Fatemeh Keshavarz

What do I do for a living?

When I am tired of detecting holes in the tapestry of tradition
And making up outrageous ways to patch them invisible
I watch birds
I watch birds that grow
From the palm of my poets’ hands
Tracing with fascination
The patterns of their dizzying flights
Over the tall hedges of centuries
Making their way back
Onto the horizons of now

And when I am not bird watching
I make broken mirrors
Smudged with sticky emotions
I have struggled hard to tame
And have mercifully failed
Mirrors, broken with intention
But not along the lines I had carefully predicted

A crooked way to find my own face
Through lending you my eyes
To see yours
But not without its redeeming moments
Like hoping all the while
That despite the scarcity of light
Despite the impatience with rising after each fall
And despite the intolerance with pain
I might someday help someone to suspect
That falling in love has a million faces
If only we had a million eyes to see

August 11, 2000

Sorry folks!
I refuse to see it any other way
No offence!
But I have my own eyes
And I am not ready to die
Not before living some

I’ll be me I guess
Shaky, like “willows in the wind” as we say in Persian
Yeah…, from time to time
Sad, like the fenced yards I pass by everyday? Perhaps…
And lonely
Like the crescent moon hanging up-side-down
every third or fourth afternoon of the lunar month
But not dead
I’ll live some before I die

It hasn’t been that bad actually
I used to run into strange-looking faces
In deserted corners of my dreams
Tricky business! Chasing them into day light
And looking them in the eye
Till they looked like scarecrows
But guess what!
They are gone now

What did I have for a weapon?
Goodness! Nothing, nothing
All I had was being me
Or you might say
The simple privilege of knowing
Who I could not be!

And, yeah…
There was that thing, too
That thing about not lying
Never, to anyone, about anything
Not even for a split second
Not even about the shape of a stupid snowflake
That defies the naked eye anyway
Yeah, that was kind of important, I would say.

And you know what?
It hasn’t been too bad
So,
I am going to live some more
Before I die.

August 6, 2000

Tomorrow at sundown
When I step into the lake by myself
Playful little waves rush to my anxious feet
And the sun’s molten red glow
Greets my body in the stillness of the moment

As the lake and I rediscover each other
None touches the depths of our solitude
But dragonflies and see weeds

There I stand
Reflected in the water – not in your eyes
Leaning against the stillness of time
Untouched by your voice
Holding the ode to freedom – the predictable, over stretched, overused ode
To freedom – in my hands
And remold it in ways unforeseeable to my own fingers.

Later,
Singing crickets in trees around the lake
Have snatched my noisy thoughts
I am peace
And the water’s smooth crystal surface
Mirrors my perfect satisfaction
The lake and I have merged
With the melting darkness of the new night.

Later still,
The kids race to the motel’s big theatre
For their evening movies
And the line outside the ice cream stand is the longest.
I walk back to the cabin
With a towel in one hand
And a poem in the other.

August 1st, 2000

I reach out and touch
The tip of the needles on a lonely pine tree

-As I pass through the park
And stumble on a tender spot deep inside.

What is it that hurts so?
When someone hits you in that spot with good intentions
The rawness of their insensitivity?
The universality of their clumsy moves to cover it up?
Or the fact that you had hoped for something better?

I pull my hands away from the needles
And continue to walk

July 26, 2000

No use kicking the walls of the prison
Scratching your throat with loud cries of anger,
History yawns at noisy displays of despair
What if I lost a pair of bruised feet
at the threshold to oblivion?
Or your scream echoed for two whole seconds in the hollow chamber?

Hold my hand
Hold my hand…and look!
Look, how I grow silently into a giant palm tree
Bursting my hot humid greenhouse open
To sip the fresh cool vibrating blue
And stand on the edge of this open field
With endless possibilities of whispering in the wind.

Then, come closer
Push the doors of my solitude open
Take a long look at me
In this happy, delirious, talkative state
And tell me I am not dreaming.

