broke and feeble
minds
regurgitate
the lines
of fibs and hate
turn to truth
then propagate
like lions
that roam upon
the plains
a quest for meat
and lust and flesh
torn from bones
left in heaps
and piles
too late-
a predators feast
the liar’s grave.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Frans Van Heerden from Pexels
#Poem #Freeverse #Lion #Predator
bird duck
flip dip flap
through clouds
one not flocked
by friends
merely skipping down
pond to pond
cloud to cloud
lone duck bowling pin
flappy winged fowl
out of synch, out of step
no rhythm, to be found
awkward, imbalanced
a lone waterfowl
squawk squawk
squeak squeak
duck beak chatter
flip flap hovercraft
the hunter’s mallard
bird duck bowling pin
splash crash sound-
Boom!
a cannon shot landing
webbed foot, gliding down.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Christian puta on Unsplash
#Freeverse #Poem #Mallards #Rhymes
Who doesn’t love a good brushfire burning up their walls!
This is a collage layout of my oil pastel “Brushfire” available on those cool metal prints. Great home decor item or snazz up your office walls with some great new artwork.
In my shop! 👨🏼🎨
Enjoy super sharp image details and rich, vibrant colors. No, we’re not talking about the newest HDTVs, but our lightweight, durable Metal Prints. Pick a design and give your space some modern edge with brilliant metal art. Available in three sizes.
Artwork ©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Two great Poems today- With a Highlight on Palestinian American Poet, Naomi Shihab Nye
I periodically turn to poets from my heritage and am always reminded and delighted by the deep roots we have as Palestinian’s in the art forms of Spoken Word, Storytelling and Poetry.
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Carity Randall Prize, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and many Pushcart Prizes. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was a Witter Bynner Fellow. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018 she was awarded the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. Nye is the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate. ( poetryfoundation.org )
“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.
In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.
Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn’t have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
“Shihab”—“shooting star”—
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”
He said that’s what a true Arab would say.
Today the headlines clot in my blood.
A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.
Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root
is too big for us. What flag can we wave?
I wave the flag of stone and seed,
table mat stitched in blue.
I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilized?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?
Naomi Shihab Nye, “Blood” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.Source: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)
What?
You don’t feel at home in your country,
almost overnight?
All the simple things
you cared about,
maybe took for granted. . .
you feel
insulted, invisible?
Almost as if you’re not there?
But you’re there.
Where before you mingled freely. . .
appreciated people who weren’t
just like you. . .
divisions grow stronger.
That’s what “chosen” and “unchosen” will do.
(Just keep your eyes on your houses and gardens.
Keep your eyes on that tree in bloom.)
Yes, a wall. Ours came later but. . .
who talks about how sad the land looks,
marked by a massive wall?
That’s not a normal shadow.
It’s something else looming over your lives.
Naomi Shihab Nye, “A Palestinian Might Say” from The Tiny Journalist. Copyright © 2019 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., http://www.boaeditions.org.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
someone please tell me, where has all the humanity gone? nothing now but scum fronting like a hu-man! i can’t take the cruel profane, of ‘a Lot of a man’ gone insane, or a wo-man acting like an ali-en! stop the purposeful targeting of the asian community, the asian elderly, the asian humanity, a humanity lovelier than you and the despicable hate you propagate, for god’s sake, you inhumane fake. an elderly woman beat for no reason, shocked from dis-belief at her ungodly beat-ing. blond-haired scraggly beast felt the need to assault a lovely, elderly lady, who lived long and hard, punched like garbage, in-humane, only to please the backward grunt of a brainless mutant nut! what message are you sending you long-knuckled-hairy, well, I won’t…but you get my rant…my plea…my cut it out! who made you the way you are, to lay a fist between her eyes, unseen to her sad surprise. long-knuckled-hairy-blond-grunt of a man, hit a lovely lady without a care for her humanity. i’m disgusted by the sheer lack of love and distaste for the sanctity of her life, now living in utter fear, the end of her life near, to live in such fear, who are you? you inhumane beast, you stole her freedom, left her eyes a-bleeding, who the, where the, tell me please, where has all the humanity gone? Please…
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Siavash Ghanbari on Unsplash
locked in on sunshine
forgot the day was beautiful
clamped inside like a turtle
that hides in his shell
I cast away the chance to ride
alongside the butterfly flying
and the pelican gliding low
to the shore, planing the surface
for a delectable score.
