I'm leaving.
Less like, Peace the **** out,
more like, I gotta go.
I'm leaving the way ships are wooed by waves,
under the pretense of more promising continents.

I can see where countless hands have pulled at my shoelaces,
wrapped my arches in ribbons of origami,
left me second guessing how well holes burn through soles.
It's been a long day of finding breathing space between double-knots and bending
broken fingernails back into place;
the self-constrained chaotic embrace of something supposedly so
straight as string brings forth beckoning ghosts of
those figure-eight souls who laid themselves
horizontal
to waste their Sundays tracing the Hills
on the breath fogged side of some painted-shut window sill;
trading the promise of Infinity
for the Religion of Monotony.
Praying through agoraphobic day-dreams
raining across the night sky of their eye lids
with the brilliance of meteorites,
imagining how earth-shattering they could be
if only these tyrannosauruses would just look up.

I have come here;
Less like, conquest
more like, exploration.
--Abandoned the comfort of quaint, suburban
ruins of the American Dream, which buckled
like widows knees mid frail-voiced eulogy
mourning the death of their Salesman--
and wandered aimlessly into the improvisation of some story-book jungle,
wishing I was better rehearsed.

I have come here
to congregate with the snakes and beasts; to feast beneath
the din of carnal sin and primal instincts. I've chosen to begin jumping
from stump-to-stump like stepping headstones
in a graveyard of fallen trees, where men,
                     who grew up too quickly and forgot the importance of pretend,
                     who learned early on how to black-market trade
                              the need to imagine for something a little bit more
                                                      tangib­le,­
                     who, smiling through serrated teeth,
saw it fit to clear this wilderness for something a little bit more
domesticated.

But thank god, these brambles grow so thick!
For every hail Mary their metal tongues would lick
into the trees' skin, a hallelujah of vines and branches and roots
would erupt in confused medley,
and their finest mathematics couldn't begin to calculate
the thriving division of a place so ungoverned by logic.       
In a jungle plucked straight from storybook pages
I'll band together with these untamed brutes
--these feral barbarians and unbroken monstrosities--
to howl at the moon with the effervescence of a Ginsberg poem.
We'll forge a tinsel-town crown and take turns
playing king of Where the Wild Things Are found.

See, unlike concrete cities
The Wild of Atavism has never forgotten that
Tradition is a catalyst for change
and that nothing is permanent.
Hell, I've been having laughing contests with a mountain
because every now-and-again he will crack
A smile, and when a mountain laughs
He does so, so gutturally,
From deep within his catacomb chest that
the whole Earth quakes -- everything shifts--
And I'm not gonna lie to you right now,
I've sort of got my heart set on being a part of something so
significant.

So if you follow,
shipwrecked and mapless,
Keep your shoelaces strapped tight
and run off the infinity of double knots.
If you go looking for me, continue
past the paint chips, through
the open window;
Set your sights to the far treelines.
And don't strain yourself listening for
the laughter of mountains,
Because when that stoic disposition
Finally does crack, you'll feel it in your feet
no matter where you are.
And from the way his ridges are crumbling,
I think I've almost got him beat.

WHO WILL SAVE ‘HUMANITY’ FROM ITSELF?



Ayad Gharbawi



Come down, and celebrate with us all
The beginning of a senseless
******
Where children sat awaiting
Trying to
Understand
The necessity
That you humans found in yourselves
Was so necessary to enact
Against the innocently impaled victim

I guess, that no one
Can ever
Accept truths
That for me and for you
Were so different
And yes, the medieval priest
Did laugh gutturally
In his drunken paradise

Yes, that man you loved
Was very sickening
In his punishing self-imposed bleeding dictums
And he can no longer talk
Through his burning tongue
That has been mercifully stabbed
Just far too
Many times..

Eternal laughter
That tries to memorize the renaissance poetry
Is a silly game
That gets you somewhere
Endless rows of frowning fools
I tell you
What did you learn from
All those poetry you did memorize?
I tell you
We must all decide
To stand
Somewhere of relevance and depths
Here in our personal hour
That God
Has dictated for us

Sing, then, the songs of deathness
Wherein the lonely dance
Hundreds and acres more
Of corpses have been recently
Unearthed
Rotting statues
And you can no more bear it
I know
Just as the world
Drowns her dulled eyes
Flying fast and far
Away from your memories

And now all the clowns disguised as priests
Have told me to die
So soon
I guess, they want me to say
“Goodnight”
But I will try to breathe
One more breath
One more escape
From this imprisonment
You classified as ‘life’
You see, I wasn’t really sure
If they weren’t in truth
Priests disguised as clowns

Come tonight and throw your
Second-hand flowers
In that grave for
The princess that has been assassinated tonight
Murdered deeply
In this Paris night
And tomorrow we’ll all laugh idiotically
In astonishment, once again
And the bewildered children will, once more, sit not understanding
The murderous nature of you human beings
And yes, I myself, once more
Do not understand what is impelling you all
To ****, ****** and butcher again and again

Come ye saviours!
Save us, ye saviours!
The crucified darlings
Tearful you stand
I pray for you to rise up and do revenge
Against these sadistic monstrosities
In my increasingly disorientating brain
Christ!
I did try so hard to reach out to you
For you to save us
And my doubts are brimming now
As you wither ever more
Decomposing on that wooden cross

We didn't work
because my brand of love
is bargain-bin CVS romance novel,
there are no fairy tales in which the prince battles addiction,
the princess starves herself all day to make the two beers left in the kitchen
last longer than they were meant to.
Nothing was eloquent in the way we sat on her mattress,
anger seated deeply in our stomachs,
bugs hiding in the curtains, buzzing invisibly,
comforting to me as I felt invisible too,
the sun trickling anemically
through cobwebs and window panes.

We didn't work
because a picket fence will never feel like home to me,
I don't drive so well at night, she smiles
so pretty when I'm not around,
I've heard,
all teeth, and laughs gutturally
in that way she used to
when my fingertips gripped the edges of her
ribcage, before my skin got so rough.
Her eyes are bluer
than the chemical cleaner I use to scrub pots
for rent money, my tongue
just as harsh as she folds into herself
like origami and I ask
what the hell kind of shape it's supposed to be.

We didn't work
because we craved the pieces that were missing,
it made the puzzle hard to look at straight-on,
and I speak in clichés,
and she barely speaks at all,
and that silence broke my bones.