you in a small basket and throw you away into the waves of sleep and dream
accompanied with all that eager to see the giants' kingdom and the mice's storehouses,
squirrels' village, their dances and bridals,
the departure will lead you to the waterfalls' cliffs of a dreamy sparrow's new day.
With the beaming love out from our eyes,
you dry up your tousled feathers and
take into the open.

Nevertheless, how simple-hearted the lies were when I kept telling you:
"Dog is a dog, a wolf is a wolf and the kitty is a kitty, and what are we, my Jody?
We are humans!"

I didn't want you to know
how in the world, could a dozen of
rabid armed dogs
smash down the door
and out from your eleven months old eyes,
with a persistent thronged barking,
they did take your dad away to the deepest liars of the ranch of malevolence,
introducing him to all kinds of animality.

How might I explained to you
why in the world, they reduced 'dad' for you
to that thing which every month
from behind a doubled bars
keep sending you a tearful laugh?
Why did they minimized the ancient capital for you into
both of the Political Security Branch and Siednaya's Jail5?

Your fingers had just started taking to writing and drawing.
You had just started
cantering your own stories
along with unsaddled breezes' foals
when herds of jackals with dark mouths
deported 'your Azad' into a fool refuge.
Again,
they
made
you
an orphan.

Inside the brushwood of the story and the wilderness of the epic,
since neither your fingers have become able to rise the sign of victory correctly,
nor could your throat match the letters of 'Kurdistan' properly,
whatever cave you step in,
no matter how shiny is the globe in the witch's hands,
she would never be able to tell you,
these lacrimatory mist and clouds,
with the emerging of every spring,
from which valleys of the ranch of malevolence  
did they come to overflow the Kurdish neighborhoods.
How did they vilely with no permission go up to the third floor
in order to join you in a poisoned feverish soiree.
And since when
the creatures of darkness
that they had brought
have been grazing their hyenas
among our fresh hopes.


Hence…
when I tell you that
I'll come back with the snowfall,
it is nothing but a lie!
When you ask me to come back in summer
in order to hang on my back
and swim together
along with the little fishes,
such an imagination!
When you are not sleeping in my empty bed anymore
Intending to let my pillow and blanket await for
my return,
only a childish dream!!
Yet, when you
in the sweet and soft Afrini accent of yours
say to me
'Ozod, I mithed you thoo thoo thoo much',
my heart
would blindfolded fall on the knees and
die down…

Azad Ekkaş
Roni_alend@outlook.com
Erbil: 3-1-2011

They call me the smartest *****; they look at me like they would at Sauron.  Maybe I am just destined to be defined like an oxymoron, and also why do people shut their doors on me like I was a Mormon. Did I make the right choice when I took the blue pill and moved into Zion? Don’t know how to feel or who or what I should rely on. Bygones are bygones, got to follow the drill, so best not pull any funny ones. Being spied on, got no where to run, after all when your under a dictatorship there is no time for fun, there is only time to train one how to shoot a gun. Blang blam got a cross on fire on my lawn from the dreaded Ku Klux ****.  One extreme to another, what happened to Jesus’s teachings of how we are all heavenly sisters and brothers? **** the American dream; **** this apparent land of the free where anyone from anywhere can attain cream. Not a joke so turn this into a meme, this is serious if you only saw the things which some claim as the unseen.

Open your mind; don’t bind yourself to devilish things that appear kind. Charging up my chakra, hypnotizing you with my words like I’m the unclaimed child of Big Poppa. I am so waka I get yawl flocking to my flame, my bars aint **** yeah they as lit as Mary Jane. Bulking up like Bain, natural leader and I got a big brain. Some stalker ******* get so shady, thinking that I will spend my gravy, or that I will have their baby. Sorry I am not interested in getting rabies or taking a taste of your dead daisy. This is my loot; ***** the only thing I’ll give you is the boot. Scoot away from me, best stray by the bay before I write a restraining order on thee.  What is this world coming to? Harold be it that we stuck in a rut with a storm beginning to brew.  

People say I should stop drinking because I got family duties and responsibilities but I drink because I have to deal with the stress from family duties and responsibilities.  **** it all; **** my *****, better duck down because one punch and you’ll fall. Got the gall, Pokémon master man **** right I’m about to catch them all! I’m super and I like to smash bro, so better hide your ***** and your side **. Classically unclassified, mentally traumatized from a fall out of a genocide. Time to be unfiltered; rhyming from a heart that used to be good but now has been altered. Maybe I am just an oxymoron, just a sly fox that know how to survive because no matter what my hope for a better world will stay strong. I may live in this world but I am not of it, I may continue to give until I decide to say ah **** it! Isn’t it ironic? Isn’t the whole point of being a rapper to make a profit and strive to rap as fast as the speed of sonic? Let me puff some **** and drink till I’m subatomic. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Wouldn’t that be something if I chose to become like everyone else and live out a life of being toxic. So am I ironic or am I just an oxymoron? Don’t give a **** either way because I am iconic and will take anything you haters bring on!

