Rain returns, void of song…

Beyond the arc of the rainbow, there lies a foreign realm,

A sanctuary for those who shattered upon the celestial throne.

Beyond the desolate gazes of the city’s folk,

I touched the pulse of hesitation, and simply, I wept.

The breathless echoes of children,

Screaming in the depths of suffocation…

And yesterday was fear… a dread born of fatherless voids.

And today is grief… a sorrow as vast as a sea of tears.

And tomorrow is silence… a stillness born of weariness.

A breaking in every fleeting moment…

A shattering, knowing that this time,

Distances vie with memories for dominion…

And there are souls who offer hatred As a tribute to my remaining seconds.

A grievance… But to whom shall I complain?

When I am the architect of my own innocence.

How much sincerity is left?

When you know you are destined for annihilation…

Yet, through which mask do you gaze upon me now?

Erase the shadow of your pity from my life,

For I have no strength, no endurance left to bear.

Rain returns, but this time, void of song…

The hollow nights arrive…

I wish that tomorrow, in that same solitary world,

My alienation could wear a different hue.

Rain returns, void of song…

The Little Fish…

Amidst a sea of breathless droplets, a little fish dwelt.
He moaned of the earth’s cold indifference,
And of an era that had grown parched and thirsty.
Of an incurable ache,
One that resonated even within the hollow vacuum of memories.

A world ablaze with unrest…
In those moments when you are consumed by a void of silence…
The puppets of Grandmother’s tales burn without cause,
So that you may touch the essence of hatred,
Long before you ever taste its bitterness…

The little fish has rain-drenched eyes…
Yet he still offers his gaze as a tribute to the radiance of the stars.
He clung to a belief: that once more, one must learn to rain with the rain…

Now and then, he pondered the reflection of bitter smiles,
Left as ghostly remnants in the corners of his heart.
He feared… the shelterless void…
The sorrow of solitary hours steeped in malice…
And the tomorrows that perhaps could never be built.

Solitude, with a mere touch,
Shattered the pride he had secretly harbored deep within.
Darkness, softly, began a game of love with his fragile heart…
Until at last, it became the sole traveler of that small, aching heart.

He trembles… from love…
From the serenity of gazes rushing toward a fading light.
He speaks of a breath drifting toward oblivion…
A mere pretext, perhaps, for those
Who turned to ash along the desolate stretch of the horizon.

For a moment, remember that fish…
For I am that little fish.

A Shadow of Hatred…
You gifted me the bleakest, most colorless minutes of my life…
And in your vanity, you extinguished the sole lantern of the desolate roads of solitude.

I welcomed your heavy breaths into the portal of my heart…
Only for you to pierce my eyes with an arrow of cold indifference.

And yet, I loved you…
But your presence became the very instrument of my ruin.
And now, with a haunting peace, I wander into the frozen nights of anonymity.

A smile was but a pretext to linger…
Yet you merely mocked the purity of my innocence,
Ravaging my fragile heart like a torrential flood.

Now, amidst all this desolation, wake up…
For this is no game anyone is playing…
The world is no longer a sanctuary for wayfarers.

It is agonizing…
When a flood of tears erodes the sanctuary of your memories,
When you dwell upon the past, and a shadow of hatred enfolds your yesterday in its embrace.

And how cruel it is that in those fleeting seconds,
Death,
Becomes the sole companion of your longings…

Verdant Joys…
In an act of unbelievable cruelty, you shattered a heart that you knew
Burned purely in the fire of longing for you.
You walked away from all those verdant joys you had once crafted.
My voice trembled, entwined with the warmth of a gaze
That remained fixed upon the distant horizons…

Restless once more…
For the silence…
Is more mute than ever before…
Linger a while, for my tiny heart still craves
The transient smiles of your passing…
I was the sole traveler of these desolate roads…
Now, who will simply overlook my transgressions and pass by?

The remnants of life’s frozen days
Became a mere pretext for my desolation…
The sky within my eyes understood the bitter truth of my laughter…
Yet…
Fate played its cruel game with me once more.
And this… was not the moment I had ever desired…

The Echoes of “I Wish“…

I wish that loving were as believable
As those sweet tales of childhood.
I wish you had witnessed my shattering in every passing second,
Within those merciless moments void of grace.
I wish you knew that this drifting in indifference
Was never my choice.
I wish you hadn’t drowned the joy of our togetherness
In the bitterness of parting.

I wish you knew that amidst this vast crowd of loneliness,
I am drowning in a shroud of ambiguity…
I wish you had bestowed these most desolate exiles upon me a little later,
So that I might have tasted life for just a while longer…
I wish the atmosphere of my heart were not so heavily overcast.
And I wish, in these very seconds,
You could feel the weight of all these “I wishs.”

And today, I stand upon this precipice, gazing at the horizon…
Perhaps there is no tomorrow,
And I may finally take flight with a serene soul.

A Path Void of Signs…

I gaze into the far reaches…
Horizon upon horizon…
Along a hollow, empty road…
To the void of the fish’s bitter smiles…

The sun descends, greedily yearning to scorch my scales.
And now, bearing the remnants of millennia of existence,
Within the silence of my heart’s damp fragments,
A tumultuous voice manifests at the threshold of oblivion…

With a strange longing, it speaks:
“In the lustful confinement of this yearning sunset,
And through the corridor of my fractured existence…
My winter-worn heart,
Remains the eternal vigil-keeper of a markless path…
And I…
Until the final breath, shall find no respite!

A Hollow Existence…

Sometimes you are forced to wait, just to feel that someone, finally, believes you.
Sometimes you are filled with a silence, yet you find a strange solace in the fact that:
Even if you had words to utter, you no longer possess the strength to scream.
Sometimes you are saturated with gazes…
Yet there is nothing left in the world worth looking at.

Sometimes you are weary of people…
But you fear this straw-like, hollow life,
Which has forced you, from the very beginning to the bitter end, to settle for the unspeakables…
The very things that are slowly unraveling you.

Sometimes you are mute, sometimes you are still…
These regrets are not meant to be spoken.
Sometimes, your soul becomes bloated with all the unsaid things…
There are times when life is simply too harsh…
There are days when your heart grows heavy…
And there are nights when you weep for the sheer fragility of moments that silently surrender to the tides of time…

But what for?
When you cannot even purge yourself of your own existence!
And sometimes, you grow loathsome of yourself,
In those moments when you see the peak of your own folly mirrored in the crystalline clarity of their eyes…
You wake from a dream, and your entire being is enveloped by the embrace of a singular, haunting…
“I wish…”

Death…

I know not who shall enfold my lifeless form in their embrace,
Nor how I shall fade from the corridors of memory.
I know not who will shed tears for my presence or my absence,
In that hour when I become a wayfarer of the soil…

Who truly knows?
Beyond these desolate roads…
What befalls the pilgrims who walked only the path of love?!!

I know not who will hold my frozen hands behind the dark veil of solitude…
I know not if anyone awaits me beyond the shores of all this exhaustion…

I am afraid…
A fear stripped of all humanity…
Yet this time, I do not fear death itself…
I fear the reality of those I once believed I loved…
I fear the truth of those luminous shadows that will shine with a cruel clarity before my humble eyes, once I am gone…

I fear the voices of acquaintances who, in this very moment, are the strangest of strangers to me…
I fear the restlessness of a little boy, drowned in longing, kneeling by my grave…
I fear the shattering of mirrors that reflect the loneliness of the little fish to the void of passing seconds…

I fear the coldness of gazes that stare at the length of my shroud with surprise and regret…
I fear the pressure of bitter memories that pierce through my soul…
And the multitude of breaths that I vainly entrusted to the hands of fate…

The Echo of a Lost Love…

“I become brimming with hatred, and I fall silent…”
I pine for the beauty of the innocent smile of a love long gone.
Time and again, I empty myself in hopes of a single breath…
A breath woven from the luminous shadows of your longing heart.
I drown in the ambiguity of minutes that smell of blood to me…
And in these moments of desolation, I find the ghost of a lost human… myself.

The drift of dandelions occasionally wanders into my realm…
What answer should I give to their inquiry about the exile of longing?
Your name alone is enough to fill me once more with an aching yearning…
At dawn, from the window of your tender home, you cast a fleeting glance toward my room…
You do not know that I have not dwelt in that room for years.

And I still know that I cannot exist without you.
I feel the tremor of my voice mirrored in your gaze, and this time, I am ashamed before you…
Ashamed before the one who forgave me, time and again, for every pretext…
And I had imagined that you were oblivious to the whole world!

And still, utterly alone, I wander through the nights until the sun ascends…
Clinging to the hope of returning to a single moment of being with you…

This time…
“I become brimming with love, and I fall silent…”

SAHAR (Dawn) with NAZ (Grace)…
The frost of my existence occasionally draws the earth’s warmth into its depths…

And how exquisitely I shatter, and am shattered.

And each time, within the clarity of a gaze, I behold the vastness of my own darkness…

I offer only a smile, wishing I were not so consumed by this shadow.
The ruthless solitude of the night dissolves me more with every passing moment,

Compelling me to cry out my desolation…

And I endlessly echo the same question within:

Beneath which sky is my true essence concealed?
And I wish, until Sahar emerges with her Naz, That I may endure…

Forbidden Access…

Who possesses the strength to spell out the word “loneliness”?
Who paints their existence in the colors of exile?
Who is capable of believing in defeat?
Who dares to touch the raw edges of misery?

