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
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
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
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
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
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
two bodies
fighting on the grass
struggling yet loving
one strong and mighty
the other floating, resting
filled with angst.
they are dancing
dancing to the tune
of their struggle,
flames
flames of fire within
i can feel it
it’s there, see it?
it’s all around us.
why!? why can’t you see?
you are stepping on my toes-
my fire.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Jordon Conner on Unsplash
#Micropoetry #Fire #Silhouette
Tell me all the ways to love you today
the bridal bouquet has stopped producing
the answers that feed your love lost heart,
unripened, fallowed, the veins filled with dirt.
How do I bring it back? Will blood run free
and wild again? The light evades dark and
berries redden their face in waste, as black racers
and woodpeckers attempt to invade.
Love come back and show me the way.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by George Becker from Pexels
#Micropoem #Love #Bouquet #Freeverse
A Chinese Moon
A Chinese moon revealed a
fools desire
ravenously my eyes bespeak
tranquility is
the ocean-bed
the flesh-plumes velvet
petals end.
I first posted this poem on this blog back on December 30th 2018, but I wrote it many years prior to having this blog, while my son Adrian and I, were deep into playing some fun poetry words games. Hope you enjoyed it!
Happy Monday!
Photo by Just Another Photography Dude from Pexels
#Micropoetry #Moon #Reboot
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
there’s a soul
on fire
and the
forces
ignore
the reasons
why it blazes
through the
atmosphere
trailing the star
that fell
then lifted
to flight
again
the fire
the white light
hyperspaced
a line without
a trace
seen
but for a few
they saw
a soul
on fire
and they
silenced
the sight,
in heat
of ignorance
that forbode
a trail
never to
be seen
but believed,
as seeing
is believing.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Lukas Hartmann from Pexels
#Poetry #Sci-fi #Aliens #Space
no, i have no taste for it
i breathe a slow breath and
you sigh into the balloon
it expands into a long winded
lie, a tale of deceit, a tattered
worn book you bought with a dime.
cheap lies, dirty minds, foolish
waste lingering behind. don’t
saddle me with this bullshit
you peddle to feed your feeble
spine, a load of bullshit in repeat
eating your young and spitting
out fire to your wicked inward denial.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Alexas Fotos from Pexels
#Poetry #Shortverse #Jackass
The storms brewing up a big downpour
Odd encounter with the inside of my skull
Cranium matter knocking at my soul
The waves batter violently, nausea, ad nauseum
Takes control, Lost to an apathy a listless inner
Sanctum possessed, crawled like a beetle
in gestation, worm-holed larvae, no rhyme
No reason strikes to the far reaches, inside,
calling my name outloud, small little voices,
drown, drown, drown this storms battering like rams
swinging hammers, pounding viciously
At the gray matter.
@Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Matt Hardy from Pexels
I first published this poem a couple years ago here and recently recalled what inspired me to write this, back in the day.
I used to huff it to work by foot every morning (very early) and had to walk a good distance along side a very busy route, with LOTS of traffic; with mostly no sidewalk and at times pretty dangerous. It was a bit grueling and Mondays were always the worst, after a long weekend of rest.
Happy Monday!
Legs burn muscle
over hills and byways
highways stretching on the horizon
teeming with cars
hell-bent on winning the race
the race of human want
want that crashes without brakes
still, I beat the road
pounding legs on shoe rubber lanes
racing the clock
to stay in the game
gridlock metal that knows
no shame
refusing to budge, I remain
leg-muscled-highway
drive through wind and rain
all steel and rubber
screeching in pain
the race of human want
futile gain.
©️Jay Mora-Shihadeh
#Poetry #Rhymes #Poet #Ratrace
Early mourning
in Palestine,
not an unusual start,
children proceed play
fledgling friendships
in mourn’ they depart.
The child an unbroken dove
white, purity, innocence’s laid
in a nest of love, a red
vibrance of love
The processional wailing
in protest, in the streets,
fathers, mothers
heads hung… beating
at their chests.
Early mourning in Palestine
not unusual, lay witness
the children of the morning
play with abandoned bliss
in forgetfulness of the dispute,
while our olive trees
weep their weighted
heavy fruit.
Children come running
home, to report
another hit,
a stray bullet
or perhaps, on purpose
in aim, to land
no claim,
to lay in prayer
in early mourn’
They came-
the washed out,
white’s hanging
like grapes on vines,
the demolitions proceed
to wreck their hearts
and minds.
Early mourning in Palestine,
not an unusual start.
Poetry and Artwork ©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
#Palestine #Children #Funeral
