|
08/17/06
Suheir Hammad
Straight out of New Orleans...
Message from Suheir Hammad: radio from New Orleans
DJ Philistine hosts Rise Up Radio aka Sock Puppet Mystery Theatre
Special DJ - The ButterPhoenix from WTUL New Orleans - music, guests, news, and more. Listen online at:
http://wtul.fm/listenlive.php
Every Wednesday, 11:00am to 2:00pm.
WTUL is a non-profit, commercial-free college radio station in New Orleans.
August 17, 2006
break (bas)
bas
bastana
ana bastana
bas
daily papers photo babies
charred bread no life
venus chaired motionless shaking
bleeds currents
astonished stars cry
bas
gather armless
gather heart broke
gather just broke
gather harvest
gather blood
gather thirst
ride moon bare
back through night
conjure lion stretch
sunrise reaching raw ankles
bas ana
image mirage libnan woman khadra
khalas last call rouged up bought
down maze mezze liquor
rich sweat raw flesh mint civil
warm family foreign faded
coast defiant jaded
jupiter altar smote cypress
loudest crescent siren
occupier vampire
tell like is
gather orphaned
gather barren
gather limbs
gather touch
gather eye light
gather close
realize
bastana ana
alone
bas not
September 6, 2005
We received this poem from Suheir today.
a prayer band
every thing
you ever paid for
you ever worked on
you ever received
every thing
you ever gave away
you ever held on to
you ever forgot about
every single thing is one
of every single thing and all
things are gone
every thing i can think to do
to say i feel
is buoyant
every thing is below water
every thing is eroding
every thing is hungry
there is no thing to eat
there is water every where
and there is no thing clean to drink
the children aren't talking
the nurses have stopped believing
anyone is coming for us
the parish fire chief will never again tell anyone
that help is
coming
now is the time of rags
now is the indigo of loss
now is the need for cavalry
new orleans
i fell in love with your fine ass poor boys
sweating frying
catfish blackened life thick women glossy
seasoning bourbon
indians beads grit history of races
and losers who still won
new orleans
i dreamt of living lush within your shuttered
eyes
a closet of yellow dresses a breeze on my neck
writing poems for do right men and a daughter of
refugees
i have known of displacement
and the tides pulling every thing
that could not be carried within
and some of that too
a jamaican man sings
those who can afford to run will run
what about those who can't
they will have to stay
end of the month tropical depression turned storm
someone whose beloved has drowned
knows what water can do
what water will do to once animated things
a new orleans man pleads
we have to steal from each other to eat
another gun in hand says we will protect what we
have
what belongs to us
i have known of fleeing desperate
with children on hips in arms on backs
of house keys strung on necks
of water weighed shoes
disintegrated official papers
leases certificates births deaths taxes
i have known of high ways which lead nowhere
of aches in teeth in heads in hands tied
i have known of women raped by strangers by
neighbors
of a hunger in human
i have known of promises to return
to where you come from
but first any bus going any where
tonight the tigris and the mississippi moan
for each other as sisters
full of unnatural things
flooded with predators and prayers
all language bankrupt
how long before hope begins to eat itself?
how many flags must be waved?
when does a man let go of his wife's hand in order to
hold his child?
who says this is not the america they know?
what america do they know?
were the poor people so poor they could not be seen?
were the black people so many they could not be
counted?
this is not a charge
this is a conviction
if death levels us all
then life plays favorites
and life it seems is constructed
of budgets contracts deployments of wards
and automobiles of superstition and tourism
and gasoline but mostly insurance
and insurance it seems is only bought
and only with what cannot be carried within
and some of that too
a city of slave bricked streets
a city of chapel rooms
a city of haints
a crescent city
where will the jazz funeral be held?
when will the children talk?
tonight it is the dead
and dying who are left
and those who would rather not
promise themselves they will return
they will be there
after everything is gone
and when the saints come
marching like spring
to save us all
November 3, 2004
A letter from Suheir:
What a Difference a Day Makes
Soundtrack: John Coltrane "Interstellar Space"
& Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising"
Do not be depressed. Do not be depressed. Do not be depressed. I woke up this morning; sure the States would get attacked. "Thank God I'm not in New York," was my first thought this morning. "My God, almost everyone I love is in New York," was the next. I am in Huntington, West Virginia, what the pundits are calling "Bush Country". Word.
