the war never here

my nerves electrified, attempt to jump ship with the slightest whisper of sound. it was only the air conditioner’s clack, clack, clacking into autopilot, though. nothing serious, you see. nothing like the spontaneous plummet of black bombs under their white orders, they shrieking hello as they drop in for an unwelcomed visit. again. and again. and again. and still more. 

war. the only whisper heard there are the suffocated cries of the almost dead, the soft whimper of excruciating loss. 

this is how i know i’m far from it. these nerves terrify easy.

 

what is it like to feel grave uncertainty?

___

palestine,

your ever-rooted people

and your tortured borders,

are with me.

diagonally pierced heart

through the cage that holds it

eyes now the shape of pistachio

before they’re broken open

except these eyes already are

they pink instead of white

wet instead of dry

stomach compressed and coiled

maybe she entered there too

rummaging around

throwing this piece there

that piece where it never belonged

she lost something, i’m sure

or maybe it’s not her,

just something i ate

regardless

i’m familiar with pain again

not friends yet

no gifts exchanged

or nothing

just getting reacquainted

i’m noticing pain,

she runs cold.

a smile on her face that’s no longer for you

a momentous occasion

when heart breaks

again

for the first time

since

the last

all i feel is the

repetition

of why

of the tenderness

squeezed between

of screams and thuds

of screams and thuds

of screams and thuds

of trying so hard

feelings would bleed

chemical weapons kill over 600 people in syria today.

i dare you to watch the videos of rows of motionless brown children laying on cold dark cement floors in makeshift hospitals. i dare you to hear the screams of Allahu Akbar by husbands and sons clenching onto their dead loved ones. i dare you to witness a child convulsing attempting to live a little longer, to witness a young girl with white froth bubbling from her mouth and nostrils, to witness the lungs of all those half dead violently searching for breath.

what will it take for us, for me, for me, for fucking me, to forsake our comfort to really begin to be in solidarity with people trying so hard not to die? like getting in the street rather than posting shit on facebook, like intervening in public rather than creating “safe spaces”, like making war felt.

if we remain comfortable, we remain complicit.

“In two days, you and the rest of the world will forget about this massacre the same way you forgot about the rest that have happened over the last 2+ years in Syria.”

sometimes i can hear my soul gasping, exhausted because i pay it no attention.

yesterday lingers.

heavy baggage under dropping eyes.

i wanna do everything but sit in silence, everything but get closer to insides.

it feels as if all of me is telling me not to. its ok, everything tells myself, you can miss just one more sit.

but it is my rebellious spirit, my forever guide (and misguide at times), that wants to disobey these posturings of support.

gentrification or “urban renewal” (really a term used to invisibilize displacement of peoples) is essentially colonialism. when a place has endured a removal of lives, when its new inhabitants have joyfully erased its natives’ forced exodus (or have appropriated it to show progressiveness), when the process of “renewal” has replaced a natives’ culture and history with what is ahistorical (shiny shit that is used as an agent of forgetting), when there are forces of state violence (in this case the cops) protecting the lives and property of its new residents, what is it but colonization?

its appearance is just more comfortable to swallow now.

gentrifying san franscisco

yesterday night I made a mistake. I make mistakes kinda often, I suppose. Been alone in my head and heart for so many years that I forget where I’m at sometimes. People know this about me, my fam especially. And it’s with this knowledge that I’m known by folks to be irresponsible, careless, forgetful, tardy to the party, spacey, clumsy, etc.

Since learning this, I really do try to be less of those things. but when I do exhibit those qualities, I judge myself with the voice of those who have judged me, and hard. Yesterday was one of those days. And as a strange (and mean) punishment, I told myself that I don’t deserve to sit because if i cannot have my mindfulness shift from meditation to my day-to-day then fuck it.

these were my stories yesterday in the thick of it.

today i sat. because i do make mistakes. the fucking end.

free moving parts.

i hold tension- my jaw tightens, my stomach locks, my eyebrows furrow, my shoulders become friendly with my ears. and when i sit, my purpose is to notice, so i notice these parts held and i loosen my grip and release. but its because im sitting in place with the purpose of noticing that release happens. how often in my day, with all the movings, reactivities and stressors, do i notice when i hold, grip and tighten the many parts of me that want to be free?

how often can i notice it now?