Tag: #Poets

Does it count if you don’t know them? You know—family, years of living under a family rite and ritual of practice/ if in the end/ or the middle/ family doesn’t matter. Answering to myself and my wife suits me better. I fear I let the ghosts follow me on my path way too long. I cared about running in endless fear.  Fear to progress, fear to digress— fear, fear, fear. Hopeful for life to whisk away that fear, where one day I wouldn’t recognize it anymore. A reckless steerless burst!  From dawn ‘till dusk, no rest. No wonder I live quietly to the chest and relish the silence in my head. Today not fearing but living in slo-mo effects. I understand the Gnomes/ the Hermits/ the Erdgeist—in life and in death. I manifest the tales that weave through the devil’s grip, to God in spirit—I slip, I slip!  I materialize in incubation from due West to due East to the forests in my dreams— to ‘The Here, to The Now’ Erdgeist rises on misty vales. Water vapors turn heathens and materialize on the waves of oceans and mountain sides. Blankets of pelting Blackbirds dot the skies, lifting the veil of midnight through violet nights. I reflect backward to leap forward with antelope strides, a herd stampeding through space and time. African plains dusted from the quakes of my hooves, beating back those fears lost to my strident youth.

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Consider it a sealed emotion nestled
in the cleavage of your heart
I can’t bring you flowers every day—

for this love is now set in stone
and made a pact with trust to deliver
the best of me and the worst of me 
in full blossom and in faded stem

Love arranged itself in asymmetrical patterns
in full color palettes, not lost on seasons
that wither and fray like dried smatterings
of cuttings left in a vase

A full house swelling in contentment 
with each passing day
the days of lust and bright bouquets 
every day—

exchanged for a coddled heart
dug out, excavated 
to unearth my timid soul 
hidden deep away.

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Colette Allen on Unsplash

The disparate
desperation
seethes viciously
through my veins

in the air, an
outward cowardly
despair, 
in the air, a breath
saturated in a
tantalizing wish
a dare
 
on feathery dandelions
blown, seeding the air

a taste of cherries 
of figs, of pears

a life of delicacy, deliciously
plump, juice runs ripe 
‘Alas-
your trees are bare
the earth is not right

not fertilized in specific
care,
the loam- 
no sand, no silt 
nor proper clay

the famine
in your bloodline
a betrayal, unfaithful
the bearing of the fruit
yields an unstoried fable.

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Jasper Wilde on Unsplash

Hell, don’t give in to it
the repercussions aren’t worth
the dime of payment they will
lay on you.  It’s easy to react in-kind
the life you made severed by the
malfeasance of their backward mind
serve-up those fritters and forget
the waste of your time—

love comes easy 
to a soul
who feeds the 
starving people 
a plateful of 
homemade fritters
battered from their enemies' 
hateful hardened hearts.

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Max Griss on Unsplash

Old man look in your mirror
cry if you want to
the mirror reflects back
the pain of severed love

Old man you wanted love
to bicker the day with
a fragment of reality
hit the play button
on the mending setting

the fissures that separate
in two
your heart of one

Old man look in the mirror
reflect a life well-lived
and gratitude for more to give.

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by YashRaj Verma on Unsplash

A scream without an audience is no way
to end this call of the wild 
to no end it is but fragile and in haste
the wind carries it away

Tall Florida Pines scrub the sky 
of it’s gray and the hawks glide and bob 
like kites caught on a line 
for display

I figure, the time of forests lost behind
the convenience store, in dreams, ended
to childhood cemented
in my mind the moss 

and deer and crick's wind through 
neighborhood to neighborhood connecting 
friendships never destined to survive

Convenient thoughts of stolen pops, not the kind 
you score from countertops but below
of pennies and mops, that only
tots and moms remember most

I figure you, screaming into the wind with
no reception, is kinda’ like dreams
without a host unseen through dust
the days drifting upstream, possibility
lost.