Yesterday, everywhere I went people looked beat down and broke. The downtown is full of construction workers and planners walking in and out of huge developments. The people are friendly but do no extend themselves. There was a toxic leak a few days ago, and some of the evacuated are staying in this same hotel. One medium sized window is not bringing enough light into this dreary room.
I waited and waited for my absentee voter's form. I filled out the paper work in late August, with the DNC. I assumed it would be in my accumulating mail. Nothing.
Do not be depressed. There is work to do. There is light to make.
My candle is lit. The scent is fig; it smells green and damp, alive. I bathed in rosemary oil, to soften my skin under the armor I will have to don. I scrubbed my body with a luxurious "polish" which was part of my friend's birthday gift to me. Exfoliate, let breathe. Be kind to myself. Be kind to those I love.
Eleven states will add amendments to their constitutions defining marriage as only between a man and a woman. We must all love harder, fiercer, in defiance of those who aspire to own and mandate love.
My friends have sent emails from across the nation, around the world. People are aghast. Does this mean the American people continue to mandate this Administration's policies, even as the coffins return home, and thousands are buried, nameless to us, in Iraq's imploding streets? Does this mean we really don't give a fuck what the rest of the world thinks? What will happen to our American progressives and activists? What about Palestine, Sudan, North Korea?
Do not be depressed. Depression is a weight we cannot afford to carry right now. There are plans to make, and hopefully, plans to put in action. Why are so many people voting against their best interests in favor of letting fear guide their politics? Fear has won this round. We will need all our resources not to fall to it. There is nothing to be gained from becoming the victim of a weight that is not ours to carry. Breathe - sigh. And get that dirt off your shoulders.
While I am constantly shocked and awed by what a few people are doing with the power they have, I feel like I pretty much know what I'm working with here. We must practice Fortitude. Compassion. We must remember this country has always had a radical tradition of dissent. This will be the legacy we leave. We will be even louder. Write even better. Live even fuller. We will not be bought into a de-habilitating stupor. We will not be medicated beyond awareness. Alongside that fear you are feeling, is an adrenaline rush. We know now, it is the very soul of our planet and collective humanity we are trying to save. Nothing less.
And my brother. And your daughter. And our kids. My generation speaks of Vietnam in hushed stories of absentee fathers and devastated uncles. Now, we will watch our peers and our younger siblings be sent off, one after another, into a war which is not even that. See, this is where the depression sets in, weighing down my heart, just that much.
Do not be depressed. Be aware. Be awake. Be resistant. Be your ancestors. Be your future. Be alive. Be alive.
Suheir Hammad
New poem from Suheir Hammad
May 31, 2004
We received this today from Suheir Hammad:
"...below is my new poem. i send it to you with love and hope. one suheir"
1.
Where has my language gone?
The poet searches for words to wrap around these times
Make them sense Make them pretty Make them useful
Words from the past haunt our conversations
Empire and Crusade
Plans and Centuries
All these words cleared understanding before
Fall heavy now
And weightless into this abyss of bad news
I have seen the photographs
Again words Prison Torture
Desperate for words I can write
That are not profane That are objective Read as rational
So people will not stop reading this self-conscious poem
So my parents will not be embarrassed
So Americans will demand the return of their own
Desperate for words I can write
So I can keep from becoming something hard and unforgiving
Language has failed me
I am told to believe nothing I read
Then everything I read
I am given my own face to be wary of
I am told to fear colors as alerts
I am told over and over
Iraq is not Palestine
Kabul is not New York
The photos
Women Raped
Posed as girls gone wild
This is entertainment This is staged This is recorded
Men Chained
Do words such as humiliation and torture
Truly fit the immensity of these acts?
What happens to those who survive?
What happens to those responsible?
Haiti is not Chechnya
Chiapas is not East L.A.
Iraq is not Palestine
Over and over I am told
I am given a vantage point and a lens and instructed
Do not move Do not look up Do not look down
I am falling
2.
No connections here
No illuminated parallels
Two different histories and two different peoples
Make no links
Do not confuse the issues
Only confuse the people
For 56 years Israel has legitimized
This type of behavior
Sanctioned violence in the name of a god
Who does not have enough love for us all
A god who chooses sides
A god who has favorites and chosen ones
A god who cuts deals and shuffles souls
The type of god who does not answer prayers
Who understands only one language
A god who does not worry his beautiful mind with
Such ugliness
I am told this is America's god
The photos from Rafah Palestine
It is 1948 and 2004 in the same frame
Their eyes say to the camera
What will you do with this pain?
