An unexpectedly patriotic rant

Its 12:45 am. Earlier than my usual bouts of reflective melancholy. It is already quiet in the house and I’m thinking of pulling an all-nighter simply because. I like this quite in-between.

My room is a mess – the way it used ot be in KSA. I have been keeping it clean since I got here but with all this stuff…I’m wondering why I brought it in the first place. Its like burning a CD. you burn it with a certain mood and then after a couple days wonder why the hell you put those songs in there. What were you thinking? What was I thinking? I was thinking here would be so much like there. I was afraid here would be like there so I brought everything that I needed, might possibly need here. But here is a new place. I need to make space for new things.

I am thinking of relationships and death, and what Pakistan has come to. What we have come to as a people, as a race, as human beings. What has happened to us and where is that Pakistan I remember from my early years? Where is that possibility of life? I never classed myself as patriotic. But patriotism has become more of a love for the people than a love for the government. If it can even be called love. I detest the culture but I know it and maybe that is what makes me feel for it more than the goings on in Mexico or Sudan or Iraq, Afghanistan. I know what the roads look like, I know the smell, the dirt of that country and this mere knowing…it does something. There is so much potential there. So much talent. People like me who are willing to think, willing to put themselves out there, prove themselves, willing to LIVE and not just exist as secondary things among the political warfare. Collateral damage. I hate that term.

I have the urge, again and again, to pack up and go there. To live impermanently but to live and DO something. To change something for someone over there – to show them there is more to life than desecration and death. But I have no money of my own and money is everything. I do have a “network” there – what I prefer to call a group of like-minded individuals who are willing to be real enough to give some form of a damn about whats going on around them. And yes, we have a vision we are working towards – a vision of Pakistan as it once was, culturally rich, educated, a place to be proud of. The Pakistan that we remember from years ago when we were little kids, the Pakistan we hear of from even further back when our parents were kids. We have that vision and perhaps we can make it something more. Perhaps we can make it better.

This wasn’t meant to be a patriotic rant. I guess this is just what I am thinking of, more than I would care to admit. Maybe its some ridiculous response to being in this wonderful mesh of people and cultures that is the GTA. Maybe its some desperate grasp for identity. I dont know what it is but it has me thinking. I wonder what it takes to get other people thinking too.

Untitled

 

I go

about the house finding

new places

for old things –

my books crammed

in the last drawer

of my chest,

your words folded

carefully

in the one above –

the shelf unfilled

table empty

there is too much

and too much missing

from the weight I carried

with me to this land

 

Morning

in this neat suburbia

with its neat

rows of neat houses -

I dress

in the clothes

from a city that shrieks in the night

and by morning has died

and rebirthed itself

leaving the messy aftermath

of loss and creation

 

Morning

in this neat suburbia –

a cushion room

for the insane    we

who have

and have lost

too much

are in a little corner of

the world playing

with our own demons –

in these mornings nothing

happens

and nothing is real

 

In these pristine mornings

who

can say there is something

wrong

with the world

and who still grieves over

those wrongs?

And if

there is still grief

where nothing happens

and nothing is real

what does that mean?

 

You,

around whom

this foggy stillness shatters

and the world becomes

real

Tell me -

tell me upon which shelf

I should place this grief,

folded in what way

tucked in which drawer

Tell me

what have you done with yours?

Tell me

what shall I do with mine?

 

I go about the house

finding new places for

old things.

I am amazed. Absolutely amazed. I listen to them now and think of the small small life I lived in my small small bubble, in this small, protected little sphere of life where everything was externally mediated and I think dear god how could i have lived like that? How could i have even learned to THINK in that bubble? Let alone reject the external mediation and try and try to get a hold of things for myself. I listen to them and think I was like that once but was I? I remember my life in the past 17 years like a haze – only bits and pieces here and a little there – moments without feeling crushed together, floating in this vacuum of ultimate nothingness. Ultimate nothingness that was meant to be my life, my purpose in that country, society, people.

Life has grown for me here and given me space to grow. And I only just now realize it, after looking back at what it was I moved on from.

Villanelle

What comes out of this pain?

echoing through centuries the lament

of being alive and human and sane

We carry on in the wrong lane

tracing the paths of our descent

to find what comes out of this pain

As gatherers we venture out for gain

from our flimsy paper tent

of the alive and human and sane

Walking while predators line the plane

all that happens now happens with our consent

to what comes out of this pain

And this time the Earth does not birth grain

we return with bodies and heads bent

to be alive and human and sane

Many of us have lain

tired nights, long, bodies spent

for what comes out of this pain

of being alive and human and sane

Untitled

 

Your jacket lies

in my room

where I come to smell it

should I begin

to lose your scent

You said

I don’t know

how

this began,

or when

amnesia seizes us turning

bits of our lives to void

the wells empty

and hunger

sits at the edges

of our tongues

 

—

 

After I had poured myself

into you

after we each had drunk

and satisfied ourselves    moment-

arily we sat with bellies

full still groping

for that last drop    the last

gulp which would

quell our hunger    but

the lie never surfaced

 

