O stifling silence, pain that I did not forget,

in this morning soon to arrive you will find a
sleepless night
arrested by the stillborn hopes of tomorrow,
...

Every time I blink I see God.

Every time I lose my breath I inhale Him.

His majesty is all around, from every direction.

My severed head knows Hs greatness


i found a ring by the riverside
with a ruby inside
and light shined through
that prism divine

and a wine drunk on all the holy ghosts came to
me
and a mighty hangover did kneel down beside my
tale of woe
and there was nothing I could do to stop you from
leaving me
or him and her

and the death we fear in our bones is the death
we know in our sleep.

I dreamed my bed floated on an ocean of eternity,
nestled beside the rippling tides

beneath me a whale took flight

lifting me up into the skies of forgotten worlds
worlds I had never learned of in any textbook,
or seen in any teacup.

there I saw the cupids doing their work

I asked them to shoot an arrow for me

they were too busy fucking in the clouds above

no wonder there is no love below.

TREES

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;


Upon whose bosom snow has lain;


Who intimately lives with rain.


Poems are made by fools like me,


But only God can make a tree.


by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

sometimes i can't tell the difference between regret and nostalgia.

it's ok if you're not beautiful...

you're just not beautiful.

so cheer up!!

be kind to the old.

soon we will join their company...

It seems to me that the people who do the best in this world are the ones who pursue their goals with the relentless confidence that they will indeed achieve them-

Yet they are keenly aware that success is entirely dependent on how much of themselves they give and the intensity of their efforts. As a result of these two paradoxical sentiments- inevitability and contingence- they are completely committed in their actions.

And if they fall short, they keep moving, always looking forward.

And if they succeed, they keep moving, always looking forward.

I am outside of a place, near a concrete wall. This
homeless guy starts asking me all sorts of questions.
He says, you make stories, and I say yeah, he says,
God sends you those right?

And it is an amazing thought to me. Then he starts
talking about some computer protection, using a term I
don't remember, something like burning digital
interchange, and I say, you mean like a firewall, and
he says yeah.

I don't remember most of it…

I'm in a bar, with Baha'is from LA there. I remember
Ashkon and Akia but that's it.

Ashkon is pimped out, acting totally out there. He
starts kissing Akia like Pepe LePew. I look at the
food they have. I don't want to get anything but I'm
hungry, and I decide to get the tomato soup they have
a sample of on the counter. Ashkon starts speaking to
the Mexican waiter/bartender in French. I think
they're talking about a drink, I say just water.

But then he gets the tomato soup and surrounds it with
soft pretzels. Ashkon tells me, amazing what you can
get with trade, and I say O thanks Ashkon, and he
tells me, you traded something too. And then he walks
away, and I am confused about what I could have to
offer him.

I start walking back to wherever I came from.

I'm walking through a huge hilly area. I keep calling
out to the girls up ahead, I think I know them from
high school. They don't seem to know me though.

I come across a huge parade; I'm walking through it.
It's going one way, I'm going in the opposite
direction through it.

There are guys on huge stilts, and floats. I discover
it's all one big ad for a warehouse.

I get to the place I'm in search of. I end up inside
some huge apartment. There's Dan Binae'I and there's
pictures of him with kids. He's busy, but looks
radiant. This Arab guy enters. He's short and has a
beard. He looks kind of Mexican. I say Marhaba. He
introduces himself to me and starts speaking Arabic.
He writes his name in Arabic for me and I write mine
in Arabic for him. He says, you're illiterate. I
write my name for him again and he says, ah that's
better.

As the son of an iraqi, I always look at news about my ancestral homeland with somewhat different eyes than most of the people around.

This is an interesting op-ed that was written by an Iraqi expat in the days following the fall of Baghdad... Interesting both for its insightful perspective on the danger and promise it foretold, and also for what it did not- and perhaps could not- foresee:

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

Op-Classic, 2003: The Fall of Baghdad

Published: April 13, 2008
Every week, the Opinion section presents an essay from The Times's archive by a columnist or contributor that we hope sheds light on current news or provides a window on the past.