Me?!!
A version of me, stripped of all the beautiful desires that grace this world.
Do not deceive yourself with false hopes…
In this world, you are nothing…

Who knows what this “emptiness” looks like?
Days of void that burn aimlessly…
Or cold nights that are crossed out without reason…

From time to time, you are forced to remind yourself:
That this cursed life is all you truly possess…

There is no room for choice…
Only a mandate for every single second…
Seconds that are barely clinging to life.

Do not step into the grounds of my fragmentation.
This place is not for you…
This area is blocked until further notice…
No Entry…

Tombstone of My Longings…

Wayfarers of love break with such ease,
For in the corridors of time, there is no sanctuary for the broken-hearted survivors.
Seconds now play with a cruel composure,
While the puppets surrender their lives, awaiting a breath of fresh air.

All this fear…
All this overwhelming anxiety…
Yet my heart remained restless, trailing a shadow woven from rain.
It yearned for luminous days and waited for the emergence of green seconds…
But then, as if it were nothing…
A cold winter, moments stripped of all meaning.

My anxieties…
And the serene peace of those closed eyes…
Yes, they are gone…
They left, drifting past all the springs of tears that they knew would overflow from my eyes in their wake.
Their departure is the dawn of all invisible regrets…
But more bitter still was the sound of my fragile shoulders shattering—a sound that went unheard.

I wish you had believed the tale of habit…
The tale of the little fish and the glass bowl…
And the endless breaths the fish offered as gifts to the droplets of water.

Sleep peacefully in the embrace of God…
For this loneliness was destined for me from the very start.

Infinite Seconds…

Yes… at the horizon of solitude, you finally found yourself.
Yesterday you wept, and today you are brimming with yearning…
Tomorrow shall arrive… with the same swiftness as the days of today.
Open your eyes; the sky is waiting for you…
Believe in the stars…
The sun remains as radiant as the seconds themselves.

Cross out the minutes with love, for these “Infinite Seconds” are far more precious.
Do not sell off the pedestal of happiness at a discount…
Cross out the “I wishs”, one by one,
For the “I cans” now stand poised before you…

Do not fear the moonlight…
For she is that eternal, faithful friend.
Touch love, just as you touch that sublime feeling of being with God…
Remember the nights when, in every heartbeat, you shattered a thousand times.
And hold onto the hope of days when you gaze toward the distant horizons with pride…
And be glad, for the road to happiness begins right here…

Leaf through the pages of your memory…
The warmth of gazes that once set the depths of your soul ablaze.
And the coldness of hands that occasionally forced you to resist.
Surrender yourself to the embrace of the night…
Now, live with all the simplicity of being.
Just live… for time continues its journey…
Whether you are here, or not.

Me and the Blackboard…

The teacher wrote upon the board: “A friend means…”
My heart sank; a profound sorrow seized me.
Something heavy settled upon my shoulders.
My hand, pushed by the weight of my grieving heart, wrote: “Someone who…”

The teacher wrote: “A friend means someone who…”
And my sorrow continued its narrative…
A teardrop that made its home in my eye surrendered its life to my innocence.
My heart whispered a signal to my hand,
And my hand, once again, offered my heart’s truth:
“…Easily walks away.”
“…Becomes a mere dot in my grief and escapes.”
“A friend is someone who calls my name only in their own struggles…”
“And releases me the moment they reach the end of their line.”

A friend is the one who wanted me for themselves,
Regardless of whether I existed or not, whether I lived or died, whether I wished or didn’t…
My breath failed me; my heart was losing its patience.
My damp eyes looked toward the windows,
The window was weeping; I saw it with my own eyes…
Surely, it too was grieving for my utter desolation.

The recess bell rang.
No one remained in the classroom but me and my solitude.
My eyes widened in surprise, and suddenly, they fell upon the blackboard…
Do you know what the teacher had written there?

He had written: “A friend means someone who was never there from the very beginning.”

(The Blackboard’s Truth…
The teacher wrote upon the board: A friend is…

My heart grew heavy, where the sorrow begins.

A weight on my shoulders, a shadow of grey,

My hand, led by grief, tried to find a way.

“Someone who…”

I wrote, with a trembling art.
“A friend is someone who…”

the teacher’s hand flew,

And the ink of my sorrow continued to brew.

A tear in my eye, a home small and frail,

Sold its own life to my innocence’s veil.

My heart gave a sign, a beat and a plea,

And my hand revealed the tragedy:
Someone who leaves when the path is too wide,

A dot in the darkness, with nowhere to hide.

A friend is who calls when their own world is dim,

But leaves me to sink while they learn how to swim.

The one who claimed me, in love or in dread,

Whether I lived, or my spirit was dead.
My breath grew thin, my patience grew old,

I looked at the window, where the winter took hold.

The glass was weeping, the raindrops were clear,

Shedding my tears, for my loneliness was near.
The recess bell echoed, the hallway grew still,

The classroom was empty, a void and a chill.

Just me and my ghost, in the silence we dwell,

My eyes hit the board, where a tragedy fell.

Do you know what was written, in the chalk’s dusty hue?

A truth that was cold, a heart-breaking view…
The teacher had written, as the silence descended:

“A friend is someone who, from the start, never even existed.”)

Yearning for the Infinite Blue…

Restless for the endless blue of the sky…
Autumn had packed its bags, and the fish awaited the Master.
When the first sting of frost pierced through its being,
It knew with certainty that Winter had arrived.

The lump in the throat offered no mercy…
With great effort, it pieced the letters together and whispered: “Winter…”
How bitter is the tale of remaining in this crowded city,
How painful is the story of leaving this hollow world.

And now, the greenest sense of joy is but a doubt.
Even the black butterflies of emotion are poised to burn…
Who understands?
Who knows?
That in an ocean this infinite, perhaps…
A tiny fish yearns for the endless blue of the sky.

The beautiful sky weeps silently from time to time…
And nights, I pleadly borrow its tears from the water.
Its tears taste of fatigue, and I am too small to offer it faith.
Winter smiles softly, a bitter grin at the simplicity of its little pupil…

What is the cure?
When the void drags me deeper, moment by moment?
Who is to blame?
Me, or the sky?
It does not see me…
I feel the sky’s silence because of its vastness,
But it does not hear my screams because of my smallness.

No strength to fight…
They call it tradition…
They call it a game…
The game of time.

“Silence… Silence… Silence”…

 Winter whispered softly:
“If the heavens’ tears bear the flavor of pain,
Your heart’s secret depths are a fire-scorched rain.
If you find yourself frail in this infinite art,
Seeking hope from the heavens will shatter your heart.”

The Jackals Strike…

As the night passes its midpoint, I exhume my grave,

Inviting my own corpse to a feast of distant cemetery harlots.

I was intoxicated…

Sipping blood, drop by drop.

I fled the light, and lay with hungry wolves.

Astride a black steed, I wandered far,

To the borders of the land of nothingness…

Near the minds that had lagged behind themselves, I whispered: “I have grown fragile.”

In the mire of identitylessness, I drowned, I drowned.

I turned my back to a vile illusion, and those jackals struck me from behind.

As the night passes its midpoint…

I crack under the lethal heat of your skin!

And I melt from the senseless cold of your presence!

I flick the ash of my cigarette a little further away,

And you…

You extinguish yours just a bit over there, 

Against the curves of my body.

And I burn, knowing the Devil dances for you…

If you can still hear my wails,

Remind your thoughts that they owe a debt to my bruised neck;

If for a second they think of our bastard,

Who is destined, one night, to drink pain from these breasts.

Why This Way?
The one-dimensional thrum of people’s footsteps in this city drills holes into my brain.
There isn’t even a Petros here to plug the leaks of my mind with his fingers.
And so, I talk to myself, just like the madmen do.
A hunched-over old man sits beside me; he lights a cigarette.
A little exaggeration isn’t bad, is it?
And this question repeats a thousand times in my head:
Why this way?

A man screams: “Dorood!”
And all the frayed strings of my being snap…
The earth spins around my head…
And precisely on the hour, it grinds to a halt, marked: “Closed until further notice.”
I cannot continue writing. I’ve experienced this feeling a few times now…

It’s a foul sensation—as if I can no longer brag to those around me that I am a writer…

In the end, which “me” do you believe?

This boastful pretender… or this simple soul?

The Seed of Pain…

My throat burns with the chill of my mother’s gaze,
And since her embrace is the only sanctuary for my solitude,
I burn with the fever of absence.
My mother’s body has spent years playing with the soil of love,
And in nine more months, the seed of pain shall become my brother.
On the seventh day of this void, the heavens will weep alongside me;
And on that day, my only possession will be a black stone, to which my mother’s name was gifted.

At the intersection of desolations, forty days have passed, yet I still breathe.
We return to infinite years ago…
To the moment my mother smiled through her tears;
A midnight drenched in the beauty of a winter child’s birth.
Perhaps if I had known that years later, in a night this dark, I would be drinking such bitter sobs…
I would have carried my mother with me to the land of the blessed at the very start of the journey.
But what of my father?
Alas, such a dream is beyond belief.

