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To Ghassan, Poet and Friend In Palestine

ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚIn my despair I write hollow words in the hope that they reach you and you know I am always thinking thoughts of you dear loved friends . . . 

Vikas

wasted like desire   

🐼the wind crackles          

like an over-used radio

after the rain  

the failed lightning

too late now  

 to look for last night’s music

ไ‘Thank you also for your kind words of support during these hard times.’

෴‘There is nothing better than the birth of a book in these hard days to give hope’

ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ‘This is the true face of the Face of the occupation appearing without masks. We will find a way.’

🅰‘You are not only my publisher you are a real friend. The situation in Palestine is very hard. We are trying. We are adapting.’

ꦦPhone messages that attempt a ‘courage in the face of the not-normal as if to say we are trying to stay alive on whatever terms and for as long as it takes’ . .

🌱The truth is being played out ‘live’ on every single social media possible. The genocide in Palestine as spectacle. This too is the ‘not-normal’ made ‘new-normal’.

🍸In my helplessness I write more words which even as I write feel inadequate and reach out to friends.

One more sad mail from Palestine . . .too many lives lost . . . meanwhile we celebrate Christmas and yet another new year . . . sorry . . . I can’t stop the words . . . 

Nativity

Un holy cathedral   

this heart

vast caverns

🐓chilled           

like the winter wind

knocking

𒁏the child wanting to be let in                    

or out

depending

on which side of captivity you supported

her pleas

🐟falling            

like rock solid hail

its echoes      

rising upwards

gusts of rejected air

crashing  

into the ceiling no longer visible

hidden

in a haze  

her blue innocence couldn't pierce

dejected

꧙her wings drooping            

trailing on the floor

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she walked away

And this:

Love in the time of war?

Or a film I could have made . . . had I . . . made the film I never did . . . make . .

Sad

🐬she said         

voice sinking into the pond of melancholia

everything you write

true

I replied

but     

not without hope    

hoping this would make it more palatable

yes

⭕perhaps not entirely without hope though dark           

you would agree

yes

I do tend to write

🥃I said             

🅠now beginning to swim frantically from a dark place sounding hollow to my ears as she whispered    

I understand I think I do

🌺shifting on to her elbow and side her head tilted towards me observing as I lay staring at the ceiling on a bed made blazing white by the afternoon light

🌸 see our bodies covered in leaves              

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I said

trying to change the subject

💙as I ran my hand over the dappled shadows streaming through the windows across her thighs and mine

𒐪look how helplessly the tree outside the window is valiantly trying to protect our skins             

⛄I spoke fast to distract to draw her us into a different conversation

♕interesting is it not that the shadows are tinged with varying degrees of light       

I whispered

like our bodies

❀reaching out with her fingertips she traced the contours of a particularly dark shadow on my right cheek

🌼her breath whispering what could only have been a smile

🧔see how it stretches from the hill of the cheekbone to your earlobes and seeks refuge behind your ear             

🍌errant shadow         

said I

mockingly shaking my head

like her dog after a fresh bath spraying

𝄹the dark droplets all over her arm and face while she whole heartedly in the game defended herself with flailing arms protecting

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💟retaliating with her own darts of slim slivers of shadows with pointed glowing tips

♛from the evening sun         

we became a black and while film

🍰our shadows on the wall across from the bed engaged in a pillow fight between the forces of light and

shadow

even as the lens of the camera slowly pulled back

and the screen faded to black

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