Between Haram and Iniquity.
Photo by Sergio Kian on Unsplash.
Between haram and iniquity
I mirror the entirety of myself in a pocket-sized gadget as counterfeit
from foreign materials.
These days, my flesh bleeds the odor of shortage
forged by the economist
who reeks of poverty in grand style into our veins.
Everyone weeps formaldehyde.
The government is not of the people,
nor by the people, nor for the people.
It is a farm dispute,
a ruffle effect of another blast
where we seek to trample on ourselves inside a mud pie π.
They are touring around our body,
somewhere in a critical care unit.
Our bones are tottering on the edge of sobbing gold.
Still, we choose to envelope our mouths
around the blister in our palms,
on the worn-out bet tickets that have bleached our senses.
The tiny lobes beneath our ears remain nonliving.
Look at us, running anticlockwise,
rearing a man’s myopic breath—
sloping midway into a collapsed grace.
Look at our skin— vulnerable and weary
between haram and iniquity.
Nothing in our country
is worth surviving for.
In my dreams,
I watch plunderers measuring the angles of slump
on our faces.
And there I detonate a grenade
in their ribcage for aborting our bodies in a critical unit.
Life isn’t fair in this courtroom.
How would I tell justice I’ve been handsomely rewarded to bleach its name?
Art from The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash.
The currency of many deaths.
these days, the face behind misery is an abstract force:
a protracted pain like claws of many sizes,
a sacrilege from a madman’s tongue,
painting ashes in salt water & feeding it to the destiny of future sons.
nothing hurts more than the feelings of emptiness in the belly of a child.
the ghrelin hormone is seeking adventure.
this days, my temple is a carrier of pious pains
tilted on a platter of rage,
from the crude hands of those who evaluate this house of flesh
with the wealth of accursed gold: the currency of many dead.
twelve months into democratic fiction,
my father’s mortgage has incurred harm,
& by all means, I become a debtor— my surname debited on every ledger
as the banks erased my profile.
now, they have raided my wealth & the inheritance
I safeguarded with caution
into their shelf that stinks like crime.
I live inside a tsunami with holes here too small to bury their howls.
pain reshuffled; my bloodline bleeds.
I am torn apart by grating lips that sing manifestos
after each swarm of undergoing martyrdom,
with grumbling stomach & swollen eyes
watching a video game, trapped in a room filled with faulty memories.
I am not proud to identify with them since being free in my hometown demands surviving on
pennies.
so I request this poem break boundaries—
for I, too, am a product of lawbreakers.
Photo by Phoebe T on Unsplash.
A catechist in a bloody cassock.
How do I say that we’re catechist in a bloody cassock,
gutter locoweeds, in Japanese accent
in the body of Nagasaki that turned ichor?
a hand claws through the ribcage of our existence
& forces us to bleach our face in a furnace named extinct:
i. a hand tattooed with menace become a scorch on our skin
ii. the scourge of vagabond ghosts that render us homeless
iii. a press retched between Haram & bandit’s teeth
This situation forces us into a mud pie π.
being decent here demands rebellion.
tonight, the country has written our surnames
in a vile note of Arabic script:
say: السجناء .....!
a future empties itself into a stoic grief.
at the mention of grief we’re howling into self-pity,
masticated by vultures.
call it a bloody cassock, my body is a plundered field.
what is the weight of this nomenclature?
i. a portmanteau of slave trade.
ii. a tree reciting new ways to die.
iii. a doomsday calling, manifesting to enslave the next generation.
iv. all of the above
beside the stern hands that groomed us—
I include my deceased relatives, slumbering through dust,
Pa reeks of rot from his grave.
so here, I rehearse the origin of exile
from the barred lines of a musical staff
instead to be the bride fed fat for marriage.
Photo by Julian Schultz on Unsplash.
Rehearsing violence.
I enter into this poem through my heart, creep my way into my fingers,
to compress around my subconscious mind
like the shape of spearhead— bullet of uncouth words.
In the stillness of my room,
I stammer into a gun in search of ruin
aiming at the man outside my window
until age leaks finely from his skin.
At noon, I unleashed mayhem that chill the walls of the chests,
frightening teenagers for being domesticated without a price tag
sizing them up for leverage.
To put it succinctly, I am a scarecrow; my tongue is a bullet.
My breath twists into a rustling wind
each time my name is pronounced with bilabial plosive— that goes boom!
The bullet leaning inside my blood vessel
allows me rehearse violence in the orbit of my mind,
before demonstrating it through my fist.
I am beginning to see the monster within me
hawking a well-dressed wrath—
the act of murder without an artillery,
my body gets excited on damnation.
I love to have more crime on my name,
to cherish the utensils that groomed me as a gun;
I love it for the other side, frightening my foes.
I love to take the form of a loud verb,
It is to be at peace with the waltzing hotness of a projectile.
I wish to account for my tongue, and not lose my mouth to a plague.
