Pandora's Box Poetry - Backgammon & Dice

The sunflowers were longer than I. She climbed a few steps. I heard a broken mirror. Men. He was gone. A breath. But we left again. A highway. A military field I could see from the window with no army.  The rails with no trains. The train stations were backgammon and coffee with cardamom inside on small tables and men Hubble-bubbling. The railroad covered with second hand stuff. Once upon a time, the train went back home.  

Pandora's Box Poetry - The King & The Oak

I woke up. I’m not a fan of waking up. I like dreams better even if bitter. It was a sunny day. Not summer yet, neither cold nor hot. Perfect -as it could be- that even weather wouldn’t be a subject. I can see the sun between the branches lying on a tree swinging. My grandfather with his huge belly is sitting on the grass across my mother. She is not thin but not fat, chubby, perhaps, blond with short hair.  Both are trying to agree on what to cook first on the barbeque. Mom is a pro she knows how to put the fire on in a few minutes. It is an Oak. One can park a few cars under it. It is an ancient tree. It should have been there for thousands of years. Swinging around I had a lucid dream of a king sleeping under the Oak before crossing the canal to Cordoba. Next day the Parrots woke me up shouting and swearing. The King is coming. The King is coming. I ran to the door. The Parrots were swearing in Turkish. 'Siktir git! Siktir git!' I went outside. My mom was talking. A car had parked under the house with two young men and a soldier. Mom was laughing. ‘Go get some old newspapers from the library’ she said to me and I will get some water in a bottle! I looked for a few seconds to who was there; a young blond boy with another one I don’t remember and a soldier with a funny hat. We got them what they needed then they left. Mom said he is a prince and they are playing a joke with the neighbors. The castle was on the top of the hill above the Oak. Who would know he would be the king.

Pandora's Box Poetry - Home

‘Where do I come from?’ or ‘Which country do I feel like I belong to?!’ or more weird, ‘Where do I feel at home?’ I want to grumpily reply,  ‘In some planet where you do not exist now’ with a humble smile to whomever is asking. But usually I have to shut up during these questions if they are bureaucrats. It depends. A question that still faces me during my entire life born as one of the exiled. To be honest I really don’t remember the multi-billion little stories that I make up on the spot to answer according to the different situations. Stories depend on the general atmosphere, the time, the weather; whether it is a sunny day or not, if I’m having a good day or not, or if I might get in trouble because of my humor, anger or if I had offended anyone around me. Answers usually range between nice, intelligent and wise to stupid, offensive and even rude. Not that I aim for any of that. I just happen. Some simple answers are ‘I am a mix-identity of Levant’, of ‘Palestinian & Iraqi descent, born in Jordan’, a ‘made up English term called Middle Eastern’, an ‘Arab with a taste of Kurdish, Armenian, Circassian and Turk’. To go historically deeper; ‘a citizen of mixture, of Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian’. If religion is on the table, mostly I will mock all politely, ‘a Palestinian from Jerusalem born on Christmas day, declared a Muslim yet the Gods and I haven’t agreed of their existence, neither did my city agree to settle in peace.’

It seems to me that our existence is a coincidence and so will be our absence. It just seems like humans are accelerating the process to damage the planet before we leave. It feels like as if I was invited by force to a sold-out show of a black-comedy theatre for ‘Homo-sapiens versus the Rat Race’ hammering on in a round planet circling to an unknown end.