I cast aside on purpose, the beauty
of the tide, to lap up the sun
and hold it close to my tight cheek,
hopeful to rest free, the tightness
that resides between my brows and teeth,
a pointed tip of concern to get all this shit done
fragile in heat, in quicksand I run,
I retreat, I cast away the belief
of the day, that more of the sun’s begging rays
call to me, to play with promise,
without delay, stricken without purpose
like a fricken- viral virus,
waiting it out to receive the call, the call
to hither, to yonder, to run for the vaccine gun,
in quest of life lived without purpose
and fear, to get locked in on sunshine,
on a day that holds everyday in captive repeat,
I release like the butterfly from hand to free hand,
to freedom sweet freedom, oh’ to sing like the free
locked out of fear of a virus sinking down,
sinking down like the sun,
sinking down on me.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo credit- https://www.pexels.com/photo/tall-building-near-trees-1798687/
#Poetry #Freeverse #Sunshine
I’m excited to have my piece, “The Riddle of Death”, included in Issue I: hebe
( the fountain of youth ) over at Free Verse Revolution .
Thank you to Kristiana Reed, for including me in this great first edition, alongside many other talented poets, writers and artists.
The Riddle of Death
Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Burst forth the ships! Time has come, forever traced, the
legend, the place where life lives to never-cease. She
strokes the night and whistles through daylight, the legend
of prowess and praise, her locks flowing like honey, sweet
and free. The deserts welcome the quenching rain, the
love from fountains above, pouring like wine into chaliced
mouths in an endless time. The forests and mountains
share their love forever-more, dipping backwards and…read more
This ArtDesign is simply called “Cloudy Skies”, it is a digital collage I’ve created, using many different filters in the the Figma platform. I designed it from one of my small acrylic paintings (seen below) , as part of my “Blue Sky series” depicting the never-ending blue skies, we seem to have here, in Florida.
it is now available on very cool, lightweight, metal wall hangings, in my art shop.
Enjoy super sharp image details and rich, vibrant colors. No, we’re not talking about the newest HDTVs, but our lightweight, durable Metal Prints. Pick a design and give your space some modern edge with brilliant metal art.
Available in three sizes.
Artwork ©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Pieces scatter
the earth
leaving the task
at hand –
With hand and heart
I shall sew a story
a tale to mend
your life.
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Amine M’Siouri from Pexels
#Micropoetry #Shortverse #Story
I will walk this dry land
and bathe in the witches water
to quench my thirst
with God’s cup.
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Zaid Abu Taha from Pexels
#Micropoem #Verse #Poetry #God
Our stretching souls
and empty spirits
wake as sunrise smiles.
TV’s click on
and children chortle
as icons display.
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Josh Willink from Pexels
#Micropoetry #Micropoems #Icons
That greedy glint
in the eye of the fooled
the eye of the lost
my heart left in the home of the tricked
What does it take for them to wake up?
To stop selling their fortunes
for the land of milk and honey
the land where the streets are paved in gold
the lies told to lure them
What will it take before the tales of fools
are replaced with the folklore of the ancient?
The contentment of the indigenous?
What will it take for the
Mad Hatter to end his greedy voyages
into the hearts of the innocent?
I am ravaged like the forests of the Amazon!
Ravaged like the tombs of Egypt!
And where do the tombs rest now?
In the land of the greedy, the violent
in the land of the weeping
I am the ravaged exile!
The ravaged land of the tricked
and the ravaged heart
of the fool.
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Free Creative Stuff from Pexels
#Spokenword #Ravaged #Poet #Lies
Did you know I could stay here all day?
writing and wasting away
words keep coming
releasing a gorge
an orgy of thumping dancing syllables surge
playing on my tongue, jumping in my head
begging to display.
I love this feeling, intensity and healing
pleasing my body with lusciousness reeling,
bleeding from my mouth to my page.
Did you know I could stay here all day?
penning and pining, bated breath reclining
waiting, for something to say.
it’s nighttime now, but time is out of place
when images are flying, bouncing from space
to grace this page alive,
with such disgrace
emboldened, completely burning away.
Did you know I could stay here all day?
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels
Original Post first blogged on Feb. 9th 2020
This poem came up, when my wife and I were talking about how fast time goes by, when you are in that flow of creativity as an artist. And, I wrote this as an expression of that experience, and damnit, it’s hard to pull ones self away from that flow, to attend to the ever nagging “tasks”, that prey on me, on a daily basis. This will forever be my love and my potential demise, I suppose. arggghh!
#Poetry #Rhymes #Healing #Writing
Photo by Cybele Knowles
To follow up from last week’s post about poet Mahmoud Darwish ( read Post ) This post is about the poet, who translated Darwish’s Poetry. Fady Joudeh, a Palestinian American poet and Physician, has translated several of Darwish’s Poems.