The silence of God will not deny my mother’s untimely sorrows in those nights of turmoil.
I go blind from an endless darkness born of truth…
A truth called Death.

Squalid Nights of Anonymity…
Not a single pretender of humanity ever touched this madman that I am!
For the final chalice was poured for the final camaraderie,
Upon an earth where the stench of nameless atrocities had swallowed the sky.
And my cigarette clung to the sludge of his grey-toned poison…

Laughter as vast as the hatred in eyes that, with a chilling calm, silenced your solitude.
Having crossed the streets of harlots in squalid, nameless nights,
Fleeing from the sanctuary of the seemingly innocent people of this land…

My heart craves a single sip of the sacred soil of a vineyard,
To bury this restless, sick, and rebellious soul…
Prepare the gallows this time for my shameless hands.
These hands only rushed to help those weeping eyes, which committed adultery,
Satiated by the perverse pleasure of beholding the contours of the lifeless girls in my city of mourning…

I swear by the bruised cheeks of friendship:
Spit upon the very fabric of this simplistic nature and be gone from me…
Gone from a madman that no pretender of humanity ever understood.

The Byway…
Tonight, once more, darkness reigns as the superpower of this galaxy,
And the moon wanders somewhere nearby.
The stars ignite in flames,
And the sky, as is its habit, weaves mist from smoke,
Raining down upon my nights…

Sometimes, every cigarette a woman lights
Begins on the shoulders of a man!
Just as the alleyways drag the void of his embrace before her gaze.

Right at the intersection of time and space…
That very byway, in whose lap one collapses,
And is effortlessly crushed beneath the onslaught of loneliness.

The Incomplete Me…
Return to yourself…
To this incomplete me…
To this idealized self in the notes of a cafe-sitting psychologist…
To the me who, according to him, was not to blame.
And to the you who, according to us, is not at fault.

Instead of reproach, caress yourself.
Caress, for this restlessness is born of our illusion.
Together, we shall find peace…

One day…
One place…
We received this promise from God, eons before the dawn of creation…
Is it not true that even if you hear a word of wisdom from the Devil, you should accept it and be grateful to him?
You, too, are a creator, my friend… can you create something and not love it?
Therefore, even the Devil, whom we call the most malevolent being in existence, is beloved in the eyes of his Creator…
So you, too, look upon everything through the eyes of God, and love…
Love flows, and the end of the path is luminous…

“Breathe…”

The Awakening…
Everything in the world, in its rightful place, within His own light,

The teal of those eyes, an eternal sight, within His own light,

The stars’ endless winks, shimmering bright, within His own light,

The midnight moon’s glow, a celestial white, within His own light,

The daily sunrise, chasing the night, within His own light,

The beauty of all, a visionary sight, within His own light,

The mountains’ proud strength, a towering height, within His own light,

The breathtaking rain, a majestic might, within His own light,

All my childhood dreams, taking their flight, within His own light,

The story of love, a sacred rite, within His own light,

All these marvels, woven in light, within His own light,

And this is what keeps me, forever in sight, within His own light.

Beyond the waters…
I am weary;
Weary of all those who stung this wounded soul of mine…
I go;
I journey beyond the waters where corpses are mute,
Mute from the frigidity of life beneath the depths…
And like an utterance, I seek refuge beyond the veil of pain.
To perhaps borrow liberation, for a single second, from a proud heart.
And for me, liberation is not merely a name.
It is a life…
A desert thirsty for rain, and a rain that washes away the mother’s sin;
So that perhaps, I may find peace.
And how bitter it is, that my absurd and melancholic trial now meets the gavel of the end.
The story concludes, and I awaken from sleep;
A pain seizes my entire body from the belief in this strange sensation,
which collapses upon my return…

Just a few days…
Stay with me for a few days, and forget who you are…
Forget that self, imprisoned within your daily routine…
Spend just a few days with me…
And carve the greatest human paradox within your soul.

For just a few days, let your inner child play,
And let your mind become the heart’s most intimate friend for a few brief moments.

Stay with me for a few days…
Vow to me that you will laugh for no reason at all,
And just for tonight, lend your tears back to your eyes.

In these few days, step by step with me, let us bake a cake with the flavor of carefreeness in our tiny kitchen,
And become the finest chef in all the land…

In the simplest language possible, I will tell you stories during these days;
The tale of a young, barefoot prince,
And his queen, who knows no fear of the open roads…
Drink coffee with me for a few days, and play your favorite music on an infinite loop…
And with a smile, say “no” to everyone waiting on the line…

Stay with me for just a few days, and let your body drift by the fireplace with a peaceful mind…
And once your weariness is forgotten, dance with me to the most exquisite symphony ever heard…
Just stay with me for a few days, so I may teach you the meaning of the word “freedom,” letter by letter.

And when our few days come to an end, return to yourself…
And continue your daily routine, but with a little more peace.

I Became a Thorn…
And my home was left forlorn…
The songs of my heart, by habit’s art, became a myth, weary and worn…
I became a thorn; my ancient exile drifted into sleep…
Behind the yesterdays, the winds swept the todays into the deep…

Lonelier than before…
When you are overcome by longing, you become someone else;
A little quieter, more exhausted, a little more alone.
And this black speck grows more vivid with each passing day.

From these shadows, I weave my tales,
And when the rain falls, I wash my stories away…
And I cast my sorrows upon all of existence.

The ice melts,
And the world is engulfed by the waters;
Everyone perishes, and I am left…
Lonelier than before.

The Burden of Responsibility…
My grandmother used to whisper:
“If you are patient, I shall turn these sour grapes into halva.”
But patience is a grand deception…
For years I have struggled with these grapes, yet they never became sweet.
The stranger was right: “You will understand when you grow up.”
And I do understand…
I understand the nightly moans of the aged crickets.
I understand the complaints of the black crows at the break of dawn.
I understand the heart-to-heart outpourings of the neighborhood street sweeper.
I understand the calling of God and the echoing silence that follows.
I understand the soul departing the body.
I understand even the stormy peace of God.
And all of this, I understand through my only sanctuary, God… that is, if I truly understand…

For no matter how much I hide it from Him,
He knows the smiles I force upon my lips.
I know He loves me, but I do not know why He does not come sooner.
Does God feel pain?
The pain of a responsibility so heavy that He alone knows its weight?
And that no one will ever truly know that his only punishment is being God?

God has sorrow—a sorrow as vast as the distance between His divinity and my lifeless soul…
And I am nothing…
Nothinger than nothing, before Him…
“I love you” is the only offering I can bring to You,
So that we may live, just a little.

Saharnaz (SHRNAZ)…
Shadows of my breath, heavy with longing,
Honoring the sanctity of being by your side,
Rare was the rainbow, painted in a single hue,
Now playing the childish roles of my heart,
An infinite peace, cast in the purple echo of your voice,
Zealously, an eternal prison was built for me.

Buying a lucky egg for God…
And the sting of lips, weary from a conversation that began with the last puff of my friend’s silver Bahman lighter.
Was God weary of words?
Did God feel pain?
How can I lighten His burden…
I am… so very small…
I…

If I take a bill from Your coat pocket and buy You a lucky egg or some gummy bears, have I lightened Your burden?
If I plant a flower in Your garden every day, will Your weariness fade away?
God, just tell me, do You ever get tired?
Do You have someone to bring You orange juice?
Someone to take off Your socks for You?
My kind God, I am so small, but…
I make funny faces at You, and then, I eat You.
Your place inside my belly is safe; though, You must watch over everything while You are there,
Because if You look away for even a moment, I will throw everything to the wind.
So, I hold Your hand, and I vow, again and again, that I am a mere nobody…

The only refuge…
Fragments of clues that led only to the abyss of delusion,

and a sprawling graveyard within the ruins of a fractured mind.
He stitched the puzzles together—obsessively, incessantly—with a desperate speed, consumed by the terror that I might shatter the image, failing to present the framed void to the superior in time.
I wonder now… did this agony stem from the suffocating pressure of others, or the relentless grind of the toil?
Much remains veiled in shadow.

For example, I still do not know if I harbor the capacity for cruelty.
Yet, one certainty burns bright…
I am shielded by a fortress so absolute, that no one dares to challenge my existence.

 The Lexicon of Silence

The orbit of words…
A crushing mass of syllables writhes and coils within the depths of my mind.
My entire vocabulary shrivels, narrowing down to four haunting letters…
S – K – V – T
How hauntingly familiar this word feels.

And my captive ellipses… those three shackled dots…
How strange it is, that from this familiarity, they are conceived into being.

At the liminal threshold, I have always remained stranded.
*But a desperate plea whispers: Not this time…*
If you depart, carry me into the abyss with you.
If you return, let your path lead to me.

Reach for my hands; hold them.
Speak to me in a low, lingering murmur…
For I… I am utterly shattered.
And you, my eternal voyager, you who know the secrets of everything…

The hounds of the dead…
And a road paved with shreds of mist, drifting toward the nameless wastes.
A mire, where the carcasses of dead dogs had wallowed in filth.