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Santiago Lacarta on Unsplash

The day welled up in me like a dead swollen body stiff from rigamortis, wading on garbage strewn waters. The sick feeling of having lost all sense of perspective, has knocked some sort of alter-existence into my blood, streaming forcefully around my psyche. Have I been in this state before? Yes, but not quite like this state, similar yet different, an arranged-kind-of-marriage existence, in which you feel powerless over your own body, mind and spirit. Marriage certificates branded like cattle-prodded calves stamped, burned and disregarded, set out to market for a cheap dollar and carcass. Life bled-out like a sack full of empty cockles. The muscles torn loose from their shells—vacuum sealed and ready for market. 

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Shapelined on Unsplash

It’s the fevered pitch of the monotony that unleashes a torrent of complaints, the kind that rattle’s her tongue like a possession. Unforgiven of the battle that wrestled her soul, torn from her breast early before dawn. The sun handed down with a gentle bobbing blaze while hot tea bags float in teacups until deciding,  yes 1 cube and no spoon, then she placed the cube between her teeth, slowly sipping the brew of darkness that engulfed the room, “This is how we drink our tea, you should do it too” but I ignore the plea and state, “I’ll ladle the soup” as you poke and prod at the decision to mourn or to bless this life you were given, despite the love held back from your suckling youth, like bud’s unborn or like that cube of sweet sugar you sucked and suckled like a pig’s babe, starving, suckling for more and more and more. I question the history fed that day, as if it were written in stone as an ancestral rite of passage, a way to bemoan the pain and the passing of the past. The ripping and scorning of truth blasted into the universe, lost in vacant dew drops that fall from the vines and the breasts of women and the men besieged by a stealing of their time and life spent in the bobbing sun—watching as it went down in a blazing ball— an arson, a scorched-earth burning, a lost recall.  

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Eugene Lazovsky on Unsplash

I was told by Tarot Lady
of my past lives
many lived over time 
as Preacher/ Professor 
or two-bit man with a bone 
and a hammer to pound.

I was told to live powerfully
 and accept the mission of
‘carnating’ willfully— 
to accept the lot of boredom as planned 
and reap the harvest of selling hangers to man.

The Tarot Lady confessed my future/ from my past 
not lost but found/ in this mundane task 
of flipping these cards/ that hands down tell
an intriguing mention/ of many tales re-lived at last 
long-lived and upheld/ as long as life is vast.

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by petr sidorov on Unsplash

Exultation falls flat when the 
false king walks in 
and expectations
sound the trumpet—

signaling to bow down and pray to the idol 
to display your loyalty 
without thought or care

whomever, wherever you lay, or 
whoever you marry
loses, as the false king chooses to 
blow his horn and beckon your call by
his sheer place in line—

first borns and pecking
orders determine your worth and salt, in

pay. The fanfare leaves as you return to normal
and sweep the floors, do the chores left hanging
to dry on laundry lines, whistling, 
as your spouse stares blankly, in utter dismay.

©Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Paweł Furman on Unsplash

She shows me the tubes running down her
legs, a chuckle takes hold of her as tears
run away. The tulips in the vase sent with no
card, light up the dingy space. I hand her the
fresh bread she requested I bake.
She lifts a bite to her mouth as she wipes her
cheeks on the bed sheets.

I remember those green olives
she ate on that last day,
that last day she was deathly ill.
One by one by one, plucking them out of the briny heap
grasping the jar in her emaciated hand, she claimed
how much she loves green olives.

The sight made me wince a bit, it rattled my mind knowing
this was her request at this time. The sodium on any other
day, would disrupt the heartbeat in an unpleasant way.
Today none of that mattered—

just these tiny olives with no pits, stuffed of course
with that tiny-red-squishy-thing, like the flesh of a minnow.
Minnows are cool though, I collected them in fish bowls when I was a kid
they though, don’t live forever, like I wished she did.

©Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Antonio Molín on Unsplash

Fanfare and blank
stares don’t cooperate
in willing shakes of
hands

the mesmerized prophet
ladles soup into starving 
bowled open mouths 
of babes and man

many lost attempts
to settle debts
and return land

fractured beginnings
broken on settlements
caved to God’s clan

of one or the other
not breaking bread 
for luck or hope or peace
instead 

they stitch lives
together with woven
tales of tea times
ceremoniously broken

wept in the sunshine
and salty sea
dozens of tears shed
on battles bled

confusion ringing
sound of dread
terror rises
inside their heads.

