All, this is my first attempt at a ghazal. It follows a story my dad told me of when his family had to leave Nagpur and move to Hyderabad, India after the partition of India and Pakistan. Hyderabad was still under the rule of a Muslim prince, so they thought they would be safer there. Nevertheless, there was the threat of violence, so they had to leave quietly and travel at night.
We left at night, an industrial moon bathing the Distant Kingdom,
Revealed dim paths to men, leading us to the Distant Kingdom.
The moon unveiled furrowed brown faces, darting eyes and whispers,
To Allah’s weary, wide-eyed children, dreaming of a Distant Kingdom.
Small hands clutched saris, weaving in and out of brilliant folds,
Decolonized, weak smiles seeking refuge in the Distant Kingdom.
The bus traced scents of Mughal gardens, evening jasmine and gul,
Through long grass and listless rivers, searching for the Distant Kingdom.
Peacocks wailed the women’s songs of bride departure gloom,
Eight-hundred years of marriage breaking with a Distant Kingdom.
We woke to shouts and spinning wheels - a bus void of men,
Emancipated from its muddy prison singing odes to Distant Kingdom.
Oh Yasmeen, did you glimpse the light that danced on peaceful ripples?
The orange moon remained, blessing our journey to the Distant Kingdom.
Yasmeen Najmi
© 2010 Yasmeen Najmi
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Early Bird Special
The gym looks like the Senior Center
Sagging suits and shuffling sandals
sweating out winter
and other cranial centered maladies
And a younger dude, friendly in a way
That makes me sit near the sauna door
Tattoos and eyeliner ringed like a boxer
Fighting for both sides
I think it was a draw
The shades of gray hair
Define the range of pool side discourse
High volume and vapid
Sliding slowly along wet floors into drains
An older man tells us
He goes to the gym
to avoid his wife
And his car refuses
to make that right turn
home to Taylor Ranch
magically carrying him like
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
To the Santa Ana Casino
In the half hour I was there
He repeats this confession three times
As if he wants to tell enough of us
to make the Rosary
Anything to escape mind numbing
Lack of purpose wrought by retirement
The air drips resignation.
“I know what you mean, bro”
Said a man in the Jacuzzi
Still young enough to be seen with his wife
“I go with my lady to the seafood buffet
For nineteen dollars you get
all-you-can-eat crab legs
And they’re biiiig (his hands confirm the abundance)
It’s worth the money for that.”
And the older man admits that
he sometimes prefers a good hot dog to steak
And I watch clichés spiral in currents
Recirculating questions about why one would
quit a good postal service
or any job with benefits and pension
and whether they would go to Vegas.
The locker room women have bakery bodies
Breasts hang warm and unembarrassed
like stretched pizza dough
I survey my flushed figure in the mirror
breathe into saturated lungs
Relieved that most of my ribs are visible
Smile and realize
That, perhaps the trite conversations
really aren’t the problem
In our garage entrance-cul-de-sac culture
Hell, I’m just glad people talk.
Yasmeen Najmi
© 2010 Yasmeen Najmi
Sagging suits and shuffling sandals
sweating out winter
and other cranial centered maladies
And a younger dude, friendly in a way
That makes me sit near the sauna door
Tattoos and eyeliner ringed like a boxer
Fighting for both sides
I think it was a draw
The shades of gray hair
Define the range of pool side discourse
High volume and vapid
Sliding slowly along wet floors into drains
An older man tells us
He goes to the gym
to avoid his wife
And his car refuses
to make that right turn
home to Taylor Ranch
magically carrying him like
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
To the Santa Ana Casino
In the half hour I was there
He repeats this confession three times
As if he wants to tell enough of us
to make the Rosary
Anything to escape mind numbing
Lack of purpose wrought by retirement
The air drips resignation.
“I know what you mean, bro”
Said a man in the Jacuzzi
Still young enough to be seen with his wife
“I go with my lady to the seafood buffet
For nineteen dollars you get
all-you-can-eat crab legs
And they’re biiiig (his hands confirm the abundance)
It’s worth the money for that.”