The howling of ravenous wolves, echoing through the identityless plains,
And the wail of an aged woman, rising from the deepest abysses of my being.
Smiles… that reeked of blood.

I shall curtail the tale.
And I, like a jagged shard of ice…
Returning from a path that had illuminated a singular truth for me: that the sky is a monochrome void, wherever one wanders.
A living corpse…
Whose whispers were greeted with disbelief by all.

And yet…
I am the most blessed of God’s creations.
A maiden whom the Divine has christened the Goddess of Peace.
I shall purchase a sliver of silence from paradise.
Allow me to weave my reveries, in whatever form I desire.
For tell me, what is it that you lose?
I yearn only… to be the confidante of God.

Oh God… grant me Thy strength…
His gaze was tethered to that small, crimson Bible.
Indifferent, he listened to the perpetual drones of his father’s voice.
Within his mind dwelt a hundred logical rebuttals, poised against the barrage of questions launched toward him.
A bitter smile, and tears whose release was strangled by the cold grip of pride.

My father bestowed upon me the greatest gift of my existence:
The introduction to the Divine, and the awakening of gnosis…
And yet, how does he now hurl these illogical words toward me?
Has he surrendered all his God to me, and now finds himself devoid of a deity of his own?
If this be so, I must aid him; I must share the Divine with him.

Oh God…
I am the wounded wanderer of the midway path.
And I am consumed by a searing rage, a bitterness that burns within…
Thou… Thou art Great, Merciful, All-Forgiving…
Grant me the grace to forgive my father and my mother…
Oh Lord… whatever Thy will be.

The Sovereign of the Fish…
And a young boy who reigned over all existence.
Dweller of the ethereal realms…
Poised above the reaches of infinity and beneath the tectonic rifts.
Acquainted with the denizens of the Land of Solitude,
With clouds, winds, the moon, and the stars cradled within his palms.
His gaze, a luminous point of light, traced a shimmering line with a whisper of dread.
And what was it?
A tiny fish, adrift in the abyssal depths of loneliness…

He packed his burdens.
He sought no path but the one that would lead him to bring her back,
In that singular moment where departure becomes the end of all meaning.
And with the midnight sky and the choir of praying angels…
The boy, mounted upon the Zephyr of the Saba wind, descended into the ocean’s deepest void.

Cold… darkness… a thirsty earth…
A peculiar terror…
A fear born from the void of silence.
He gathered the fish, softly, in his hands,
And whispered into her ear:
“I am here…
I have come for you…
I love you.
Rest now… and be free.

Loneliness…
A few years have flown since your bloom began,
Thirteen you turn, the dawn’s golden span.
All these thrills you chase, thinking they are the height,
Will crash on your head in a single, dark night.
A pathetic ruin, a wretched, hollow plight

Simple...
I’m out of their world, no part in the frame,
Since I’ve got no place, no stake in the game.
I’m far too plain to play the part,
To act a lie with a simple heart.

My purpled lines…
My feet are sated with the sarcasm of vast distances.
Monolithic mountains, once my anchors, now collapse upon me, one by one, in a cascading ruin.
A mythic daydream, ensnared by the razor-sharp teeth of mocking crowds.
And an ominous voice, now nailing my finale into a tomb of silence.
The air of my cough grows frigid, as I struggle to tighten the rusted bolts of my resolve!

In the end, I shall bow my spine… I know not why.
This river surges in a headlong flood, through a night of such abyssal dark.
Tremble before the infinite hatred lurking within my smiling eyes.
Curse the hollow voyeurs of the virtual void, those who trespassed upon my bruised lines without leave.

Life never bloomed for me as a lush meadow of infinite flowers.
Nor did any sun ever truly melt the putrid ice of this mundane existence, born into a decade christened the “Burnt Generation.”
Woe to the day the salts of my warmth putrefy and poison the city’s breath.
On that day, not even the blood of innocent children shall cleanse my wrath,
And I shall drive the Divine Himself into the depths of regret.

Cast me into the solitary confinement of euphoria;
For within this nameless void, a madman in an asylum is plotting a revolution.

Trite, cliché-ridden regrets…
I know not who thou art, oh man…
Whoever you may be, your absence overflows the brim of your children’s weary souls, like a dam breached by sorrow.
And pain carves deep into the hearts of my fellow wanderers…
I know not with which nail you pinned love to the earth,
That they find no respite, and in the pale void of your absence, they surrender to a bitter silence.

Fly toward these waters,
For this cursed expanse drags the loneliness of your children before the weeping rain.
I despise the expression of those hollow, foolish condolences that pierce my mind like needles.

I shall confess…
None shall ever truly grasp how, from this moment on, you shall bear the heavy, jagged wound of fatherlessness.

)Dedicated to a few friends who have lost their fathers(

The Free Zone of Yearning…
This is my own sovereign territory of longing,
Where the borders are but fences, shorter than my own stature.
Restlessness shall remain enshrined within the anatomy of time…
For how long?
For an eternity that ends too late—or perhaps, never ends at all.

As I retreat into the confines of my room,
I become heavy, burdened by the mute roar of these four corners, swollen in the dust of this lawless trespass…
My eyes crave the ghost of their lips…
I…
I deserve to witness a sunset where the sun finds no sanctuary,
And my breath spasms in utter helplessness…
Once more, I fall behind the racing needles of the second hand…
And my follies throb violently, echoing in repetition…

My only sin was inscribing “Forever” in a bold, heavy ink.

Why, raised to the power of a question mark…
Hollow, shapeless “whys,” that never arched with dignity.
I no longer await the rainfall from the clustered clouds beyond these fences;
Tonight, the sky holds neither a lump of grief nor a single tear…
The nights of my land, traced by jagged lines, grew darker with this solitude.
I became tainted—polluted by a sin called “People”—and thus, the horrific odyssey of the smile began.

I am becoming hollow, raised to the power of eternity…
Still, no miracle believes that all my mischiefs have fallen into ruin.
I shall scream from the depths of my being until this cursed subconscious is jolted awake!
At last, I shall speak my final words to them.

I bring this poem to a close; these weathered pains of mine are not for sale.
And once more, I smile…
For I lack the patience to explain the depths of this very impatience!

Wake up…
I recite two rakats of the Prayer of Terror, over the umbilical cord that was severed.
In the name of a source forged from the delusions of humanity?
I cast the dice, racing unceremoniously toward the threshold of bloom.
Muezzin…
Tonight, they have commanded the mute play; be silent.

I was born a law-breaker,
To plunge the trivialities of my thoughts into the tower of your flawed forms,
When all shapes, for you, are reduced to the heave of my breast…
When you burn with fever, drenched in the sweat of my bowing and prostration…
When the only proof of your manhood is a breathless, desperate shudder.

The verdict is final and absolute: your non-existence.
And there shall be no appeal, no reconsideration.
I follow the lead of shamelessness, until the Angel of Death claims this loathing—I shall be defeated, Qurbatan…
I shun the Qunut, for you are the very essence of filth; this stain shall not be cleansed by water, by earth, nor even by fire.
I bring this seemingly fair game of nature to an end!

Peace be upon you… oh Houries standing in line after me.
Peace be upon you… oh justice and equity granted regardless of gender.
Peace be upon you… oh ripe apples upon the tree of lust.

5 Questions – 1 Answer – 1 Torment.
Ineffable emotions seize my throat in a crushing grip.
Such is their appetite for my annihilation that my heart falters, undone by this relentless resolve…
This time, even the white flag that embraces the earth lacks the power to sway the tide.
The hour is past; the hands of hatred are stained in my blood.
What a meaningless contradiction spins within the orbit of my flesh.

Following an honorable, eternal slumber, for but a few fleeting minutes, I shall reign as the Sovereign of this Injustice.
Now, history obeys a different logic…
The vengeance for years of corrosive self-consumption can be claimed in a mere few seconds.
The countdown commences; one step from the freezing point, the knell begins to toll…

Question One: With which of you—the architects of the grief that birthed the hatred of the winter girl—shall I begin?
Question Two: With what perceived value in your lives shall I offset the centuries of exile your gaze imposed upon me?
Question Three: By the decree of autonomy, you willfully defied the laws of humanity. Now, by the decree of my own sovereignty, from which region shall I unilaterally erase the concept of peace?
Question Four: With what audacity did you shear the most decayed thread of the heart of a girl from your poisoned city, under the hollow slogans of “honor” and “superiority”?
Question Five: With eyes that opened and closed in rhythmic lust; with ears that never tired of the news of a virgin’s disgrace or a man’s helplessness; with a tongue that dared to assault the mind of a lonely woman who had lost herself for but a few days… By what wisdom did you play the part of the blind, the deaf, and the mute, precisely when the need was most dire?

Answer: None possessed the power to respond to the aforementioned inquiries. According to the law of the realm, the Sovereign of these minutes holds the right to inflict torment.

Torment: I, the deceased, Registry No. 24/12/1370/2/45 S/A, under the banner of Injustice and a wisdom known only to me, do hereby decree: let peace be stripped from all creatures until the end of this unfair game. And I confess, knowing full well I may return to this earth, I shall not alter this decision.