—

 

we came to each

other as a land

of forgotten landmarks

bodies rigid with

subdued desperation

there is the cracked

sidewalk I tripped on

and scarred my knee

there is

the hill you climbed

chasing june-bugs

 

—

 

later in your car I

tell you lies    there

is no sidewalk    no

chase

 

you roll

my words on the edge

of your tongue we swerve

violently off the hill

I don’t know

how

this began

or when

your body

slashed open

as I grope for

the last drop

with which to quell

this hunger before

the void forms itself again

Song of the Sirens

 

the sounds break open

and die at your feet -

what are we

supposed to say to this?

the heretical sound

of music this night when

no words can be said

to our children

of what we have done to ourselves

of what we keep doing –

 

tonight the sirens

sing us to sleep

to a chorus of rhythmic bombing

tonight the sirens

wail    somebody

has been shot, somebody

has been knifed, somebody

raped

or all three    or somebody

has been netted

with bullets, dragged

into a cell, stripped

mutilated,    or somebody

has choked on a pretzel

 

.tonight

we lay our children to sleep

shutting the fairytale we told

them so they may rest peacefully

tonight    in some other world

that we do not know    (do not wish

to know)    a child

lays entrapped in

the song of the sirens

 

tonight the sounds break

open

but die at your feet –

tomorrow there will be nothing

to say of this.

Reflections on a Man in a Room

I wouldn’t want to be left in the same room with him, relatively alone. It was only the two of us, and then him. Its better to judge wrongly and leave, then to stay and risk…stuff.

The threat was real then. He could easily have done things to us. The door could lock. The walls were thick concrete – sounds didn’t easily pass through. And he could’ve.

He had this look about him. Like he would. Like he was on edge, ready to snap at any moment, any mistaken word. Like he couldn’t look at us without thinking about “it”. But it might just have been me.

So I left. Didn’t wait for any more evidence. Its usually too late by then anyways. I don’t know what happened to the other girl who was with me. She didn’t leave. You could accuse me of abandoning her there, but I didn’t. I told her what I thought and left it up to her. We spoke about him later on. She said he was a nice guy. He might well have been. A lot of them are. Nice.

Recent Reads

I have hit a writing plateau. My poetry is terrible (not improving) and I cannot even begin to write prose. My words are weak. There is SOME thing I want to say, that is swimming around in my head but I can not for the life of my find the right words.

And so, I have been reading. Amazingly, Adrienne Rich is not at the top of the list this time (because I do not have the time!). Only assigned course readings but fun ones…well, my version of fun…which involves staring for hours at the blank space between the lines, trying to figure out what the writer has implied.

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye – I read this before, about an year ago when I borrowed it from the college library (also where I discovered Rich). Loved it ever since. It is, stripping down to the bare essentials, a story of a little black girl named Pecola. Of course, that isn’t the real story. It never is.

Doris Lessing’s The Cleft - half way through this interestingly topsy-turvy retelling of the origins of “man” quite literally. That is, a boy child being born in a pre-existing community of women. It is interesting because although it is topsy-turvy, a lot of the conventional “female” attributes and roles are assigned to the first women. The novel explains it as the story being translated by a male historian presumably in Rome’s early ages. Even so, I think there is more to it. I will be posting a review of this soon, if I can manage it between…everything there is to be done.

I have also been researching on the Villanelle form for my english paper and have found beautiful poems by Marilyn Hacker, Martha Collins, Theodore Roethke and how can we forget Leonard Cohen! Click and enjoy your mind being turned to blissful mush.

On my shelf, waiting to be “completed”, are a billion other titles (well, 13 at least). But I must first complete a bunch of assignments and extra curriculars and yes…generally manage my time a hell of a lot better.

Signing out!

My values and ideas are dated. It is as though I’m fighting against a demon that has been vanquished. I feel slightly insane. At the same time I am shocked at people’s passivity and obliviousness to the demon’s existence. It is there! Can they not see?! But it is not. How do I reconcile my acknowledgment with their denial? Is there a demon? Am I deluding myself?

I have not been able to analyze the life here to be sure enough. What if the demon has died already? Has the demon died already? They say so. But I don’t believe it. It is like returning from war and expecting bombs to keep falling. I am still afraid. I am still on edge. I am still acutely aware and yet I am not. My energy leaks away, analyzing trivialities, all for protection and none of it is translated into useful knowledge. I know how they move, how they talk, I know how to identify them from several feet away and yet I do not know how to put it down in words for others to know. I don’t know how to stop this. Do I want to stop this?

I am fighting against something that no longer exists. Thus, I must be insane. But am I? Am I really?

Doubt.

I fear I will lose myself in my little ideas and thoughts, and die. I fear I will die having done nothing to turn my little thoughts into big actions. I fear death before I have been able to untangle myself from the tediums of everyday life, to transcend the needs of the day to day (money, food, living space). I fear death before i have transcended the everyday and changed it so it no longer needs to be transcended.