And the older man admits that
he sometimes prefers a good hot dog to steak
And I watch clichés spiral in currents
Recirculating questions about why one would
quit a good postal service
or any job with benefits and pension
and whether they would go to Vegas.
The locker room women have bakery bodies
Breasts hang warm and unembarrassed
like stretched pizza dough
I survey my flushed figure in the mirror
breathe into saturated lungs
Relieved that most of my ribs are visible
Smile and realize
That, perhaps the trite conversations
really aren’t the problem
In our garage entrance-cul-de-sac culture
Hell, I’m just glad people talk.
Yasmeen Najmi
© 2010 Yasmeen Najmi
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Haiku
In winter salt grass
the tamarisk and willow
are again equal
A wall can't deny
smells and sounds of genocide
their screams roam at night
Flash of black white tail
lifting hopes to winter branch
was just a Robin
Lady Liberty
repatriating freedom
how long will we drift?
Comida pura
porque es necessito
a defenderla?
Rio tap water
has estrogen and prozac
life is looking up
White dog with dreadlocks
Barelas 4th Street struttin'
in a pink sweater
Yasmeen Najmi
© 2010 Yasmeen Najmi
the tamarisk and willow
are again equal
A wall can't deny
smells and sounds of genocide
their screams roam at night
Flash of black white tail
lifting hopes to winter branch
was just a Robin
Lady Liberty
repatriating freedom
how long will we drift?
Comida pura
porque es necessito
a defenderla?
Rio tap water
has estrogen and prozac
life is looking up
White dog with dreadlocks
Barelas 4th Street struttin'
in a pink sweater
Yasmeen Najmi
© 2010 Yasmeen Najmi
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Convivencia
You returned in the Fall
of my 40th year
Armed with an early frost
And a box of 500-year-old plums
The forbidden fruits of our common ancestry
Blurred the boundaries of our worlds
If I fed you my jam with horno bread
Would you recognize the explosion of purple
cryogenically preserved in the layers
of a Buffalo winter?
The firm, green pucker of impending womanhood
Would it taste like me?
Tormented by your freeze-thaw
I broke the silence
I don’t remember your few, soft words that night
Only how they erupted in beautiful volcanic violence
Hurled fiberoptically through flaming canyons
Slamming into sandstone, stealing my breath
from the river where I hibernate beneath mud and snow
Frozen stalagmites dripping lethargically
into swirling debris
Your voice dove deep into my bed
Liberated geothermal streams
That nibbled the cold from below
Gently exposed fractals and fractures through icy lenses
Warm currents shaped my face
Brushed away leaves and lost years
Dendritic fingers carved cliffs and valleys
The genesis of Spring and tears form vegas
The thick grass of your chest
Birthing sparrows and love again
But your tongue could never speak of love
It just pushed it deep inside of me
A seed that suffocates in the darkness of womb
But never dies
I want you to reconstitute me
With caldera endurance and ancient fire
Lava burning rifts into thighs
Following the Silk Road to white sheets
And in our movement
Time leaves nothing but ash and Pele’s tears
And your eyes
The blue Spanish sky.
Yasmeen Najmi
© 2010 Yasmeen Najmi
of my 40th year
Armed with an early frost
And a box of 500-year-old plums
The forbidden fruits of our common ancestry
Blurred the boundaries of our worlds
If I fed you my jam with horno bread
Would you recognize the explosion of purple
cryogenically preserved in the layers
of a Buffalo winter?
The firm, green pucker of impending womanhood
Would it taste like me?
Tormented by your freeze-thaw
I broke the silence
I don’t remember your few, soft words that night
Only how they erupted in beautiful volcanic violence
Hurled fiberoptically through flaming canyons
Slamming into sandstone, stealing my breath
from the river where I hibernate beneath mud and snow
Frozen stalagmites dripping lethargically
into swirling debris
Your voice dove deep into my bed
Liberated geothermal streams
That nibbled the cold from below
Gently exposed fractals and fractures through icy lenses
Warm currents shaped my face
Brushed away leaves and lost years
Dendritic fingers carved cliffs and valleys
The genesis of Spring and tears form vegas
The thick grass of your chest
Birthing sparrows and love again
But your tongue could never speak of love
It just pushed it deep inside of me
A seed that suffocates in the darkness of womb
But never dies
I want you to reconstitute me
With caldera endurance and ancient fire
Lava burning rifts into thighs
Following the Silk Road to white sheets
And in our movement
Time leaves nothing but ash and Pele’s tears
And your eyes
The blue Spanish sky.