She wishes she could tell you that she's doing better.
She wanted to express her feelings, and you let her.

Now, acknowledged she does feel,
Her wounds continue to heal.

She knows why you pushed her away,
There's a reason why she couldn't say what she wanted to say,
That day, in the cafe.

She wants you to achieve your crazy idea and let you do whatever it is that you need to do,
She doesn't have what it takes to be angry at you. It is the truth, she'll always love you.

She is sorry that she was rude,
And ruined your mood over the food.
She didn't wish to hurt you with her words so crude,
But that's the way she does brood.
You didn't have to hear her nonsense, dude.

You, she'll never have the strength to claim,
Yet, she lights up each time she hears your name,
She loves you still, she loves you and will always feel the same,
It is not that she'd wait for you, more like she can't move on.
It her fault, you should not get the blame.

You’ll find them in all such establishments,
(Be they graceful small-town former Victorian homes,
Or cinderblock edifices mindful of some campus multi-faith center)
Sitting in the basement, cheek-to-jowl
With moldering burial records and banking statements,
Yellowed newspaper clippings, faded prayer cards
Small squared-off boxes hastily tabbed together,
Ostensibly temporary containers which have acquired
An unintended and wholly unwelcome permanence.
The whys and wherefores of their subterranean placement
A mixed bag of foible and outright foolishness:
Unresolvable squabbles concerning possession and burial,
Families that skipped out on the bill, leaving mom behind,
Cases of outright not giving a good-*******.
And so they remain, in lieu of repatriation and redemption,
To sit for something akin to perpetuity in some cases
(Members of the profession resolute in their respect
For the dignity of life,
Though their sincerity enjoys less unanimity)
While others wait for mass burial
Once legal niceties have been satisfied,
While still others, in care of firms not so scrupulous
About crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s,
Are flung, albeit somewhat surreptitiously, out the back door,
The remains to take flight if the grass is dry and the wind is brisk,
Otherwise to be left to the vagaries
Of curious birds and creped soles.

Good Friday 2020
_____

The wind groans with reluctance
Sends April snow in squalls—
a tossed and careless shawl
worn long and tired with this Day
No glimpse of sun
A dirge of snow surrenders on the grass
Winter making one more pass
among us
gray with grief

Due east of Rat Island

alone

Appropriate in name
Appropriate to this, the day

surrounded only
by the jealous surf
with hateful waves
surrounded by the howls of “crucify!”
“He is not ours!

They are not ours!
We are not ours!”

Send them all away
They belong to the island
to the ground
from which they came
Not for us to cry and claim

Their abandonment

Wooden boxes fill the
trench—
A Babi Yar
of our own doing
so it seems
and yet again...
Golgotha

In the bitterness
of heart there is

an island--

Hart—I think they call it
Both a prison and a graveyard
of NYC

A place “despised and rejected”

rejected of men
an island of sorrows...
and acquainted with grief....”

      “...I see myself an ancient Israelite.
       I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt
      And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
      And even now, I bear the marks of nails....”
                                   --Yevgeni Yevtushenko

...inscribed on the palms of His hands....

Again—

There is an island
where scores of the forgotten lie
He knows them all by name

Today it binds my tongue
with bonds of sadness
It has traveled in the tides
of time to find us

Our Babi Yar has come for us
to take us to Hart Island

Unmarked
Unloved
Unclaimed
_____

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BabiJarravijn.jpg…

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that more people are being buried at the city's potter's field, but stressed that only the bodies of the unclaimed would be buried there.

The blank paper stares at me
It knows I have no thoughts
But how can I keep it from winning
when I have nothing to share?
The paper mocks me from all four corners
Challenging my thoughts and intelligence

For I have nothing to write

Searching high and low
I'm seeking for inspiration
Words fading, people leaving
memories disappearing into the dark void
My tongue incapable of letting
the emotions fall from my mouth
They run to avoid my grasp
My hand reaches out to them
But they flee once again

The ink is wasted. Pen is silenced. Going unused.

The blank paper stares at me
For I couldn't birth my truth
Mocking and laughing
The paper won.

*Inspired by Jessica DeBoo's "Unclaimed Territory"