I can only manage one and you are it tidy up the bed/ make the coffee and off you go pitter patter feet to the car/ zip gone now I’m alone/ to manage this one thing Can I do it without folding in and succumb to my own undoing? Manage to complete the work of my life— feel the release of a lifetime of complaints that I only had you/ all along This One Thing. Can I get it done?
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Mathias Arlund on Unsplash
as stiff as a backboard protruding— jutted bone / fetid waste the smell of weeping willows tears rolling on the blackbirds little-black-face cars whiz by in a hurried pace we fiddle the locks to close out the last of what remains no feeling of need to be on time or need— to be someplace it’s like that these days we blow in the wind like dandelion seeds fuzz drifting every which way landing momentarily then floating away.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
instagram.com/stories/jaymora_art/2811922280674792977
Happy Friday! ✌🏼🇮🇪 🇵🇸
the windows are rattling / vibrating warrior drums / drumming up battle the traffic is doubling in immensity steel thrumming / brakes grinding / growling engines the vulgarity in population density thickets / then thickens gridlock cemented / tourism almost non-existent / instead new-residential-sales increase / billow / like sails on the gulf stream blowing in torrents of wind / hailing in the newcomer’s almighty dollars latching onto our sorrows / as we trail new trails / to avoid the inevitable clashes the horizon rising higher / flat-earthers swallow / the sunset / drunken beggars / maulers flatten silence with hollers / peaceful sunsetters forgotten / pollution increases two-bit liars ocean views lost to skyscrapers / modern boxes hatch like turtles on salted landscapes / if Hemingway saw this / as witness / his drunken brawls would pursue this / plot an escape / in third person / narrate a way out / I feel a sense of dread mixed with doubt / how long can this go on before the whole thing POPS like corn!
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Josiah Gibbs on Unsplash
April is ARAB-AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH in America. To honor my heritage, I chose to share some Poetry of resistance from occupied Palestine, today.
TRANSLATED BY SULAFA HIJJAWI
Published by the Ministry of Culture
Baghdad- Iraq 1968
This is a revised and edited version- 2009
THE OLIVE TREE by, Tawfiq Zayyad Because I do not knit wool* Because I am always hunted And my house is always raided. Because I cannot own a piece of paper, I shall carve my memoirs On the home yard olive tree. I shall carve bitter reflections, Scenes of love and yearnings, For my stolen orange grove And the lost tombs of my dead. I shall carve all my strivings For the sake of remembrance For the time when I’ll drown them In the avalanche of triumph I shall carve the serial number Of every stolen piece of land The place of my village on the map And the blown up houses, And the uprooted trees And every bloom that was crushed And all the names of the experts in torture The names of the prisons….. I shall carve dedications To memories threading down to eternity To the blooded soil of Deir Yasin And Kufur Qassem. I shall carve the sun’s beckoning And the moon’s whisperings And what a skylark recalls At a love deserted well. For the sake of remembrance, I shall continue to carve All the chapters of my tragedy And all the stages of Al- Nakbah On the home yard olive tree! * Reference to Madame Lafarge, who used to knit the names of the traitors and send them to the French revolutionaries during the French Revolution.
Darkness engulfs my heart wrenching itself between the metal and the flesh— Parading as a commoner, fools blinded by it’s dark beauty, then— shattered to bits by its intent.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
It came to my attention that you’ve regurgitated again— Can you not think of anything more meaningful to say?
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Jayson Hinrichsen on Unsplash
The sheer weight of knowing, is a burden one cannot always carry, it hardens your mentality like candy rock pops, stuck in your throat. Knowing too much, clings to your intentions, with expectation of some weird kind of occasion, some weird excellence of endeavors hanging over your head— we blaze on, as though it isn’t there, feeding the bitter taste of it, then spitting it out in attempt to brush it away, only to further the appeal of its existence— but instead, we trod on as though it’s some kind of weird apparition, escaping our daily vision.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
i fettle the curves in the neck
and remorse plays on the strings of
my chords
the fancy love songs
and cherub blues you mourn, swoon
and swindle under my skin,
torn from a page lost
in fretful scorn,
a love-lorn loser who burns
like the scorched innuendo’s
you play on your horn—
a violin singing
a sliding trombone
beat to the drum
of your bluesy tone.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
revised 3/22
Photo by Joel Wyncott on Unsplash
Frozen Night, ArtDesign created from my original Abstract oil pastel.
