This Eid, no lamb walks beside me
only this chest, split like Zagros stone,
veins scorched by the breath you left behind.

No fire feeds these ribs.
What burns here is older than flame
a hunger etched in salt and sinew.

Pomegranate splits in my grip
its flood outlasts both hands or gods,
a red that marks and does not fade.

If the blade must fall,
then let it bury deep
let bone crack with your name,
let the ash remember.

Under the crescent’s cold eye,
I speak no thrones of smoke.
Only your hand
rising from fire,
rough with warmth,
proof that I endured.

I’m a rainy day parade.
A parade that was rained on
but decided to play anyway.

Neither the rain nor the parade is a charade.
Rather, the rain is Kool-Aid and the parade is a wall
of a bar.
I’m on the other side looking far



too






gone.
I sob and blub between a racket of thunder and brass.
Every emotion I feel feels crass.

Alas, are these drops tears or rain?
My life is a metaphor for itself.
Is that irony or plain?
Maybe they were drops of Kool-Aid.

And how does one ask for help? Or plead and not feel
Pity, shame? And does one ever grunt and say what one needs to say?
At some point in the yarn of the time, how does one
Look over one’s shoulder to reconcile,
How does one open a mouth to say
“I am lost. I think” But does one truly think,
Or act on the impulses.
Or calm oneself to ask. Ask!


And “When should I think?” I ask
“soon,” I say, “soon, on some wintery night,
When my windowpanes creak in the cold,
When my steel glass never gets warm,
I might think or ask, how does one not think?
and find a reason to reason with it;
The weary long journey, how it doesn’t end
And seems to start at every corner of the road”
“Perhaps, I shall shave my head
and wash my face with some fragrant soap
or trim my beard to look sharp and address it,
perhaps, soon!”

"are you happy?"
echoing
lingering
imitating
reanimating sound

"maybe"
cyclic
anemic
phobic
armistice

"I am asking for a yes or a no"
endangered
requiting
enamored
caprice

"so which is it?"
vibrating
shattering
lingering
doubt

"are you truly happy?"
monotheistic
never-ending
asphyxiating
reprise