Tag: Art

Vulnerability

 

In an ideal world, if we weren’t so impatient, if we slowed down to at least be able to appreciate the lather of people as they come to maturation,
perhaps we’d equally be as mature to accept their vulnerability.

HOWEVER, we’re not mature or developed enough.
It’s sexy, it’s trendy, it makes for good conversation fodder, but the reality is that dealing with a fuck up and loving them in all their insecurities, their vileness, and more so than loving them, but nailing an idea of loyalty into their soul, that you’re always going to be around is not something you find that easily.

In a world where flickering between connection and disconnection has never been easier, vulnerability remains taboo and I won’t believe anyone who says otherwise.

I’m abandoned more than ten times a day and that’s merely in basic exchanges, it’s no wonder I and others like me shut the world out to our innermost realities.
W.E.

 

Intolerable

If I am at all intolerable,
it’s because I am in between reconciliation,
and choking on an apple.

I arrive at my slipperiness several times a day,
this dungeon has become all too familiar,
perhaps its stench has stained me,
and I reek of sin,
oddly an ever lucrative pheromone, or so it seems.

Why can they not smell it on me?
Why when all those years I’ve spent unnoticed do they now wish I was something they saw?

The more indifferent I was to them,
the wider their eyes became.

And deep in the pits of me I want to take a knife to their livers and make them suffer more,
“here,” I say, “taste your own bile, I’m already familiar with it”,
but those years alone not only make you outwardly cold and stoic, but inwardly abundantly empathetic and merciful,
so I smile and greet them instead,
with the same bashful innocence of a child who’s spent way too much time inside his heart,
inside his head.

I leave it all unsaid,
I resort to what I know best,
one step back, guard up and play rope a dope,
play hope a hope,
maybe, just maybe, someone will notice,
that I’m half in this world and half out,
and why I can give more of me at a tenth of who I am than others can with their full expanse, their full effort.

Even then, I have to filter myself,
water myself down as it’s too easy to fall in love with falling in love.

And echo on with war crys,
with quaking thighs,
with eyes and lies,
as we play this game of finders keepers,
allowing ourselves to be found,
allowing ourselves to be kept,
unkempt…. as it all may be,
some have less demanding needs,
a glance, an arm to lay on,
a kind word a moon apart,
anything, you can afford,
they sit like beggars at your door,
one more day, one more.

This poetry of dread and longing,
of insecure apetities that waver in and out of the bay of curling shores,
that can’t find its way through the swamp and withering of decay,
is all I have to offer,
the only oil lit niche in the wind of what does not and will not ever belong.

W.E.

eat your hurt

 

If I lower my voice,
perhaps it would become something of interest to you,
and you’d pay a little more attention,

it seems poets only live,
when they pass away,

or maybe I need to fade,
for you to know I have something to say.

Perhaps in my absence,
my presence,
would be of some semblance.

But all you see is you,
and I ask,
how can I eat your hurt,
if I’m still chewing on mine?

How can I let go of life to become immortal on a page, perhaps,
if you’re willing,
you could hear me,
and this juxtaposition of incurable worldliness and longing to be with the divine,
would be no more.

Undisturb

It may be sincere, but it’s still invasive.

To pry a door open when all outward signs display its reluctance,
expresses quite clearly your persistence to chaos.

Some things shouldn’t be awakened,
some things shouldn’t be disturbed,
lurking may be a soul that’s too far broken,
and your ears may be filled, with a shrill that can’t be unheard.

Leave people where they want to be,
wait at the door patiently,
some doors don’t want to be opened,
irrespective of you having a key.

I’ve told you I’m too far fetched of too far fetched,
this solitude demeanour is on my being etched,
irreconcilable introversion,
A banished soul, a distant wretch.

W.E.

The virtuous wolf


Where is my prose snarled a hungry witch,
of crimson cheek and skin of lavender,
ego unfulfilled and hips that bare,
oblivious to the lurking scavenger.