© Jay Mora-Shihadeh. All Rights Reserved.
Someone told me— he died with a pen in his hand a computer melted to his teeth that's how they found him— but, he wanted it that way.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Serge Kutuzov on Unsplash
Artwork by Edward Michael Supranowicz The post Poem by J. Martin Strangeweather appeared first on oddball magazine.
“Triplicate” © Edward Michael Supranowicz
How to Read a Circular Book
…craving, craving, craving,
it was the best of times if you read between the lines,
it was the worst of times if you read between the lines,
craving, craving, craving,
we the readers of the United States,
in order to form a more perfect understanding
of what it means to read between the lines,
craving, craving, craving,
literary theorists shall make no…read full poem
Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.
The great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was born on this day in al-Birwa. Here, we gather a few poems inspired by Darwish or dedicated…
On March 13, Poems for and after Mahmoud Darwish
in this land there are tyrants but we do not crumble in this land that is our home, we stand shoulder to shoulder and bear the brunt of tyranny alone we scream into the air / the waves hear us yet nothing answers— in this land that is our home, we stand shoulder to shoulder and call the name of our oppressor out loud we take the hits as patriots— we scream into the air / the waves hear us yet nothing answers— in this land there are champions that rise to battled skies stand shoulder to shoulder / bear the brunt of tyranny alone we call out your names— we scream into the air / the waves hear us yet nothing answers.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Simone Fischer on Unsplash
As I watch the TV and witness the horror the day slips away as if it never began the powerless feeling the air heavy light becomes dark day turns to ashes the gray in my brain matter becomes black no joy in birds chirping the people lack hurt driven deep into a pit of no turning back I ask for nothing hope for something the chatter the denial smiles of dolls appearing to sleep I clamor for news to break the hell— to no avail people boiling fear shit soaked rumors inferiority beliefs holding patterns that sever love and disintegrate into hate posing as knowledge arrogance on steroids don’t ask my opinions— ‘til truth matters again.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
I ask myself to batch it all up and let go float the raft down the river and watch it wash up later downwind stop pretending this doesn’t exist and face the truth when will I see that it was part of my skin all the wounds all the lines all the ugly spots— I chose to ignore I try, I do— but, however I parse it out I lose in the end the meaning— of why I tried again, at all.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Hamza NOUASRIA on Unsplash
We bleed fatigue now as contagion and war spreads itself like jam across the universe jamming mutations / mutating jam from reason to reason to gone fishin’ perhaps no reason existed, just mutation. Fatigue recites a Soliloquy to the few who engage a wide-eyed gaze at the mutant vibration of mutations— living amongst our dead. We plod on with our day fatigue welded to the end of our words— muscles atrophied / nerves deadened. Fatigue engulfs like petrol on water flames / bombs / fire's in our mind’s eye skies lit / trauma’s blaze a trail through Millennial moments— but those mutants are mutating again / the bitter bitten bastard enemies of our future dreams— Act One complete!
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Ayo Ogunseinde on Unsplash
Free? You mean free like the sunsetting or the moon rising? Perhaps free is a vague concept applied in times of need to appease your fears Free like the bird soaring through the sky Free as an eagle in the eye I suspect freedom rings in your mind in times of need to feel secure The biggest questions come in the darkest hours of feeling the loss Of what was forgotten— thrown away like a piece of garbage Intentionally heaved aside for falsehood and constraints Oddly—constructed for your sense of freedom.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
INTO THE DEEP is a collage style design I created from my original oil pastel seen below.
©Art by Jay Mora-Shihadeh
