why
do we stall
?
I’m not ready
for
freedom.
and they’re counting on that.
Tag Archives: poetry
Fall Madly In Love
Please fall madly in love with this life.
Always promise to be there for life, no matter how rough the tide gets.
Cross oceans to make life know it’s worth it.
Remember this means life will rip your goddamn heart out from time to time,
probably make you curse more than your parents would like…
but know that life will always be there, if you make room for it.
There may be madness in the vulnerability life asks of you,
but exposure to the elements is the only way to love deeply.
Cultivate the relationship with your most passionate skill.
Even the most delicately sown seeds are cast asunder in the greatest storms
but know the earth remains beneath you for your landing
for the winds will grow still again
Please write life love songs, long letters,
leave life notes in lunch pails and suitcases.
Stick to pieces to bits of life that you love
and stretch them into stories you tell
to your children and your children’s children
Sometimes you’ll want more than life can give,
and you must remember that your happiness is your own
Life will demand the most of you,
so let your heart build muscle.
Madness is in the eyes, ears, and hearts of the beholder.
You may as well choose your own.
A Muslim Girl
A Poem By Sana Jahan… Jahan means “The World”
This body is mine
It is not a gift I give you
But something I will share with you
If I feel like it
It will always be mine
You will never possess it
You will never control it
You will never proclaim any ownership whatsoever
It is my body
To do as I please
To share with whom I want
My body belongs to me
It is no man’s
It isn’t my father’s to give away
It isn’t my husbands to rule
It isn’t an item to barter
It is my body
And only I have a say
In what it does and with whom.
Follow Sana (listen on this blog as “Irene Adler”) on Insta @sana_jahan310
Self-Activist
When poets spoke of taking roads less traveled
I’m not sure they were recommending mine
Fewer travelers leave fewer trail marks in crowded woods
My head tends to spin of its own accord anyhow and my sense of direction with it
In wondering which way I should head,
Collegiate conventions and Cheshire cats tell me it depends a good deal on where I want to get to
Couldn’t stop moving long enough to question where I’m headed, so careening along I’ll go.
Recycled rhetoric echoes a desire to help the world
But leaves my tongue dry when attempting to articulate my own “issues”
Should I steal from the world around me
borrow nature’s features to speak of my own storm
Reeds in the wind experience whiplash
Oak tree comes with a crackled crash
For, you see,
Metaphors come easier than honest conversation
Wounds in my wrist simpler to mention when they’ve become knots on a tree
Survive long enough to grow a bit more
We pick up titles like “activist”
To challenge violent forms only to experiences forms of violence ourselves
I begged the rain for erosion of emotion
and found myself drowning instead
We are built to last
though not alone
I’ve been told to weather the storm
But I struggle to recall,
While roots lift out from under me
and gusts break
that no matter how my body aches
This too shall pass
I’ve been holding my ground so long
that I forgot the movement needed to grow
So here we go
Own the responsibility and freedom of movement with my body…
For I am no tree, nor even a reed
I’ve got hands that shake, but legs are steady
I’ve bent close to a break, and rarely feel ready
But life keeps shuffling on
Thankfully,
And, no matter how slow
it may seem, I know
there are others shuffling with me.
We are not here to simply pass through this world
We’re here to shake the earth that rests beneath you.
Maybe just a touch,
but that’s a touch enough
to save people like me.
Just Ask
Ask me what freedom looks like.
I’ll tell you in a decade.
When I’ve grown up
Grown independent
Hold my own, fully on my own, I’ve made it clear of this place and these people.
Ask me what freedom looks like.
I’ll tell you in five years.
When I’ve moved on
Moved to a new city
Hopped countries, changed neighborhoods, cut my ties to construct new communities.
Ask me what freedom looks like.
I’ll tell you in the new year.
When I’m employed
Working passionately
Found a place to intersect the labor that’s been drilled into my skull with the soul I’ve been suppressing.