As Told by the Image…

(Sountrack: The sound of rain)
(Sound of keys, a door opening and closing, and the footsteps of a girl walking through the house)
For years, I have been etching the meaningless dimensions of this mundanity onto paper.

Tonight, for the first time, I shall paint the narrative for you.

Close your eyes… and look closely…
“It seems as though you’re searching for something particular in your bag.”

“ You don’t want to talk?”
“Why the lump in your throat?”

“Why have you stopped laughing?”
“I was hoping it would all be over by now.”
“Aren’t you tired of these clustered clouds you build over your head”

“every night, waiting for a rain that never falls?”

“Actually, don’t speak. Who cares anyway?”
“Do you think you look more attractive in your silence?”
“One question: Will you let me enter your body?”
“I want to go to the very, very depths of your heart…”
“No, no, no… I should go into your brain. I think some of your neural threads are severely damaged… I can help you repair them. If, of course, you let me.”

“I have a solution for the congestion in your heart. I think if I press my finger against your vein for a few minutes and then let go, it’ll snap back and start working like the first day again.”
“So… will you let me in now?”

“Look… I admit it, you’re right… But you’re hurting yourself too much.”
“People don’t understand you… They haven’t walked in your shoes, so it’s only natural that you feel this suffocation… They lie to themselves, and then they condemn you loudly for your difference.”

“Don’t try to act like the exhausted ones. You are the culprit!”
“You let them enter your body. They squeezed and pressed you so hard that you became paralyzed.”
“Ugh… I feel like a pregnant woman smelling fried fish.”
“Change this song… By my estimate, you’ve been listening to this for years, and the funny thing is, you still get the lyrics wrong sometimes.”

“Hey… where is your mind?”
“The ashes fell on the floor! Ugh…”
“…”
“You’re soaked. Don’t you want to change your clothes? Your under-eyes are dark! Why on earth would you wear this much mascara in the rain?”
“I’ve talked so much I forgot to ask: Have you eaten? You’ve turned pale… I think it’s from hunger.”
“It’s nothing, don’t worry. Your blood pressure has dropped… You’ll be fine.”

“(Sound of coughing: cough, cough, cough)

“This should evoke some sense of shame within you.”
“I’m choking! Did you light another cigarette?”
“Fine, fine… I won’t say another word!”
.
.

.

“I want to sleep, damn it… Don’t look at me like that, okay, I can’t just stop talking! You are the dearest person to me! Why don’t you understand?”

(Girl’s Voice): “Can you just stop this talk?”

“Ha ha! Finally, you’ve spoken… Just please, don’t repeat that ridiculous dialogue again: ‘People moan over small pains, but when the blow is devastating, they go mute.'”
“I know, I know!”

(Girl’s Voice): “Look, are you going to shut up or not?”

“Nـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــope…”

)Girl’s Voice):”Fine, have it your way!”

(Sound of a mirror shattering)
The image of a girl, raised to a high power.Blood, drip by drip, spilling onto the floor.

The lights go out, and the girl flings her body back onto the bed.

My fear was of today…
My fear was of a today that orchestrated the most sanctified suicide.
My fear was of the void-like air of this abandonment, trapped within the vacant volume of a woman’s throat!
Of a sinister past fleeing toward a tomorrow whose sky remains the same oppressive hue.

My fear was of today,
Of a today where borders hold no significance against the onslaught of pain.
Of a today that heralds the price of an unveiled ruin of liberation.
Of a today where the logic of this provocative embrace admits no just interpretation.

And of a today where my teeth ache…
From the crushing weight of the grave of a sin called “Youth.”
I know not… my fear was of today,
Of a today where voices coil and spiral within my head,
And it is already far too late for any autopsy.

I am ready to enter the house of horrors that is your world!
I ask but a single question, and let that be all:
“Was he not a man?!”

(Dedicated to God)

A few lines of silence…

The Wall…

I write to you of the bound wings of the city’s flight,
And the foolish heights of a human’s prideful plight.
From the shattered honor of a woman, stripped and alone,
To the flawless grace of a housewife, on a modest throne.
From the blooming acne of a youth’s first glare,
To the cancerous nodes of a generation’s despair.

From the senseless wakes of a boy-man’s night,
To the deep slumber of a sick nation’s blight.
From the insistence and the denial…
From the finger’s point that sparked the trial,
To the plea of innocence, in a courtroom’s futile style.

From the cliché and the real…
From the soundless tunnels of a hollow seal,
To the screams that tore through my ears’ appeal.
From the recurring sobs of a frequent tide,
To the chewing of nails where the tremors hide.

I write to you of the morning’s light,
A heart-stirring dawn, in a pallid sight,
To the restless nights, where cigarette ashes ignite.
From a father’s sweat of shame, for a guitar’s string,
To the sweat of jobless youths, where idle voices ring.
From the helpless tears of a mother’s plea,
To the drunken laughter of a girl, wild and free.

Of a clock whose hands, when they should have raced,
Recalled Forough, Farhad, and Darius’s graced…
They dozed off, and I…

I fall into a few lines of silence, in honor of this wall!
A wall that blocked your dreams, yet stood as my pillar’s call.

I write of the contrast in an overcast sky,
Of your smile in a rainy night, a soft lullaby,
To my weeping in that same rain, where the shadows lie.
You, in the stairways of the sanctuary’s glow,
Wove scrolls of scandal as the rumors grow,
And I…
In the dead-end of my solitude, scribbled pages of a tomorrow I’ll never know.

Speak not to me of walls…
For in honor of this wall, for years I let the silence fall.

The 22nd Birthday Gift...
Savor it… savor the taste…
Your mouth grows bitter.
Savor the folly…
Tasteless, sip by sip, until the tremor of collapse.
Here’s to the verdict that stamps “FAILED” on the final page of your life.
Savor it…
Set the shot glass down softly.
With this very bitterness, the gates of the city’s slander remain wide open.
Just-ice—tattered and torn—in the same void of the Lord’s absence…
“Sincerity—the sound-cut—and oh, the wreckage it wrought.
The people of this land were all deaf, while I…
Burned with the fever of my own screams.
Drink a scream, flavored with the taste of silence…
Here’s to a nauseating contradiction,
That carves a wound into your triumphant soul…
For years, I played at love with this paradox,
And the result was an illegitimate child named Pain.
I suffered through the labor that anchored this shared existence.
Savor the agony of life, of birth, and the crushing toll of this femininity…
And now, vomit it all up.
Die in the filth of this renewal,
And awaken from the slumber of March!

)”In the original Persian, the author uses a phonetic wordplay, where the word for ‘Justice’ (Adalat) is sliced to reveal ‘Tattered’ (Lat-o-par), and ‘Honesty’ (Sedaqat) is sliced to reveal ‘Silence/Sound-cut’ (Seda-qat).(

Four days of living within the cube…
The theme is not repetitive;
Rather, repetition is a wall that forever oversteps its own bounds.
Welcome to the world of humanity’s deliberate madness.

A stark white cube crafted from letters; from the dawn of enlightenment to this very day.
Within the third dimension of these four lines, four pulses lie hidden—
Pulses of void, each spanning four hundred centuries of mundanity.
And contradictions that breathe side by side with ease:
Silence, Scream.
Tear, Smile.
Lie, Honesty.
Me, You.

When the natives of this cube gather to pour their hearts out, fear can be painted with ease.
The fear of a sphere that, from afar, is interpreted as a harmony of green and blue…
But once you descend at the speed of light,
Even the mothers here feed their infants milk the color of midnight.

This is Earth, and the clock of humanity is slumbering.
This cursed clock has only one law:
“It is unbreakable.”
But if the seconds of your conscience ever awaken from their sleep,
Just live for four days within this cube,
And you will be certain… that madness is not merely a label!

Red Card...
Stop passing.
We were never teammates from the start.
I am no coach, but you… you were never a player.
With twenty-three goals conceded, and not a single one scored.
Drop the red card, and fade away through the crowd.

For ninety years in the air of this pitch, I gasped for breath.
Every desperate sprint of mine was flagged as offside.
And yet, you preach to me about “fair play,”
While the referee was entirely in your pocket.

The only art left was the goalpost, which occasionally framed you in my eyes.

My jersey was black; I wish I had framed your burial in that goal ninety years ago, bound by a ribbon of ambiguity.
So that today, in the final, shameless, and unfair penalty,
You wouldn’t shoot a smirk at my defeat with such pride.

Stop passing.
Attack, for there are no defenders left.
Strike.
Even if the final whistle has already blown.
This time, I stand within the frame of this betrayal.
Strike harder…

Raven-hued…
The curved seepages of my mind ache,
And every straight line has bowed under the weight of this alienation.
The spine of this resilience has turned horizontal.
Bury the borders in mud, for interpretation has become an illogical change.

Calculate it in any color; the angle of my vision is raven-black.
The periphery of my sight is raven-black.
The periphery is a heartbeat that raced and lagged,
And the authenticity of a perspective that trembled…
Trembled before those passers-by who stayed,
And those permanents who departed.

The surface of my capacity didn’t merely crack; it transformed into a deep, festering wound, hundreds of thousands of years old.
Do not complain of my tastelessness,
Within the fence of a soul where loneliness is a salt-laden wailing.
This accursed pen laughs at the wildness of this woman.
The paper ends, and I…
I shall never be started.