The remnants of rib and soil,
pheromone for severed souls,
a waft, a zephyr, myrtle and sage,
and lustful pangs that she can’t control.

With whisk and ease came the wolf,
hearing her plea for excavation,
with a lifetime of ravage and hurt did he answer,
aloof with misery and devastation.

We perform best where our habits  reconcile,
where we return to our defaults,
I ravage because I’ve been ravaged.
I do to others what’s been done to me,
it’s how I love, how I hate.

I eat away until I reach the pit,
by then, I’ve become my prey,
or they’ve become me.
It’s hard to tell the difference.

This attachment is beyond the pull of gravity,
this attraction more like blissful insanity.

A man  waltzing with prose between his teeth,
ever an incisor for a willing player,
blood covered hands, nails and underneath,
content only as a soul slayer.

This grief, this wail, this mourning and shrill,
this distance and indifference, and reality pill,
this noise, and orchestra, and blunt tip quill,
this rapture, sin and Frankenstein will.

It’s grotesque and tender and poetry at once,
a culmination, an opus and the crescendo waiting for a home,
a bare skin canvas waiting for the cut,
in the end a wandering sail boat,
taken by winds, a storm and white wash foam.

And there resides that scavenging wolf,
torn between hunger and the thrill,
ever the demons, a wrestle till death,
hell with every pant, a battle of will.

This carnality for the pulse,
the race for fulfilment and satisfaction,
the lure of the woman, the dance with the devil,
the lustful glance of distraction.

-Wesam El dahabi

There is no prison worse than the one of being trapped to base desires.
The wolf is the carnal ego leading us down the path of destruction.

Rudderless

Advice:

Accept insignificance.
Accept your folly.
Accept insofar that it humbles you.

Don’t accept being vulgar and self centred,
and loving yourself is the quickest ticket there.

I know my faults well,
we’ve wrestled until our pulse is one and the same,
we’ve wrestled until both are tame.

When they rise to take control,
I’m there to shut myself down,
when I rise as if accomplished and complete,
they remind me of how lowly I am.

W.E.

Recipe for men

Solitude,
has been a recipe for manhood in my family for as long as I remember. Floors groaned at three am when my father would walk across wooden tiles that I always thought someone had meticulously jigsawed across the whole apartment.
His belt buckle, I can still hear, then came the jingle of coins in his pockets as he set off quietly to his work day, alone.

I still drive by that apartment and assume that it belongs to us, my childhood will haunt whoever lives there until I can buy it, just for fucks sake and keep it as a memory.

My grandfather was a loner too, son of many sons of mountain people wedged in a village and on the other side a sea.

He’d walk, in the early hours of the morning to his work too. He’d toil the mountains, his father a shepherd and farmer.

My uncles, all land people. Quiet men, but robustly strong men.

There’s manhood in solitude yet!

Someone tells us that we’re of prophetic lineage, Hashimi to be exact and this seems to be on the lips of other families in surrounding villages.

I hear it more than once as if it’s a get out of jail free card, but I’ve wrestled with myself in just as much quietude as my ancestors for me to believe that it’s true.

Still on the offchance it is, I think of my noble grandfather – I hope he’s my grandfather – The Prophet who received revelation in……. Solitude but was believed in multitude.

The man who was responsible for transforming the otherwise then despicable Arab peninsula – perhaps now just as despicable – into the centre of the world.

Maybe it’s solitude missing from my people, stopping them from rising to that place again.

I’ve turned too many pages to not know that great men, men who’ve had the biggest impact, real impact were always introverted and preferred the humble sifting grounds of solitude over the cacophany of noise amongst people.

And so distraction feels like an enemy sucking my marrow and I feel bad for even thinking of people as distractions.

They don’t even get a chance to develop a relationship with me before I have ignored them based on their incessantly noisy approach to being heard.

Tap me gently,
wake me softly,
brush up against me with prose,
waft past me with a perfume so enchanting you pull me out of my shell,
but don’t vie for my attention with claptrap and hyde.