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

To live a lifetime through sun rain and history made

the times broken by greed vain 

the connection to love in social domains 

breaks hearts 

that know no way forward

the rich full body of work and living 

left the planet 

to those that begging has dropped 

fear and claims to fame 

driven by algorithms contained in space

the intimate clutch of friends and heaven 

lost to feelings in robotic munitions

wanderers of cities 

blocks of horror 

destined to protract a borrowed tomorrow

fiends and friends mirror each other 

the lack of care in bitcoins and dollars

rattles the nerves for centuries 

to holler out the cries and hollow out the baggage 

of bravo’s likes awards all shamed 

to place them in front/ in back 

and plays alongside all who chant go on go on!  

‘where connect’ and ‘where forgot’  live to bargain away 

lives met then butchered for stats and shares that hold no water 

grace replaced for unseen tomorrows 

to see it unfold/ decades transfused for blood 

from love—the dance of ritual used for fun

no more no less no way 

to see the future 

be gone 

be lost at sea 

return the bodies return the minds  

let go of rotten gains and follows to lead astray the years/ decades

build shatter connect forget

light it up and reset!

Photo by Pier Monzon on Unsplash

1.
 
How does it go again? Ahhh, yes...
The doctor said to put some lotion
on it, or some oil.
I calm myself before snapping in disbelief.
I know how to rub moisturizer into dry skin,
if that’s what it is, or not.
It's incomplete. 

The answer to my question is not received.
My answer was asked as a last resort—
not out of stupidity.
I scratch my head, arm, knee and gnaw 
on the next stupid answer I get.

2.

My wife says she loves me, but I can be 
such an asshole.
Times are strained now, we are gonna pop,
the world is fecal, floating
out to sea.

I cannot see the horizon, as shit consumes me
like an asshole running incessantly

on, about the end of the world, or the
beginning of time, that began 
the end of right now, at least,

I have turned into gas, it seems. 
No bones, no skin,
words in tiny bubbles,
thoughts that linger in a lighter than
troubled mind that doesn’t even
exist...only words no skin.


3.

I see not even the experts have answers.
Their training pays them to downgrade 
into mindless quips of wiki-thoughts— 

of arrogance, of numbness, of thoughtless obedience.

Here, take my co-pay and I’ll be back in
six months for more abuse, punches 
to the back of my head, where my humanity
has drained-out anyway, no worries. 

Nice meeting you, and thanks for nothing,
at least I feel like I’ve accomplished something
today, in the rain.

©Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

Your metallic space-green Mustang
white faux leather
convertible 70’s model 
of something or other
pulled in the spot, out in the street. 
You again, on weekends, kicking the curb— 

doorbell rang, knock-knocked up.

Surprised you didn’t just walk-in
our salt-box hut.
You so gallant
You so cocky
You so pretend to want to. 
Momma doesn’t want to play no more, she is fed-up
and lost. Kids, money, depression—all too much.

 You, lit-up and fired-up and freed-up!
 Her, imprisoned.

The street seems so mean, so,
gray-black-macadam-green.
It’s not warm and comforting, it’s
castless, cold and melting.

No path forward—nor backward. 
Not sure where these mean streets lead 
but we go anyway,

it's obligatory.

© Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash

i used to run through my days like sand sifting through a sieve—
or like the mist of you rising from your grave, daily you haunt 

my brain, a magnet stuck to this evil, gripped by nightmare,
a force to reckon with, no cease or desist. i struggle to stand a Victor, 

i beg iron-grips. molten-orange burns. i dream of being legless—
running from dream to dream to dream, begging for release of

the night shadow, the beast, and plea for the day to come to my rescue.
my pillow rock-hard. pounding waves. i call to my side that song

from 1969, the one i use to soothe me but i lose the music—
the tune drifting like sand in sieve, blowing in wind.

i run endless to chase ‘the dream’ of each day. i stop. i breathe, i exhale—
a murder of crows, a blow of wind, a tempest-dragon—mounts then rescinds.

©Jay Mora-Shihadeh

Photo by Ravit Sages on Unsplash