Homeland (found verse)

It’s hard for me not to feel like I felt when I was 14 in 2001. It is somehow strange and normal to realize, in actuality, adult life is the acceptance of people you are tied to through markers and chromosomes and birthplace waging war. It is not what I thought. In any case, I wrote this in 2008, in a very good poetics class with a high focus on MENA (Middle Eastern Northern Africa) poets, where we took lines and made found poems. If you are interested, the anthology is: Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. FB and I bought our copy together, and I’m glad she still has it. I am unfortunately still at a loss to find all the poets who I found words from, but “Midday” by Ak Welsapar is indelible to me. There are many, many, other incredible poets, but if you have not read Mahmoud Darwish, Victims of the Map is a good a place as any to start with his curation. For all you urbanists out there, well, let us think of maps.

Be good to each other. For the love of God, call for a Ceasefire. 

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Homeland Homeland Homeland(A Found Poem, 2008)

Die simultaneously in three countries / Speak different languages in different rooms / 

(Oye-Da-Nee-Ch-Ch-Ch-Mer-Cy) / I can hear from adjacent rooms

-the South, you know, is the land of promise-

-the plants that ignite-

-clouds on the faces/ dead cities-

While smoking my cigarette/ My extensions, my exertions, my pride, my country(s)/ Children gathering sunshine outside Pentecostal Churches Tornadoes, claps of thunder, my horses neighingI fall out of smoldering biographies/ sleep on a body of language/ 

Written on Orinoco jungles, refined deserts

You are the grief of my living, my never translated poem

I walked into murders and riots/Belief in electricity, in water, in rivers/Crushed angels, safety pins/ 

Though we were ghosts among skyscrapers, we found it very hard to die a girl, my face to the sky

I bear a worry in my heart not everyone bears/ My homeland follows me everywhere.