Where will you take it?
Can you take it from me?
This space between the lens and the subjects
Is concentrated with pleas for witness
With promises of cycles unbroken
With children's bicycles under the rubble of once were homes
Another level of exile is being constructed
And I am falling
Aaagghh, ya Phalesteen
What is it about us they hate so much?
This face? These eyes? This obstinate refusal to die?
How much trauma can one nation endure with the world staring?
Some mouths open in shock
Others silent and sneering
While women scream at a frequency the living cannot hear
Again? Again ya Phalesteen?
3.
How fucked up is it that I have to choose between ending
One occupation or another?
Partition my time and portion my information
I have to make Nice Play Fair and Polite
When I want to tear open my chest to void it of this emptiness
This ache has eaten into my head and wears down my dreams
My friends worry I am not eating enough
Am taking too much on Too much in
I find nowhere to rest this responsibility
If I say nothing I am complicit
If I say something I am isolated as extreme
As a theorist in conspiracy
As if war is ever a coincidence
As if genocide simply happens
This is about oil and land and water
This is about illusion and the taking on of airs
The poor once again the munitions in rich men's cannons
This is about light and dark
There is no black and white in humanity
I am told
Venezuela is not Cuba
Rwanda is not Kurdistan
I am not the woman kneeling
In front of soldiers and their cameras and their weapons
I am not the child shot in the head by the Israeli Defense
Forces
I am not the starving AIDS inflicted mother
Praying I live longer than my children
So they will not be orphaned and sick and have to bury me
I am not the child who watched
Her family chopped to death in Lebanon in Sudan in Nicaragua
I am not the father who leaves his children so as not to hear
their
empty Bellies call out Baba, where is the bread?
I
am the woman whose taxes outfitted this tragedy
The American the Authority does not speak for
The Arab the Arab leaders do not speak for
The woman whose shouts of Not in My Name
Were spit back at me as a slogan of the misguided at best
I am the girl from Brooklyn told to mind her business
I am the poet in search of new words
And a new world Not Mars
4.
We use antiquated terms that cannot stretch enough to touch this
truth
We have not learned from the past enough to not repeat it
I
am told it has always been this way
War and Pillage
Rape is older than prostitution
And prostitution is the oldest politic
The way the world has always been
The pimps and those they pimp
The
human race has always left
Those who fall behind
If
I am to survive then
I learn from the present
From the future promised
We learn to live with madness
One cannot be healthy in a sick world
Only navigate illnesses Only medicate wounds
Pray you are not contagious
Try to hurt no one
My
elders say dissent has always been watched
Radical ideas have always been recorded
But even those who have lived on the margins admit
Under breath It has never been this bad
Not
everyone is suffering True
Most thirst
A few swim in pools that fake connection to seas
Most starve
I throw away meals I have no appetite for
You can shop from your couch and eat food fast
And never think about anything other than your credit card debt
And the next hour's purchases
Shop and stop asking questions
I have envied this stupor
Even knowing it is the least honorable suicide
Even knowing its apathy is another kind of murder
5.
Sometimes all you can do is inhale and exhale
Life a shallow version of its potential
Sometimes all you can do is search for life where you are
In the city A flash of yellow on the basketball court
The divine geometry in the pattern of a girl's hijab
For a week I have been cleaning and knifing enough
Parsley for tabbouleh to feed hundreds
I pray over the green
That what I make will feed those in need of a meal
There is still love in us
The proof is that we are watching it die
There is still hope in us
Hope is there in my sisters' eyes
There is still enough resistance in us
To create a world where there is no
Your people or my people
But our people
Our people who kill Our people who are killed
I
somehow know love will save us
The proof is in the stories not broadcast
The poems not published
The truth between the lies
The stories whispered in the dusk of this day
I
know somehow love will save us
Though I can't find the passion or desire in my body to make it
There is still a source for peace deeply embedded in this chaos
I
know love will save us
Though words fail to point out how
Amazingly
I still pray
To a god I envision to be larger than any nation Any religion
And
I still hunt for language to gather into a poem
That I pray will feed those like me
In need of proof they are not alone
More poems by Suheir
|