Yasmeen Najmi
© 2010 Yasmeen Najmi
Monday, February 8, 2010
The Back 40 and other Underground Tales
From 25,000 feet our country
looks like a desperate act of geometry
As if the Gods of Aztlan, in a last attempt at prophecy
threw thunderbolts
from the roof of the Sony Maquila
And collapsed the border wall
into a giant flat screen
So we could all look the same to them
The topography is killing us
Or perhaps it was aliens
playing laser games with landscape
In an intergalactic contest to see
how many bank-approved shapes
Could be jammed into an irregular continent
There are 40 squares in a section of land
Roads and natural features
Our children's response
to coloring inside the lines
A rebellion of vermacelli and fistfuls of sand
hurled across checkerboard yards
Our Euro-obsession with rectangularity
stamps remnant hills and forests
Random waves conclude with stoplight precision
But in the twilight of red farm dust and cricket nods
When noone can see them
The rows sigh and shake off the long, linear day
As dog’s ear casts a fly
Fingers of water appear
then disappear under boundary fences
forced underground in silent streams
You, water, giver of life and soil
You are not wanted here
You create and destroy
Like the lover
That submerges us, as we gasp for more
and other times
Pulses, embedding the echos of waves
Before evulsing to other valleys
We tried to redefine you
Paint you with familiar colors
Herd you into shimmering corrals
and brand you with sexy French names
And childhood memories of instant chocolate
Taking what we want and need
But never with enough distance
to avoid the collateral damage
So we erected levees, dams
diverted and shared you with others,
Flushed you with estro-prozac cocktails and filed for custody
To make you stay
You were always just passing through
We never learned from those
Whose lives we stole
their knowledge thrown into arroyos
with grizzle and bones after the feast
We never intended to reshape our existence
beyond the bought and paid
Knowing this
You went away sadly
Sinking into sands of doubt
Evaporating into desert skies.
Yasmeen Najmi
© 2010 Yasmeen Najmi
looks like a desperate act of geometry
As if the Gods of Aztlan, in a last attempt at prophecy
threw thunderbolts
from the roof of the Sony Maquila
And collapsed the border wall
into a giant flat screen
So we could all look the same to them
The topography is killing us
Or perhaps it was aliens
playing laser games with landscape
In an intergalactic contest to see
how many bank-approved shapes
Could be jammed into an irregular continent
There are 40 squares in a section of land
Roads and natural features
Our children's response
to coloring inside the lines
A rebellion of vermacelli and fistfuls of sand
hurled across checkerboard yards
Our Euro-obsession with rectangularity
stamps remnant hills and forests
Random waves conclude with stoplight precision
But in the twilight of red farm dust and cricket nods
When noone can see them
The rows sigh and shake off the long, linear day
As dog’s ear casts a fly
Fingers of water appear
then disappear under boundary fences
forced underground in silent streams
You, water, giver of life and soil
You are not wanted here
You create and destroy
Like the lover
That submerges us, as we gasp for more
and other times
Pulses, embedding the echos of waves
Before evulsing to other valleys
We tried to redefine you
Paint you with familiar colors
Herd you into shimmering corrals
and brand you with sexy French names
And childhood memories of instant chocolate
Taking what we want and need
But never with enough distance
to avoid the collateral damage
So we erected levees, dams
diverted and shared you with others,
Flushed you with estro-prozac cocktails and filed for custody
To make you stay
You were always just passing through
We never learned from those
Whose lives we stole
their knowledge thrown into arroyos
with grizzle and bones after the feast
We never intended to reshape our existence
beyond the bought and paid
Knowing this
You went away sadly
Sinking into sands of doubt
Evaporating into desert skies.
Yasmeen Najmi
© 2010 Yasmeen Najmi
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