Just think for a while…
The streets are crowded with aimless wanderings,
And with sobs that, instead of breaking, chose to think.
The air of your mind may be cracked, perhaps, but the salty feast of your cheeks shall never be poisoned.

Think…
Your sense of smell never grew used to the open window; tear down the ceiling and lie back, just think.
Break your glasses; the world has no gravity, neither natural nor artificial.
With blurred eyes in the absolute darkness, listen closely to the sound of your heart; think.

If you’ve become entangled in the lagging needles of routine, you will never arrive at the rendezvous.
Throw away your clothes, and think of the lingering aftertaste of your eternal coffee and cigarettes.
The beginning of your storytelling—blame it on the earth, the sky, and the seven heavens—
But think deeply about the end of the story…

They swallow your lies with a touch of cream and honey,
But occasionally, think of your own bitter truth.
If your white hairs are a family heirloom,
Think of the etched lines beneath your eyes in the mirror.
You interpret your loneliness today as the pretentious nightmare of those around you,
But think, for once, about the loneliness of a human being seeking a single line of humanity.

Your head on a shoulder… your shoulders crave no hands.
Dig your fingers into your temples, and think a little:
Of the wretchedness of not reaching the pleasure of a sneeze once every few months,
Of the stench of a room whose inhabitant was addicted to more than just cigarettes (Cigarettes),
Of the tomorrow where you barely remember why or how your body pays the price of its endurance with wounds (Alcohol),
Of the blood clots from a white circle with a short line that intensified your nausea (Birth Control Pills),
Of a seemingly pleasurable itch and a sleep called a “nap,” a cigarette that turned to ash before it was even smoked (Opium),
Of an innocent nose that fed its neighbors dust instead of air (Cocaine),
Of the sweet laughs and the emptiness that, on a spring day, were perhaps slightly tearful (Marijuana),
Of the fingers that pointed to you by the bridge (Prostitution),
Of the sound of your heart under the direct control of the music,
Which, if it raced, leaped from the chest,
And if it slowed… (MDMA).

Prepare a headstone!
Now that you repeat your aimless wanderings through the streets,*

*Tell your sobs: instead of breaking, just this once… just think.

I shall not be still.
In the abyss of silence, with a clumsy sense of simplicity, my infinite deliverances lost their beat.
I cemented the bricks of this mental and cardiac congestion with the stare of my own eyes.
From among thousands of other vague and numb hues, I personally sketched the color of indifference.

Upon which toilet of turmoil shall I vomit the remnants of my indifference, just so the world believes I shall not be still?
This self, savage and rebellious within, plummeted to the seventh cemetery of the earth.
And you… in which bend of a celestial path do you wander?

The footprints of people’s routine…
I had handed the pen and paper to you;
Are you fleeing from this repetition, too?

Tell me…
Of the vacant faces and these dusty roads,
Of the material span that remains undivided, quite naturally,
And of those crooked, foolish laughs…
These footprints of routine, where they wish,
From the final ceiling of this house, to be controlled by a handful of superiors.
Playing games of lies and politics,
Finding satisfaction in each other’s wins and losses,
As if hatred is being served to them in glasses.

This is not delirium; just open your eyes for a moment.
“Legal driving”—drive it through your brain,
So you may break away from this repetition and actually gaze at your surroundings.
Detach this accursed soul and ascend;
Watch the story from high above.

It’s wonderful—everyone’s heads are buried in their phones, and their relationships have all turned virtual.
And then, another “virtual” pushes the relationship even further into virtualization,
Until everyone feels like a life-machine.
Books, thought, purpose, understanding—they comprehend none of it!
Ninety percent are entirely absent from the story, and for me, this is an eternal, ongoing saga…
My false joys are a good enough reason to continue the path.
I have no expectations for myself, let alone for you!

You Do Not Understand

The rain’s soft chime, on madness’ rim, a ringing sound,
You do not understand.
My weary heart, in silence’s depth, its final word is found,
You do not understand.

My verses smell of damp and mold—come, taste the rain;
This cursed madness is no novelty, it’s an ancient pain,
You do not understand.

Through the depths of insanity, I’ve marched my way,
The gulf from yesterday to now, you cannot weigh,
You do not understand.

I scaled the wall and laughed at every brick I passed,
My silent screams, a ghost-like cast,
You do not understand.

My simple truths were void to you, a hollow shell,
The distance between earth and sky, a story you cannot tell,
You do not understand.

From the lowest dust, I laughed at the throne’s high light,
The grime of deep depression’s night,
You do not understand.

Behind the indigo dome, one lonely lamp remained,
The pain of light and dome combined, a sorrow unrestrained,
You do not understand.

From your hands…
I am the probable attack of that all-too-favorite legend,
I am the hollow, cubic voids,
The azure void-pairs leaning towards fatigue,
The illogical logic of blood-sculpted embryos,
With knowledge that mimicked ignorance,
And ignorances that drove my loneliness into exile.

I am crafted from the same pen as any one of you,
From the furthest edge of this blue sphere,
Among people who pretend to be humble.
I am the simplicity of a single “I”…
Fleeing from the clichés of a perpetually complaining crowd.
I am from this very neighborhood, while you are from the land of the remnants,
I am from those achievements rigged with mines…
The path where the “gallant conqueror” branded the hearts of his people with fire.

So stunned, drowned in the “now,” staring into the distances, I cannot even bring my sentences to a full stop.
My lips observe a fast of silence, while the roar of your insignificance whips my path with judgment.
I cast aside my voice;
I cast aside your life;
I cast aside your incompetence.
Do not even breathe near me;
The stench of your thoughts’ breath disgusts me, O human…

I See No “You”
When I breathe, the sky raining tears is nothing.
The cracking of my heart’s ceiling is nothing.
My brain is oozing.

Are you blind?!
You sketched the burning of the thresher across the rainbow axis of the mind.
Upon which wet brick shall I print your lack of honor?
With every breath I take, you choke.
As shameful as you are when burying your only child, so arrogant you become when burying your beliefs.
How many months more must this contradiction dissolve me?
Sooner or later, it will devour you.
I entrust the bones of your memories to my gastric acid.

When I cease to breathe, the illusion of power paralyzes you.
Your breath becomes a nightmare when you realize that no crow in the scarecrow wants you for itself.
If I am mute, I have tarmaced this dusty path…
If I am blind, I have shot this accursed pride…
I have found no audience whose ears were not deafened by this heaviness.

Now, go ahead—keep saying “I”…
While I, see no “you” at all.

Beloved, tell me your name…
The galaxy of truth, I cross-hatched in a frame,
From time’s deep hell to the bridge of fall, I paddled through the flame.
The dungeon of silence, Tartarus of my throat, I learned to bear,
As the cosmos and its spoils dissolved in my illusion’s glare.

The root of existence and strength, with a cleaver I did slay,
Before the altar of eternity, this soul on its knees did pray.
Beloved, tell me your name, for my patience is now thin,
To reach you, I’ve swept the air, from the very start, within.

Spoils of war…
My eternal friend…
Longing is not merely a word;
It is a spoil of war,
Won from all the struggles I wage within myself,
Just to hide how lethal your absence has been.

I am a walking corpse in this controversial cemetery of mine.
Come back sooner…
Come, for I have promised my heart the sunny days of your embrace.
My eternal friend…
Do not let me be extinguished beneath this terrifying flood.
A downpour of anxiety and depression has taken residence in the cells of my body;
To me, something called an “umbrella” has no meaning.

My eternal friend…
You are my ceiling, you are my pillar, you are my rendezvous, you are my shelter…

Call Your God…

Call upon your God, just for a while…
Neither deny, nor insist—just let it waste,
Embrace friend and foe in a single haste.

Dream no nightmare, buy no fantasy, just glide…
Review the borders, where genders subside.

Pray not, dig not, just set yourself free…
Sync your soul with your body’s decree.

Sow no chaos, offer no aid, just behold…
Call upon your God, and let the infinite unfold.

Existence.
I write of our shared, anxious plagues,
Of the propagation of kindness and the erosion of love,
Of this contagious misery—hey, my classmate, beware that this virus does not claim your soul.
I am tired…
Tired of these fleeting, momentary joys,
Of this sensation of emptying out in a hundredth of a second.

I…
I am bewildered by every single moment of this life!
Do you understand my bewilderment?
We lived through an era where we knew neither the beginning nor the end.
To what were we bound?
Existence—but what kind of existence?
An existence where the peaks and valleys are worthless,
Up, down; up, down; they labeled us “bipolar,” “Down syndrome,” and such…
My dear classmate, or dear fellow patient, whichever you may be…
Tell me…
Without boundaries…
Did you have a choice?
With me, or without me?
From wherever your longing heart desires…
Which memory do you choose?

I became mute; I had my reasons. If I had persisted any further, they would have truly silenced me.
Does time taste of alcohol, or of ice cream?
I am afraid—do you understand?
I fear the act of buying and selling,
I fear the race of competing and not competing,
I fear the filling and the emptying.
I fear all contradictions, damn it…
Do not laugh at me!
Just tell me—do you fear these contradictions too?
I fear these voices that spiral inside my head,
And the irony is, I know that a part of my staying alive depends on these very voices.