Ask me what freedom looks like.
I’ll tell you in the summer.
When I’m rootless
Couch to couch
Plane to bus to train to museum to dancefloor, always a few steps ahead of the fears I know I’ll outrun.
Ask me what freedom looks like.
I’ll tell you in the morning.
When I’ve felt the California sun again
Stepped outside
Reminded myself depression never stays but never goes either.
Ask me what freedom looks like.
I’ll tell you in a moment.
Whenever the blood limping between my heart and mind refuses to let me convince myself I would want to live any other way
Whenever my cynicism and bitterness and anger and frustration is drowned in human moments of compassion and vulnerability
Whenever my disheartened habits are disrupted by memories of our capacity for love.
Ask me what freedom looks like.
I really don’t know what I’ll say.
Clarity in Creation
Watching the sun set over the ocean…can be an anxiety-inducing experience.
It’s not supposed to be, or at least that’s what I’m told
by people who should know
they seem to know a lot about my experience from what they think they can see.
I guess it’s easy to convince me I’m wrong with this pressing uncertainty of what my eyes tell me.
When their views are coming from every angle, refracting light as it vanishes over the horizon,
I can look for other people who made something different along the beach.
Even in the mistrust of my mind, if I can capture my own view
I can create my own understanding, defy theirs…
But art even blurs the “me versus them” like dyes and powders hunting for the proper hue
What good are yellows, blues, greens of the globe if my eyes are fogged over by my fear of coming night?
Paint splashes shadows of doubt with vibrant life, strength perhaps lost but waking as our memories guide our brushes
My mind reminds me to question the cruelty of this world… and that same world replies by telling me I’m sick.
Get better.
I must find someone to fix me.
In creative work, I can wash their vision of failure with new color, title it “Success” on some days, and other days simply “Survival.”
Do not mistake my sensitivity for fragility.
After feelings of fear comes another sensation
It’s anger, but not the type I’ve been taught.
It’s a spike, yet numbing
thoughts blank, yet tumbling
Nerves on fire to flee a body I longer seem to control,
but I remain trained to this spot.
In these moments of vicious cycling, all I need is some way to disrupt,
But what strength remains in these muscles? Can’t even pull air into my lungs…
Then it’s back. Power to alter the normal flow of motion
Thumping to echo my heart’s insistent beating of blood through my veins
Rhythms to make me move and question my desire to be sane.
Eyes– sealed shut, fearful of what the darkness might contain–
suddenly open to catch my own motions, as finally feet find space they’d lacked
“…and it’s hard to dance with the devil on your back, so…”
now what?
when devils don’t come with fire and brimstone but illusions of comfort that they might let us alone.
To shake their floors it takes more than just my weight, but that won’t stop me from getting myself off the ground.
Yes, we move across the same topography, but as long as your shoes are on, don’t dare tell me what the sand feels like beneath my bare feet.
Even in my attempts at defiance, I still sometimes appear to be some version of myself I don’t recognize.
Amidst these fissures in my reality,
my own truth as I so certainly once knew it to be,
I can form the words to allow me to occupy the in between,
poetry to say things that have many meanings when I really don’t know what I mean.
When institutions show me just how crazy I am, this art can validate my existence beyond any dream.
Why settle for pacification when we can have creation?
I’m longing to scream “I want it back,” but I haven’t flexed my vocal chords in so long.
Precious, drawn out music notes reconcile frailty with endurance
and it feels better to sing than scream,
Remind the other, you have no idea what I’m capable of,
No clue how much I’ve grown.
As I slowly learn not rely upon their imposed narrative,
I will find new stories or better yet conduct my own.
Though the sun slips away, the sky is doused with night
and I know my vision’s slowly fading
Stars peek out, my sight can sharpen, I adjust to dimming light
for I know beautiful things are waiting.
Hands
Your hands through my hair, those “sexy” moments on film where she’s pushed up against a wall, this all fits.
My hands just need to learn to let go.
