By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: November 10, 2005

I have trouble writing poetry about you as you are
It was easy when I could imagine who you are
And write poetry about your perfect ankles
But I don’t want to write about how you cheek bones force themselves
To smile when you see me
I don’t want to write about guilt and how I feel that I should
Forget about you
But how my words and heart cannot

How do I write about us?
The creepy silence between our words where you can also hear the mechanics of our minds making assumptions – all totally unfounded – about one another.

These poems I write are badly written and yet that forms seems appropiate in describing who we are together. We have never learned how to give each other a chance.

Hide
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: November 9, 2005

My friend Marie in Sweden is dying
Tubes invading her veins, drugs numbing her 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

She has been waiting for a new pair of fish
Healthy ones
To replace the rotten grouper carcass through which she
Currently has to breath
Her lungs beat madly against her rib cage on inhale
And give up on exhale

I don’t blame them
They are tired
She is tired
Sometimes I believe she hopes that soon she will die

But this story isn’t about my friend Marie. It is about me.
Or so it was when thought about writing it.
That’s a very unpoetic line but right now I don’t care about poetics or trying to be literary.

I feel I even don’t deserve the ground; it should be reserved for things that grow, not things that decay.
I decay
I am decaying right now

When I was younger
I was obsessed with the notion of time
I loved how no matter how bad things got
Now matter how much weight that pressed upon my being
Time carried me into the future
It made me run to catch up with it
Time is linear – it persists, pushes on
And by this, it encourages us to move with it

2.this next part of the poem is at first going to appear totally unrelated to the first part of the poem. I am just writing now so I can’t promise it will relate, except to say that everything contains words, and all words essentially come from the same place.

Right now I imagine that I am poor – much poorer than I am now – somewhere in India. I am watching a young girl pour the drinking water that her mother has given her into the ocean.
“Don’t do that”, I tell her. “Your mother gave you that water. You don’t have very much. The ocean is already full of water, it doesn’t need anymore.”

The little girl looks at me. I see war in her eyes. She pauses, comfortable with silence in a way only the naïve or young could be. She continues, clasping the well water which sits in a rusty metal bucket, then lowering her hands to the giant ocean before her. How greedy the ocean looks. It is so full of the potential to give life while the population dehydrates and dies.

There is war in her eyes. She will be killed just like her father, fighting for a cause she never understood but was given no option to ever think about.
She will never get the chance to be something greater. She only has this time, where she feeds the only water she has back to the ocean. Back to something bigger, greater than herself.

3. That was poorly written but I like that image.

In the beginning of this evening
I was scared because the numbers

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