isolated fabricated in contrast with the other degredation and simultaneous progression that has characterized all societies thrust into modernity but this story is different this one is built on the graves of the family members of over 100,000 people who fled in just a few days time as planes roared overhead and flew low over their houses, planes

bearing the Israeli flag, terror in their hearts, sparing themselves, abandoning their houses without knowing whether they’d ever see their homes, their gardens, their fields, their neighbors again

Not knowing that even their footsteps would be erased, that their houses would fall to bulldozers, only a few short day slater. that erected upon their land the landscape would be changed to reflect a new imagining of their landscape, an illegal and immediate colonization that would transform their landscape into the familiar identical red-topped roofed shapes on the horizon

the fields filled with landmines and barbed wire

the mountaintops full of the eyes of military observers who blew up the land and sent bullets through its air and put up their feet in their shiny new kitchens that were planted on the still smoldering remains of the villages below them.

they would say, our nature is taken away.

there is no nature, only IDF.

they would say, we are Syrian. they would say, enough. and they would begin to blend into the landscape and to pile on top of one another, and to erase the memory of trees and gardens and space

and hope and would begin to live under a new name: occupation.

how much hope can a people have who have endured and endured?

how much stock can a people put in an international system that speaks but no one listens?

how much resistance can they endure when even their staunchest resisters are fluent in the language of the occupier, when the school’s curriculum tells another person’s story?

when families are cut off and dissidents imprisoned and the very sustenance of the people themselves comes from the construction of other peoples’ homes on their own land

on the ruins of their neighbors’ homes, on their memories some would call it torture;

here they call it progress.

There are some who will agree that this grotesque twist of the history and functioning of a people, that this forcible manipulation, that this cruel distortion of history and person is an improvement

because it’s measured in mercedes and mobile phones.

piled up next to the remnants of lost civilization, what are we looking at?

What I see when I look at this place is much more than a comfortable life.

It’s more than the hospitality of a people who welcome me into their homes and orchards and shops and hearts.

I see an accidentally chosen people, living in the shadow of ancestors they are prohibited from knowing.

This is not an argument between tradition and modernity.

This is not a battle over which trumps which. this is a battle over who has the right to choose his own destiny, to write her own history.

I am reminded of the tragedy of losing a friend, of losing a playground.

“this used to be my playground.
this used to be my childhood dream.
this used to be the place i ran to whenever i was in need of a friend.
why did it have to end?”

Mosque destroyed in war

ode to a half-eaten peach

to the twice-bit
plumpripejuicy
unwanted
discarded peach
lying by a dumpster

to the dish of rice-
filled, half-finished
soy sauce
I carry you longingly
how I long for your succulent flesh
to delight in each bite
of your sweetness

to the warm wasabi-
coated leftover sushi
to the remnants and morsels
to the whole
perfectly good pieces
that I bring to the
dishwasher

to the heady crumbs
the delicious drops
the wasted wonder

I wonder:
why haven’t I seen you before?

to lumps and bumps and
piles of golden
delicious unwanted food
in trash cans everywhere

like a dumbstruck lover
I wonder:
where were you all my life?
how did you pass me by?
how did i pass you up?
reject you
betray you, discard you
blind to your beauty

I want you now
I know you
your tantalizing scent
your juicy freshness

I love you now, my half-eaten
side-of-the-road peach

I twisted its parts and shaped something new, put pieces in and took them out and felt for the first time the supreme power of creation. I alone had the omniscient power to turn a man into an automobile and, with a wave of my divine hand return him to his pitifully mortal humanity. I gave him voice and I gave him thoughts and I made him walk and I made him vrooooomvrooooomvrooooooooom and I was idolatrous.

My servant and I were exploring the sullied and steep grimy leather canyons of a honking yellow malay taxi when news came that my newfound divinity had been one-upped.

“Zaki… there’s something we need to tell you… well…”

“Just tell him Afeefa!”

“Zaki… you’re going to have a new brother or sister!”

My heart stopped and servant fell forgotten to the floor. My dominion crumbled, my independence shattered, and the aliens had landed.

“Does…does…does the taxi-man know?”

crunch of crisp leaves,

If not for the slimy smile of slugs beneath

Would’ve salsa’d with the sun

beaming from ear to ear of corn,

But it’s the UVs, you see

She couldn’t have been my mother, for my

lips would touch no mossy bosom

I could converse with wind and trees

if I troubled to learn woosh and bark,

But why can’t they all just

speak English? This is America.

I’d live deep and suck out the

marrow of life,

But I’d rather save my tongue

for tastier things

In short: I’d bother to live in harmony

with the earth and sing verses with the universe

till the smiles smote all the swords and

weapons surrendered to the power of words,

and beings loved outside their herds,

and all of us flew with the birds,

If it wasn’t so fuckin’ inconvenient.

My generation sleeps on the wire

on the cords of constant connection
on the myth of instant earnings
on the fullness of today without the inconvenience of yesterday

we’re lit up with hope

strung out with work
caffeinated primped and manicured into debt
googled into silence
facebook fury expended in blurbs about dinner

we’re documented

studied
categorized
micro-marketed
packaged and
sold on ebay

we’ll all be stars
we’ll all be stars on youtube

our moment is every moment
our dance is unrehearsed
our day is divine
you’ll know us by our eyes that never shut
by the way we scream of every moment
urgently
look at this
…. at nothing

we’re changing the world
our day is every day
you need a translator to understand us
we’ll probably solve your crises
by selling virtual space on the moon
screaming
“OMG this is like so hot j/k lol fail”

Saw my field stained with rain

I was an island flooded by the tears

The pain of no goodbyes

I was eating lunch with a delightful

The wall fell and my dam broke.

I’m looking for a world in which charity is not my only angel and in which no joy or sorrow is too small to be counted in the rainbow of human compassion.

I’m looking for a world where mirrors aren’t haunting. Where brothers and sisters neither hide their faces nor color them sallow in our gleaming kaleidoscope of color. Where catalogs don’t present only caricatures of human possibility and one stripe of our colored rainbow.

I’m looking for a world where life is a choir in which no baritone nor soprano reigns above their common music. Where the silences are upheld as much as the melody as part of the same song.

I’m looking for a world in which quiet and noise are equally celebrated, where we embrace the shadows as much as the light.

I’m looking for a world where my daughters and sons find no shame in holding out their hands, find no remorse in being the relief, nor the relieved.

I’m looking for a world where the lowly and fearful find relief in the strong and confident, where the weaknesses of one are filled by the other.

I’m looking for a world where we see that we have a place, that we are merely players, that we are all part of the same fabric, the same wisdom, the same sunlight.

I’m looking for a world where I can look you in the eye and you will look back at me, smiles or tears. I’m looking for a world where our faces can melt back into our childlike joy, our wonder, where we can radiate in each other’s love and compassion.

I’m looking for a world of dignity, of respect for humanity, where no brother or sister’s voice sounds strange to our ears, where no person’s skin is too different to hold in our embrace. Where no act of man or God deforms us in each other’s eyes so that we are less than human. Where every man, woman and child is worthy in our eyes, in our hearts, in our homes, with our families and at our tables.