Step, step, those aren’t warning signs, they’re just nerves.
Your hands were so confident.
Spent so long with figurative hands ’round my throat I guess it’s not surprising I let your literal ones stay there.
Blood almost liquor, if only it were still surging towards my brain…but it probably would have been the same.
My hands still scramble letters for words to define what your hands did,
cuz I really don’t know.
I stopped trying to clear up memories, let them fog over instead.
I can see new ones, even through misty eyes.
His hands know exactly when I need them to pull me in.
Mine shake too much.
His hands fall on the back of my chair,
I still know they’re solid without touch.
My hands traced his sharp jaw, pulled his soft face to mine
Not for a kiss, but for a moment;
And I wanted to give him
So much more than you ever took from me.
A Love Poem
I wanted to write love poems
and clearly I wasn’t the only one.
I wanted the neatly packaged version of love I’d heard so many times.
Word are plenty, though sometimes empty on the subject,
but some words cling to your soul just a bit longer.
These are the kinds of words that strike deeper, reach further.
Cornel West once said, “Never forget justice is what love looks like in public.”
Now, those words don’t distill love’s identity, but project it instead.
It’s simpler to obsess with just words of romanticism
and the pre-processed,
company-approved anecdotes
that are ready made to explain what justice looks like.
However— in public, the reality defies the trite sound bites that frequent our songs, news and history books.
Some say love is blindness, but no.
No, no, no, no…
Love is blinding clarity of consciousness you dare not ignore.
It is the awakening of a strength of emotion
you and I may fear to face in anticipation of the revolution it demands.
Stuff of daydreams solidifies and suffers in our presence,
but where do I turn my attention?
It is jarring to realize that blind passion is not enough…
Real love? Real love is work.
But that’s not the story we tell ourselves.
It’s too far from the tolerated narrative that dominates our ears.
We miss the intellect of love that embraces wholly and does not disregard circumstances
simply because we do not recognize them within ourselves.
I wanted words to paint images of the romantic run off into the sunset…
to capture the photogenic fists thrust into the air in protest…
the fleeting glance at opponents of injustice.
It lacks the other human sensations we might experience if we were more than fervent observers or acute documentarians.
Ears won’t hear the shuffling and dragging feet of any march,
nose cannot inhale the scent of sweat off of any body described in a poem,
and our tongues will not taste salt of tears nor the rank of blood.
for love is not a single moment. And the pursuit of justice is never final.
We want these so desperately up to the second they inconvenience us
they step out beyond our personal frame.
We will cheer on labeled heroes from the comfort of the cheap seats,
stay satisfied with cheap victories passed by those whom we dared not join in their moments of tribulation. Only the most refined of histories can we consume easily.
Where is passion when we sleep too deeply to light any fire,
let alone one large enough to draw the eyes of those too attached to the safety of their own comfort?
While we occupy institutions so occupied with protecting brands that they forget to live up to them,
this steady atrophy of empathy grows normalized so that we can hide from the title coward,
but live in cowardice nonetheless.
It is a willful, self-sedation that lets slip the agony of others from your mind…
and nothing but the thoughts administered to us may be heard over the echoing silence of inaction.
But…
BUT
If you love someone,
your head does not turn away
whether from suffering you don’t understand or from joy you have yet to grasp.
More than words of kindness, this world demands active compassion.
We hope to claim ownership over selflessness, but then cry out in cold shock when we shop for agape and realize it was never for sale.
Words are never enough, but they can be a beginning. Maybe a love poem is just reflection of the bits of us that have been shattered and remade by our own lives before taking up the search for emotional consciousness.
Renaissance of soul marks awakening of life
not fractured, at the expense of a history unacknowledged,
but whole.
Rooted deep.
Liberating.
I want to write love poems. I want to grasp love.
and some part of me feels what Dr. West meant when he told us,
“Justice is what love looks like in public.”
I want justice.
CarlyDreme 