In 2003, an Iraqi exile, Hussain Abdul-Hussain, broke his silence to greet the news of American takeover of Baghdad with joy and fear.

April 11, 2003
Op-Ed: My First Day of Freedom

By HUSSAIN ABDUL-HUSSAIN
The downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime, metaphorically incarnate in the toppling of his statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad, filled me with hope.

If the regime were still in power, I would not have had the courage to contribute even these few lines under my name to The New York Times. Although I am a self-exiled Iraqi who has lived in Beirut for the past two decades, I have family and friends in Iraq -- and I had every Iraqi's dread that Saddam Hussein's security apparatus could sweep down on them at any moment.

Even in the relative safety of Beirut, I was always worried that Iraq's so-called diplomats might call me any time, any day, to revoke my citizenship and leave me stranded and stateless. As a journalist for the past few years, I have always withheld my byline or used a pen name when writing about my the politics of my homeland.

Therefore, this is my first step in the first day of the first year of freedom.

But as I watched American Marines and Iraqi citizens breaking the neck of the Saddam Hussein statue, my joy over the prospect of democracy was mixed with a fear of future tyranny under a government made up of members of the Iraqi opposition and their American advisers.

I am not a supporter of any of the Iraqi opposition factions, which I despise as much as I scorn Saddam Hussein. Most of these opposition figures are either radical Muslims or former aides to Saddam Hussein. I also worry that the American civil administrators heading to Baghdad may treat Iraqis as second-class citizens, as has been the case in many colonialist governments.

I also worry about the chaos that seems to be rising in Iraq, with the looting in Baghdad and the death yesterday of a prominent Shiite cleric in Najaf.

But I don't think that popular resistance to the Americans will arise in Iraq. (The suicide bombing in Baghdad yesterday may have been ordered by the Baathist remnant that will disappear soon.) Iraqis have been suffering or recovering from war since 1980, and the last thing they want to see is another fight.

Besides, they have nothing to lose. No matter how bad any new rulers are, they could not be worse than Saddam Hussein. The fear he inspired was so great that even though he has vanished, I remain worried that from his hiding place he will see these words and hunt me down.

My non-Iraqi friends and colleagues continue to tell me that I am wrong if I think the Americans will bring better days to my country. But the rule of Jay Garner, the retired American general who will be in charge of reconstruction, could not possibly be worse than Saddam Hussein's. We end up agreeing that by selecting the Americans, I am choosing the lesser of two evils.

Then they ask: What about America's blind and unequivocal support for Israel? Doesn't that make you mistrust America? What about the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories? To this, I say that the Americans should be as committed to addressing the wrongdoings of the Israeli government as they are to bringing democracy to Iraq.

I hope that Americans do complete the quest for democracy in Arab states, because if Iraq becomes a democracy while the other regimes continue as autocracies, it would be like having a rose among thorns.

Most of us want to live in a world of democracy. Now I ask the United States to live up to the fullness of its promise; it should not favor the crooks among the opposition leaders simply because they are American allies, since that would create another Saddam Hussein. With these lines, I plead to the American administration and people: do not leave the job half-done.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a reporter for The Daily Star, a Beirut newspaper.

Most of the time life does not really require "hard" work. Work yes, but hard?

Hard to me sounds like the bare flesh of my shoulder pushing against a giant granite boulder for some sysephean task. And sometimes life does require that- but a small percentage of the time. 5%, 10%, something like that.

Most of life consists of small tasks that require a small amount of courage, energy and effort to tackle them.

The trick is to continually tackle them, one by one, without growing weary. Perhaps the key for that is to see them for what they are, rather than feeling like we are taking on the whole weight of an endeavor.

Let your thoughts be small, just like our world is…

((sounder)) Those Days Were Good Days (as Days Somtimes Are)
..