Water
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: November 9, 2005

Aalya does not know what a machine is
She is 6 years old
Her father is missing
Her mother

While in India away from the machines
A little girl, defying her mother who is poor and thirsty, adds water to the ocean
With her bucket and pale, stolen, she sits on the beach and pours water into the endless body of wetness
Something she cannot imagine or really understand
Except that it is bigger than she is
And taking what little she has, even though it is all she has, adding to the ocean will make her bigger, like the ocean, apart of something greater than what she could ever be.

After waiting such longtime

By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: October  26, 2005

Dear Marie

I do not know what you look like
But I imagine you look how I feel –
Tubes invading your veins, drugs numbing your body
Until it feels like that forgotten mound of clay
That the artist practiced on until it was so deformed
He used it as a paperweight

I know you would rather watch hockey games
Than have to battle to two slimy fish flopping about
In your chest cavity
I think hockey is silly and useless
An activity where sportsmanship has been displaced by violence
But I know longer think this anymore
because hockey makes you forget
And forgetting makes you happy
This is totally unreasonable thought

I know that you ask questions about why your creator would make you suffer
I know you believe sometimes it would be better to die

There is a woman whom I have never met in person, but who has told me she is dying. She is about the same age as I am.
I sit in this circle, surrounded by young, lovely, warm and compassionate people. And I think of death.
Or maybe I’m just making all of that up.

When I Die
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: October 25, 2005

My friend Marie in Sweden will die soon if she does not get a set of new lungs. The two fish in her chest cavity are flopping and beating madly against her rib cage as she tries to inhale. They give up on the exhale. I don’t blame them. After 19 years of beating madly, her lungs are tired and soon will give up for good.
This cannot be a story with a happy ending. Believe me, I am most sorry to say. For even if she received a set of new lungs, the combined probability of risk of infection, rejection and the surgery itself it about the same probability that someone in this room will cough or sneeze in the next 2 mins. Even though everyone knows they can’t control it, they hold their breath and hope. While my friend Marie’s lungs are being replaced, everyone will be holding their breath, no one will be able to breath.

But this story isn’t about my friend Marie. It is about me. That’s a very unpoetic line but right now I don’t care about poetics or trying to be literary. Right now I am scared of dying. I feel I even don’t deserve the ground; it should be reserved for things that grow, not things that decay.

One day I too will be in the same position as my young friend Marie. These lungs – which perhaps I should name as to properly address them as they seem to have a mind of their own – they will become tired. I will become tired. I will forget what air tastes like as, like two gross grouper fish heads, they start to smell and decay, refusing to perform their function.

When I die
I will be grateful for convicted serial killers who show us what we are capable of and remind us to pretend that we have choices even though I can prove philosophically that we don’t

when I die
Don’t bury me
Save the ground for something that grows

Poetry
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: October 19, 2005

It is very unlikely that
this poem will feed any starving children
But that isn’t a reason not to believe

I am tired of giving
Reasons not to believe
Constantly on the edge of something
And then something else

And those all these poems about freedom
Such an overused and misunderstood word
I don’t even know what it really feels like
For I am not dead yet

Or maybe I am, says the little voice in my head

Which everyone I must negotiate with
Get past all those warnings of flu pandemics
The death of democracy
The straving children (which have already made their way in here anyway)
So I can get out of bed
Close my eyes
Look outside
Open my eyes
Imagine what I haven’t seen

And then write about it
So people like you
Can sit down
And read things like this

This is the closet to apology
The voice will allow me to give

Thank you for coming.