I am both the agent and the excused,
Tasked to choose from among these emotions,
Those that wound me the least.
And if God intervenes…
Perhaps, they will wound you less too.

Platform Two, Cell Two, Sequence Two.
I kept thinking about gluing these words and writings together to print a book.
When I thought of the words, a book was being printed;
But when I thought of the book, time came to a standstill.
I won’t get too philosophical about it.

The story began that day, sitting on Platform Two, in Cell Two, when suddenly someone said: “Ready? We’re starting. Sequence Two.”
And then, a “click” in my head wove terror, and I collapsed before a camera that didn’t even exist.
And everyone laughed.
Heh…

Whether it was an internal war or an external one, I do not know.
It doesn’t really matter.
The only thing that mattered was that my fall had a feeling,
And how hauntingly real everything was.
That has always been the point.

One side of my soul said: “You are one, you are the instant; the voice of the other, the click, the camera, the fall, the laughter—let them erase everything. What is there left to worry about?”
“Just print it.”
The other side of my soul said: “But I want to keep them, until he/she finally comes.”
Meaning… checkmate.

I thought for a while and said, let me tell you this instead:
“The wounds that are masterpieces of the hands of your loved ones are far from few.”
Perhaps this is everything I either want in my book, or cannot bear to include.

Again…
Again, I do not wish for it, and yet the sun rises.
Again, the world and all its hours spin backward around my head, and the moment they reach my brain, they wind up.
Again, I do not wish for it, and the sun does not burn.
I wonder… has the needle of this “again” locked onto my life once more?

I run in place, in a static, boring, and nauseating dance.
I do not heave; I descend, and tomorrow I shall dance even faster.
Then when do I sing?
Then when do I drink my coffee?
Then when does the sun rise?
Or perhaps, set?
What do I even know!!!

My entire point is this: when will they sing the anthem of resilience?
Perhaps my legs are a little tired.
Perhaps I have craved a cup of coffee.
Perhaps I truly cannot write of joy and excitement.
Why do some of you insist so much?

The difference between my game and yours…
In the thick radiance of this void, I roll.
A few steps this way, a few steps that way; I rise, floating.
Precise, like someone who… what? I do not know.
Again I leap, I spring, I crawl,
Gazing at the world through the window of hope.

Nothing is as it was before.

Fresh achievements from the peerless masterpieces of the world—
This window and that window, they are no different.
Both of their frames are forged from torment,
And beyond them stands a girl made of patience and silence.

The difference between my game and yours is measured by the intensity of zeal and excitement.
That which I have in excess, and you find suspicious.
That very haste which, after a grievance, slowed into frustration, yet the game continued.

Shall I begin from you, or you from me?
Have I finished you, or have you finished me?
That we remain thus, staring at each other, bewildered, while words flee.

I… I shall reach the arrival, if God paves a wide road.

Wake up… return to yourself…
The margins of the accident page,
That part where gray overwhelms the seven colors.
That stutter I inherited from chemical compounds,
That nature which was not so pristine after all,
That fountain pen whose ink dried before a single word was written.
That clock, in that same old alley,
Which was crowded, yet devoid of any soul.

I believe I have lost my loneliness,
And my childhood memories along with it.
In the midst of all this, there was only a girl with me, whose hair had turned white,
With broken lines etched beneath her eyes,
And a back slightly bent by the weight of years.

Yes…
I was with me,
But that “I” was no longer me.

Further back, further forward, stillness.
In the frenzied collapse of this hollowed-out version of myself,
From the place where the sea begins its retreat and the dry lands advance;
From those very points you long to strike through and erase,
And from these mud-hued landscapes where neither the beginning nor the end makes any sense to you.

From the chronic pain and frustration of the second you release the insect from the spider’s web,
And from the second after the release, when you think of the spider’s hunger.
You go further back.
And the memory of indirectly killing a fetus that had not yet hatched, and the direct consumption of it, still torments you.

You go further back, weaving hypotheses—that if beings had once inhabited this flat line of earth,
What sins had they cast upon the tears,
That shadows now fly this way?!
That you are so terrified of love?!

Further back you go, hypothesis upon hypothesis…
Further back you go until the dawn of eternity, and further forward you go, yet you remain still.
From further back, you go even further back until before the dawn of eternity, and from further forward, you go even further forward, and you remain even more still.
Further back you go, and you remain still.
You remain still, you go further forward, and you remain still.
And…

The Story of a Flower...
A child flips through the pages of the street,
Measuring poverty, inch by inch.
Point by point, line by line, he questions this loneliness.
He spits out “peace,” triggered by the heavy slap the father dealt the mother.
He measures again, wondering if it was the mother who first designed this madness.
He grows loathing for family and love, only to find himself, once again, held in the embrace of family and love.
Contradiction is sometimes like a loop, with a color resembling death.

Years pass from that day.
And now, he exists in a strange suspension, between standing his ground and leaving.
He no longer measures the street.
He wears a suit and a tie, and every day—except Fridays—he gazes at the photo frame on his desk and says:
“It is better that I never married.”
Then, after a moment of reflection, he thinks:
“But if I had married, I would have been happy.”

And someone told me: He remained trapped in contradiction until the very last moment of his life.
And thus, the story of a flower began.

The Myth of My Gnosis...
Tonight, I write, dedicated to the Light…
Unlike all those apparent poetic strikethroughs,
I scour my vocabulary, and in the end, it is no surprise that I find no word to call You by.
So, I say it simply:

Oh God;
Oh, the Myth of my Gnosis,
How beautiful You are,
How simple,
How near,
And how kind and forgiving.

I love You.
Do not let me go.

It has become too much…
The night is vast, and the suffocation is bright…
The provisions were devoured by mice years ago,
And I believe that tonight, is the night of my end.

Setting aside the womb, the bones, the eyes, the nails, the liver, the kidneys… and so on,
My soul…
My soul, it seems, is dwelling in the peak of absence.
Lest I become lost in the sight of my own dissolution.
It is not amusing; it is bitter.
A bitterness the color of… color-blindness.

It has become too much.
O you who read these words, offer a small prayer for my soul!

Loathing…
Treading upon the wrong path…
And at the very threshold of integrity.
A struggle, from this side to that, and back again;
The craving to taste the flavor of sin,
And the experience of that first state of losing—and not losing—oneself.
An encounter between an infinite “not wanting” and an infinite “wanting.”
Shock, the forbidden, loathing, shame;
Four sensations, and the ciphers of madness.

But for the child within me, I long for the sanctity of an embrace, and for a genuine smile.
Lately, this femininity has become so dizzying;
As if a woman lights her cigarette from the very fire of my heart.

At the peak of madness!?
The earth feels nothing.
Father has no bread.
The sky has no rain.
Mother has no patience.

God has no child.
The child has no right.
The child has pain.

The child was dead, and God did not notice.
They wanted the child dead.
The others demand execution.

You…
When I think of you, I wish we could simply be… together.
How do you look at me?
Perhaps it is something haunting, and our dream has already fallen.
But…
Is the fall of our dream the end of our story?
Or is its fall as beautiful as the falling of snow?
I do not exaggerate; we truly loved one another.

Tell me…
How can I hear the sound of your choice?
Will you call me?
Or will you come to find me, so we may speak for a while?
Or do you say, in the depths of your heart, “How happy she seems”?

I wrote to you, so you may know that without you, no paradise feels right.
I wish you would write to me too…

Light and Sunglasses…
When I was smaller, I had a puzzle that I would break and rebuild time and time again.
I could never tire of painting.
My mother tells me: I had hundreds of books that I insisted she read to me over and over.
I was an only child.
In my room, I played with my dolls and delighted in talking to them.
I would light candles.
I didn’t know how to play the guitar, but for hours, I would make sounds with it.
I would sit at my desk, pretending to be the CEO of the world’s largest company, attending to files.
Sometimes, I would give speeches to the people of the world.
Sometimes, I wrote—just as I am doing now.
I would tidy my room, I would dance, I would listen to my favorite music.
The older I grew, the smaller the world seemed to become.
And today, at twenty-eight, a terrifying and ominous restlessness overflows from this tiny sanctuary of “What do I do?”
And I am worried…
Sometimes I look around, and it seems there is simply not much to be done!

It is as if I am alive, yet I ought to have been dead.
.
.
.
I had written up to this point when my pen stopped dancing.
Nothing more came to mind.
It was as if the entry of words into my brain had been declared forbidden.
I closed the notebook.
That day passed.
Today, I opened the notebook to continue the story.
As if I am alive, yet I ought to have been dead.
Sometimes I think to myself that when God created His creatures,
If He had allowed them to see everything from the very beginning,
All creatures would have been obliterated by the sheer intensity of the Existing Light.
So, He gifted them a pair of sunglasses called “life” in time and space, so their eyes could slowly adjust…
And after a while, He would remove the glasses…

And sometimes, I am afraid.
To be honest, not of never reaching the day of love,
But of the waiting.
I am afraid of the misfortune of being afraid.
Like someone trying to halt the flow of time, I dance—clumsy, dissonant.
Do you understand what I mean?
I try to take back my thoughts, my words, but how?
My words have already escaped my lips.
Is that why I am like someone fighting an imaginary enemy, only to be defeated by nothingness?
Actually, I was wrong.
I am not afraid of waiting.
I still have hope.
I get tired…
I find myself breathless.
I wish God would take away the glasses…

We were a wretched generation.
Do not linger around the outskirts of my longing.
In your silence, I cannot read your eyes.
When I remember the apple, I smile bitterly.
This exiled self of mine has bitten the apple thousands of times over,
And I always had too little time for a laugh from the bottom of my heart.