July 24, 2000

I ponder about speaking
As I watch you dig in the garden with bare hands
To get back from the earth
The tranquility you plant with each tree.
I wonder,
If you feel your own hands often enough
If you look at your own reflection in the river-
When out in the wilderness

Watching you sit on a lump of time
Shaped to hold your body
Is exciting
“Wrap yourself in the night’s blanket!” I try to shout
“And keep your eyelids shut
“The sunrise will happen by itself!”
No sound comes out of my mouth
I feel invaded by overused, empty, inflated words
How patient will you be to see beyond convention? I ask myself
How quick to pigeonhole me? …and shudder at the thought.

What if you read science fiction,
I feel uplifted with the thought
Then I can convince you without words
That my god –when not hibernating-
Is a shape-shifter
Who changes from a ray of light
A chunk of silence
And a raging river
To the ligaments of my heart
When the moment calls for tenderness.

July 20, 2000

Have you ever walked with the morning sun?
Laughing at clumsy roof tops and sleepy trees
In their old-fashioned gold sprinkled hats?
Watching the powerful urge to start
Beam out of your body into the new day?

Have you ever melted with the moonlight’s silvery rain?
Ever so quietly
As if you belonged solely to the night
From the moment you were born?

Have you ever held newborn babies tight?
Feeling the anxiety of the unknown
Chased away with the intensity of life
And the glow of the desire to be
Emanating from their warm sanguine cheeks?

Have you ever felt breathless?
On a quiet forsaken road
Tied to a remote magnetic horizon
Pulling you all the way in
To something you have no words for
Something behind the mountains you know you can touch
If you reached deep enough inside?

Have you ever swam at sundown
In a dreamy little lake
With dragonflies racing above the head
Friendly sea weeds playing with your toes
And the sun’s molten red glow
Brushing against your bare skin?

Have you ever been washed off the shore?
By a giant giant wave
Feeling with the tip of your fingers
In that chaotic moment
The boarder between fear and joy
In that tucked away corner of your mind
Where losing control and freedom
Compete for your attention?

Have you ever loved?

July 15, 2000

The fourth floor feels remote in the dingy apartment
The summer’s bright coat covers the sleepy afternoon.
There stands my friend, the little man, the fiddler
The air is filled with an elusive, copper-red, nostalgic tune

Suddenly I am so lonely, I can burst into tears
Look across the room at the lady with the quiet gentle face
A half smile flashes from under a polite graceful nod
I know I won’t touch anything as I scratched the surface

The walls begin to cave in with the spreading waves of music
I must have let go, for I am lifted up, floating with the tide
Everyone is a little more bearable, less closed in, less masked
As I open up for the copper-red music to poor inside

I catch a shy sad smile to my far far left
As I turn and see my friend, the fiddler’s wife, sitting there
I know its time for me to talk as our eyes meet
Hers lovely and brown filled to the brim with despair

I grab a Divan of Hafez from the table and dive into the first ode
Gasping with the first shock of jumping into the sea
My friend the fiddler slows to make room for my voice
I move with the warm ocean currents that surround me

I am reading, riding, floating, flaying
Jumping, running, gliding, glowing
Touching, teasing, reaching out, releasing
Tasting the fresh watery ease of flowing

Suddenly, politeness has melted with the urgency to feel the words
To inhale their freshness, their resonance, their life
The lady across the room has tears in her eyes
So does my shy quiet friend, the fiddler’s wife

Outside the window, the summer’s bright coat
Is pulled in all directions by the playful afternoon
I pause to make room for my friend the fiddler
Who makes his way back with a nostalgic silvery tune

July 6, 2000

They come in waves before you know it:
Finished basements
Oak kitchen cabinets
Granite countertops
Fancy skylights
Nicely fenced yards

“How about a spot for writing poetry?” I think out loud
“What?” the agent looks puzzled
“Well, you can put your desk in any room you like,
I suppose”

I don’t have a desk, I continue to think
Desks are killers when it comes to writing poetry
You need to be able to run wild, you see
How else can you grab a piece of time
Stretch it to infinity
And pretend nothing unusual has happened?
Fenced by a desk, you will never…

The agent is pointing to the fancy brickwork
Around the fireplace in another room
I am talking to myself, again

June 24, 2000