Poem Into The Future
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: October 10, 2005

it is not that we have changed
I hesitate
to use wisdom, but it’s something
strength, or love has lifted us
carried us into our future

they are wrong
we have no goals
no dreams, no success
time is pointless, death inevitable

but when you hold me
I get back
everything I have lost

only in our stories and poems, only in our moments
will my life move forward
thinking

I have achieved
I am protected from death

in your arms, my life has an end, in your arms
I am carried into the future

By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: October 7, 2005

Sunsets(1)

good literature
is well equipped
with miserable endings

sunsets (ending
with the perfection of beginning)
are bad

a poet
is anyone with a false sense of control
taking shots at the evening sky

today the sun is setting
someday, everyone will die

Sunsets(2)

good literature
is well equipped
with miserable endings

sunsets (ending
with the perfection of beginning)
are bad

these words
were shot from canon
at the evening sky

the sun continues setting
unfortunately, we will die

Morning Feels Slippery
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: October 4, 2005

morning feels slippery
you imagine it’s raining outside
oceans forming in the cracks of the sidewalk
cars like strange, mechanical whales
the sun is waiting to come up

your tea cup
is a womb that you sip from
while you watch the the mound of flesh wife’s body
blend into the bed sheets
none of your neighbours
would think of the bedroom
as a crime scene

you

she’s breathing
repetitive but not mechanic
an organic radio wave you tune into

how she held your pain
like a subway bomb
the more people in danger
the more you felt free

In the dark dust
I imagined you
As a mountain
On which pilgrims climb
They followed blindly
And so did I

By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: October 2, 2005

there is a naked woman in the middle of the highway
blocking the left lane

a procession of angry motorists
creating that wind that whips at her body
she is a prophet for the new century
face covered with pale, white rust

No one stops to inquire about her motives
Everyone whispers
“Bloody whore.”
Or a silent
“*uck you”.
They continue their journey,
Driven by ignorance
Creating the wind
That whips and lashes at her body
From above come the frozen tears
Of the sky
Her face is tarnished beauty.
A pale
White
Rust
Eyes that reveal mystery,
Are sealed with frost
For once,
She thinks,
“I can see true beauty”.

Above her,
The sky is weeping

And so I am:
Facing the off ramp,
Unaware of my condition
Waiting for liberation
From a
Black Chevy pickup
Whose power beam headlights
Melt the crystallized tears
Falling on my exposed skin
I loved her
And
Am waiting
For my mistake
To remember
What it means to
Be free.

Poem During The Night
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: October 2, 2005

Wake up
Remember dreaming
About waking up during the night
Strange and heavy
Stumbling to your desk
To write this poem
And then hid underneath
Once you’ve read what you’re written

When I wake up
I remember dreaming
That I had woken during the night
I feel strange and heavy
I feel an incredible urge to run to my desk
And write poetry
But once I read what I have written
I then feel an incredible urge to hid underneath it

Why am I writing this poem?
Because my wife told me too
It is a form of therapy and avoidance
I feel suddenly that I am privileged
And everyone whispers
Gee, that was a banal thing to say

When I wake up
I perform logic puzzles until I get tired out
And then I pretend to be saving young princesses from ivory towers
Who really I have been watching with binoculars
All of my life

I take baths
In water that I collected from the rain
And saliva of small birds who make their home just outside mine

This poem is no longer going to save anyone
Poetry doesn’t save
But camouflage
We aren’t anyone
But all
This is a song about me trying to find my way
To bed
Without crying like last time
Why don’t you just watch me
In my cage
Until you too are tired
And then you might realize what’s really happening
And take your place
Right beside me

Light 2
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: September 30, 2005

If all the lamps in the house
Were turned out
You could dress this wound
By what shines from it
– Anne Carson

her lungs exhale light
breaking into the dark
womb of the bedroom
stopping at the black hole in your chest

she used the light
radiating from her organs
to grow buttercups in the kitchen
taught you to see
the cracks in everything
how the light slips through

she said the light comes from the wound of her heart
you sent her for an x-ray

she woke
while you were cutting below her breast
trying to find the source
she didn’t scream
bled into your hands
finally
it was dark
thought you’d get a nights sleep
until the warmth from the blood
became light

decided to
have her bleed
into a jar
to save
on flashlight batteries

if only you could see
how the light arranges these words
you would be able to understand them

you’ve been sleeping better –
the light from her lungs
touches your skin
and slowly
as if deciding
fades away