We were a wretched generation; a generation where there was precious little time between the greeting and the farewell.
I shall always wear black, to my heart’s content, for your absence.

The state of my days…
These days—some of which feel eternal—I carry a heavy burden of pain within me.
Whenever I call out to God, only occasionally does an answer return.
These days, every “super-moment” feels as if it is under the magnifying glass of madness;
And I hope that no sun lingers behind that lens.
I break into tears, for I know it is night, and I am afraid once more.
These days, even my pen flees from me.
There is no purpose.
I am constantly consumed by boredom.
It feels as if my room is filled with thorns, needles, and pins.
Even in this very moment, I ask myself:
“Why do you write?”
And yet, I wish to forge a sense of pride,
So that from a void that has no voice, I may scream:
“I, too, am darkness, and God loves me!”
And there is nothing wrong with being dark.
For a day will come when every single creation of my God shall reach the shores of love.
I secured this promise from the Almighty before the dawn of creation, and in it, I believe.
Even though I still mistake the day for the night.

I wish the truth could be proclaimed aloud…
From the experience of a carpet, crawling through its warp and weft,
Until I slowly tasted the essence of ascending to the Divine Throne.
God was the only one who knew where I let my hair loose and where I tied it.
He was the only companion of those nights—even the godless ones.
I still do not fathom His wisdom, but with the knowing I have of Him,
I know that a smile is on its way.

My God, the only miracle-worker of my life…
O You, the only one for whom my tongue falls mute in the hour of praise…
You do not know how much I love You.
In every moment of awaiting Your vision, I collapse into myself a thousand times; I break, I shatter.
For you do not know how breathtaking You are… O my Merciful One…

If I were to write, perhaps the pen would drop, or perhaps I would lack the strength.
So I say it simply:

O Keeper of my secrets, I adore You.

You understand my meaning well…
Right at the moment the clock reminds you to take your nerve pills,
Right when it is unclear which cigarette you are lighting out of sheer boredom,
Right when, from that same boredom, you take a pen in hand;
A text is born, which you hope to reread later beside your love, God, and let it stir a commotion.

O my old passion, O fellow traveler of these roads moment by moment, O one who—I know not what happened!
O my only true and peerless love…
O the only secret-keeper of this hunchbacked little girl…
O the only one who understands me, though the straight path from my heart to yours has frozen.

I still hold onto the hope that one day you will caress my hair,
Kiss me, look into my eyes, and tell me stories of loving…
And for me, it matters not if the glass beside us should shatter.
You understand my meaning well…

Drink it bitter…
Seeking refuge in a tragedy; from unkindness…
The calloused hands of a man who sought refuge in the laughter of Indian movies;
They were so rough that the little girl turned her face away.
The girl played hard to get, and the father gave his life.
Truly, why did the girl not understand that the father had bent himself this way, just to fill her belly and ensure her comfort?
Was the poverty that of the father, or the poverty of the daughter?

By the way, where is the mother?
I, the author of the tale, deleted the mother from the poem, right at the moment of birth.
How much can a man be both father and mother, and yet witness the insolence of his very roots?
This, too, is my cruelty; I left him alone in this poem,
Accompanied by a daughter who is perhaps too demanding and pretentious…
The pretense of being something she is not is etched into the depths of the girl’s soul, and with this mark, the father’s plans are washed away into nothingness.

Well, the end of the story is not always meant to be happy.

 The old man falls to his knees, and the story ends.

Waiting…
I am not doing well…
I constantly drift between intense endurance and oblivion.
Intense endurance hurts,
And so does oblivion…
And… the waiting…
And a God who does not answer,
And a “me” who knows not what Divine Wisdom is!

Once more, I waver between intense endurance and oblivion.
For both, intense endurance, are painful,
And so is oblivion…
I choose one, and I die;
And I feel that my state is worse than before.

Then, I think of a God who is so cruel…
And then, I am terrified by my own thought, and I beg for forgiveness.
And then, from the thousand paths before me—a few of which are more vivid—I choose one.

This is my life.
That is all.

Godlessness…
Do not believe the blackness that is etched across my shoulders, amidst this abundance of whiteness.
Godlessness was a strange sediment.
I never even imagined I would reach such a point in my life—where the presence of God in my existence has become a dotted line.
It is horrific.

This text will not continue any further.
Up to this point, I have become so terrified that the ink of my soul is nearly dry.

Read me…
God does not pass through me,
Nor do my father or mother.
I am but a mirror of You, my love;
A bit shorter, a bit frailer, a bit weaker.
I hold no ambiguity in my weakness before You, my old friend.
Once, with You, I experienced death, blood, cancer, nothingness, fear, and misery.
Once, we shared the journey of sickness;
Madness, blood, and horror—experienced with You, my kind God.

The world turns in my favor,
I know it.
This beginning, this love, and this creation… they do not taste of forgetting.
And from beyond the roof of this small room, in a street upon this earth, I write to You.
Greetings to You,
And to Your infinite patience, O Lord…
Blessings upon us,
Upon our love… upon our love…
And upon the beings and non-beings,
The flickering of sound and image, the shattered mirrors,
The resistance, the surrender, and the endless entrusting…*

*In the belief of the one I cherished, whose voice was a hue of turquoise and azure, I am still peerless…
Brave, kind, strong, and just like a straight, unending line.
And O You, who walked shoulder to shoulder with me on my parallel path,
Emerge from beyond my embrace, and paint over these distances and these seasons.
Fall in love with me again, as You did at the dawn of our acquaintance,
For I am in desperate need of this Sacredness;
Do not leave it for the tomorrows…
Read me as a prize,
For I come from a path and a battle most bitter, most harsh, and most exhausting, my beautiful one…
Read me…

Madness…
Madness is safe…
The pills, the grip…
In the realm of madness, no one can harm you.
In the world of madness, sometimes you become Picasso, sometimes Beethoven, sometimes Sopor, and sometimes a chef…
You are a master of every art.
Whatever tune the world plays, you can dance to it.
That is why you can keep moving forward on your path…
You become sad, and then, suddenly, happy…

Years ago, I thought I had experienced madness, but today I realize what madness truly is…
You don’t struggle too much with anything, because a madman soon grows bored and leaps from one branch to another.
At most, you focus on a matter for a few hours, and then you move on to the next.
When you are mad, you have no expectations—not even of yourself.
And this is the pinnacle of peace.

Only then do you become in sync with the world; you don’t pop up and down like a seed of wild rue just to understand; you simply wait for God to tell you in His own time.
If the world becomes calm, then so be it.
If not, so be damned.
For if it becomes calm, perhaps you’ll be in the realm of perception then, and if not, perhaps you’ll be happy in the world of commotion.

In short… you are free.
Madness has its own world.
Madness is the most beautiful thing that ever happened.
I love madness,
Because nothing has made me feel better than madness.
Blessings upon you, Madness…
My most correct and beautiful act…

Fear, stress, anxiety, hidden rage, and obsessive thoughts are currently my backpack.
It is fascinating to know that with madness, all of these are healed.
For a madman does everything.
He is free.
He pours out his anger,
He laughs,
He thinks,
He screams,
He weeps,
He becomes sad.
I must live this madness more deeply.
Here, in this madhouse, what could be better than madness?
In this wonderland, the only way to exist and not be destroyed is to be weird…
And madness means being weird…

Don’t let anyone guess your next move.
The answers are not always “Hoo”…
Sometimes they are “Hey”…
Sometimes “Hoo”…
Sometimes “Hey”…
Sometimes “Heh”…
Sometimes a laugh…
And sometimes…

Be mad, for madness has its own world…
Look, my friend…
There are many paths to reach God…
Either we find our way through kind words, or through blows and kicks…
Do not worry.
Blessings upon You, my God…

I am spent, O Light…
In a corner of my mind and heart,
I have sat in waiting for You.
You did not come, You did not come, You did not come… and I am spent.

Why do even the dark spots play hard to get with me?
I, who bear the name Saharnaz—
Does even the kind water become unkind?
Does even haste refuse to hasten?
Even the shadows of light are fleeing from me,
And this circle of repetition has become my home.

Why do You not come?
Why do You not work a miracle?
How much further must I go?
My glass of patience has overflowed—do You not see?
What are You waiting for?

Behold how He loves you…
You are but a slave to your own dreams;
Whether you wish it or not, you shall arrive.
Could God be any kinder?
Could God be more gracious?

You are saved, and He is your God;
And if you perish, He is your slayer…
You, who know that a world without love is but a meaningless rotation…
So, what are you worried about?

Be free…

Saharnaz Izadikia