(for katgum - by dariush)
i don't know if she's really mine
but at the same time
she's mine
she's her own as well
she wanders
and she learns to climb
last night she couldn't get over it
in the morning she finds a way
she falls over a few times
she cries
i go to pick her up and she objects
she's no object no subject
her eyes are blue
bluer than you know
and at the same time
i wonder if she sees me at all
sometimes i think she doesn't see at all
on your 23rd birthday
some man comes and puts a gun to your lips
tells you to open your mouth
and you open
tells you to swallow
and you swallow
there is nothing you can do
this is not you
the mouth and the gun and the hand and the man
are a machine
this machine is not desiring
it compresses desire
into a nut
hidden inside a belly
frozen up
you forget it
politics is not about desire
politics is about
walls lanes dead ends
structures that force
you the only way possible
this is called necessity
desire only reenters
if you force it back
with all your subjectivity
individuality
will
force
reason
choice
vileness
anger
spit
of course you may die
then it was a machine
after all
dariush guest blogger spends too much time today on his own reading news reports and gets some bad news from friends:
1.
i can sit in a room with trees and a window
reports are coming in
through the green shutters
breeze calling arrows of geese
chasing the summer north
north across frontiers
forest and trails of
satellite phones
calling down death delivery
you drag the bodies back across the border
you hide the bodies in the woods
my friend calls me
says they came with a lot of guns
last night
now she's lost her home
i should have been there
there wasn't anything i could do
when they come with guns
we have to swallow
but we should swallow it together
now they say there is a trail
that goes somewhere through caracas
they allege
all the way down here to rio
they allege
with these swift allegations
that fly in advance of bombs
that precipitate bullets
i don't care what they allege
they can swallow their allegations
i don't care what's true or false
everything's so tangled up anyway
just they should come here themselves
all together
unnamed security officials
diplomats with many years experience
military police colonels
investigative journalists
writing in left of centre newspapers
they should come here where my friends live
and spread themselves out
link hands
lie down
spread themselves out
like manure on the road
public works
and let them swallow the bullets this time
let's all swallow
all together
i can sit in a room
reports are coming in
2.
it doesn't matter who we elegise
we all die the same time
the same death is our death
if i take the name of a man
i scrawl on a wall
saudades
when i hear about death i just want
to sleep
to sleep very deep
even though i have so much work to do
reports are coming in
someone needs to note them
or we'll all get lost in it
you were very young
you were very old
it doesn't matter
i feel sick to see your name
3.
you are waiting for a call
that might give you hope
you can't solve for yourself
where you turn next
you have to pick yourself up
but you have no lever
too much weight
this is how it is
when you face power
it can't be questioned
because power makes a man
no more a man
he becomes a weight
a god is iron
a man turns into iron
his face is too distant
to have eyes
he has iron legs
and iron hands
he can't cup his hands
or blink his eyes
or will his legs
i hope i never
have power
to kill
4. an old conclusion
the world outside has nothing to offer us
it's all the same if you go
in a line all around the world
crossing many countries
you'll find everything is made of the same stuff
called matter
which it doesn't
there are squares made out of walls
white or red coloured, depending
and with roofs on top where people
squat
and mouths that open under hills
tunnels
made by tongues of green sea
salt
for all its colours
the colour of the world
is predominantly yellow
the yellow of old skin
there are stars but
even if you follow the stars
you don't find nothing new