Joudeh lives with his family in Houston, Texas where he practices Internal Medicine.
“Joudah translated several collections of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s work in The Butterfly’s Burden (2006), which won the Banipal prize from the UK and was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation; and in If I Were Another, which won a PEN USA award in 2010. His translation of Ghassan Zaqtan‘s Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me (2012) won the Griffin International Poetry Prize in 2013. His other translations include Amjad Nasser‘s Petra: The Concealed Rose and A Map of Signs and Scents.” PoetryFoundation.org
BY FADY JOUDAH
At a desk made of glass,
In a glass walled-room
With red airport carpet,
An officer asked
My father for fingerprints,
And my father refused,
So another offered him tea
And he sipped it. The teacup
Template for fingerprints.
My father says, it was just
Hot water with a bag.
My father says, in his country,
Because the earth knows
The scent of history,
It gave the people sage.
I like my tea with sage
From my mother’s garden,
Next to the snapdragons
She calls fishmouths
Coming out for air. A remedy
For stomach pains she keeps
In the kitchen where
She always sings.
First, she is Hagar
Boiling water
Where tea is loosened.
Then she drops
In it a pinch of sage
And lets it sit a while.
She tells a story:
The groom arrives late
To his wedding
Wearing only one shoe.
The bride asks him
About the shoe. He tells her
He lost it while jumping
Over a house-wall.
Breaking away from soldiers.
She asks:
Tea with sage
Or tea with mint?
With sage, he says,
Sweet scent, bitter tongue.
She makes it, he drinks.
Fady Joudah, “The Tea and Sage Poem” from The Earth in the Attic. Copyright © 2008 by Fady Joudah. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.Source: The Earth in the Attic (Yale University Press, 2008)
These are two Unique ArtDesigns I’ve created from my original watercolor “Dancing Aura” ( above). They are slightly different designs, one with circles and one with squares, meant to compliment one another. I used a digital layering technique with color filters, created using the Figma platform.
Artwork ©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
I cannot explain to you the heart and the stone
they are configured different but feel same for some
cold smooth and hardened, a heart can become
the stone in the hand that bled out your soul
cast by judgement, by seaside you roam
the heart feels heavy like a weighted stone.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Ivo Raeber on Unsplash
#Micropoem #Stone #Heart #Judgement
living in this world today to wonder
about and pray of not dying
the living live in constant death
and of love and of fear intertwined
like a ball of yarn spun then dropped
in dismay.
living in this world today to ponder
away the life given in love and lust
and sometimes in rage, doped up
by the news bitten from hate.
living in this world today to squander
the love born yesterday to strangle
the innocence of nuance and play.
living in this world today to blunder
the blessing of angels and saints who
deliver from evil the human decay
‘a life worth living’ is what they say
however you cut it, don’t piss it away.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by sergio souza from Pexels
#Poetry #Freeverse #Life #Living #Love
saturation comes in quiet realizations
blanketing the soul you left behind, in haste,
on annunciations of your lack of caring,
of giving a shit,
about the effect it had on you,
to jolt you like a
wicked bolt of lightning,
into a wreckless oblivion
a mainlining of pure rage,
into your veins, then lost
to that perpetual joke of a chase,
of the good life. hell-
the saturation blessed you,
it pummeled into you,
an existence of god. in your way,
slow, steady, feeling the pain,
not by happenstance, by southwest by 66
but by love, it saturated you like a slow-moving train,
an experience of electric shooting into me a wave
of enlightenment saturating my brain,
unlike all those moments
i neglected to care for,
back in the day.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Elia Pellegrini on Unsplash
#Poetry #Freeverse #Love #Healing
i’ve walked for days this wayward path
loving every minute we are apart
as if the final testament of our depart
will belie the torch carried
in friction and salt.
bones dried ready for mort
buried treasures, your hidden heart
gold ungirthed despite the fault
uncinched, unsettled
from knot to knot
to breathe, to relieve into the winds,
settling the dust,
the dirt amends.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash
#Micropoetry #Love #Relationships #Longing
love lights the sky from the milky spirals
the galaxies full-throttle of radiance and smiles
fixed in time, not demised to banish these stars seen
for miles and miles,
to a black hole, gravitational pull, locked and sealed
with no room to shine on you or me or the heavens
seen, the light of love sucked backward through space and time.
a force of intense magnetic nothingness, no escaping, no way out
a compact mass of a magnitude blankness, no! there’s nothing!
nothing but this, nothing to see inside the spacetime abyss.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash
#Poetry #Freeverse #Galaxy