I’ll find you, I’ll hear you, I’ll notice all your nuances like I noticed my home, my father, like I think of my ancestors walking alone at night.

Quiet men,
noble men,
men of fortitude,
sunken in solitude,
bathing in introversion,
aching in longing for answers to all their ponders,
too proud to ask,
stoic in acceptance of their fate.

Men that thought so much, that their hearts beat double as fast, silently away from the masses,
men who all died early.

Maybe they all die when their need for solitude is no longer met, when they can’t keep enough of themselves away from people.

Maybe they die when their secrets are exposed.

accidental poet

 

Some things are beautiful to watch.
Like a child finding an idea in the midst of play,
or an adult, even if late, falling into comprehension,
seeing beauty, truth and balance where previously everything was chaos.

Even more, I enjoy seeing everything through others eyes,
becoming their tongue for that moment,
I know how they feel without them telling me,
I know what they want to say even if they don’t know themselves.

They’d refuse to accept that I do if I told them so,
so I write it instead,
and watch them nod in agreement.

I accidentally stumbled into expression,
of imagery through words,
this thing they call poetry, prose and the subtlety of it all,
accidentally a poet where I’m meant to be anything but.

W.E.

Introversion Impulses -short story

 

“You have to let people see the truth of who you are”, she said.

I had no doubt that her intentions were sincere, that she was trying to get me to share more of myself, more of my work and to come out of the shell I’d grown comfortable in.

I also felt that she was somewhat attracted, that she was holding back by her own standards and not divulging her interests or motives for conversation. Why on earth would she extend such kindness, such interest in me or my words? Maybe she was thinking out aloud? Maybe I’m looking too far into her words, but she continued.

“You can’t hold back if you want people to find you, you know, if you want to commit to someone whole heartedly you have to show them who you are, how else will they commit to you and share themselves with you as well?”

She strangely intertwined the idea of commitment to a person within the idea of the collective she seemed to be generally referring to earlier in the conversation.

Only in a perfect world I thought. Perhaps if people were not so mean and would not squash your heart as soon as they had full access to it, not unlike many things losing their lustre once the hardship of having to attain them is overcome.

But my mind kept going back to the question; why was she so interested in me, or my writing? Maybe my words were an easier entry point into a conversation she was holding back from, but before I could articulate a reasonable reply, it happened, like a flood on a page, the same semi-conscious expulsions that propel me to write saw me blurt it right out into the plain of thick air.

“It feels”, I paused, “so invasive though….like a devaluation of sorts. Tell me I’m wrong. Do you really feel you can share that part of you? That crevice so deep and dark that you risk someone else holding it in their hands and having the ability to toss it at will? I think it’s a protective mechanism of sorts, for me anyway. ”

“Protective?”

“Yeah, if I keep that part subdued, to myself, I can control it. If I share it, I have no control.”

“Control what?”

“The urge to hurt someone for hurting me. I couldn’t take that. Sharing something only for them to use it against me.

I might even kill someone for abusing it. The hurt would be too much. I couldn’t contain myself knowing I share a part of me so deep, because I get urged or forced into the idea that I have to be open with a partner, that I have to share everything with a partner only for it to later be used as a method to hurt me, look down on me or whatever. It would for once, perhaps show me the other side of a person who’s lost control and killed another person. Perhaps they’re just people who could not handle their vulnerabilities being known and then discarded. I don’t think I could handle the hurt, I dunno, I’d much rather keep shit to myself. Even this I feel….”

I stopped and realised what I had just said. I could see her eyes turn cold – oh no, she thought I was a monster – and then warm again. Then she surprised me, they welled up as she then looked into her lap and placed one palm over other as if to say she was ready to catch a stream of her tears.

“That’s really quite sad”.

I felt my throat swell and fill with regret.

But she smiled and continued, “and beautiful at the same time”. The tears were now just falling directly onto her jeans as if to say there was no use hiding her own vulnerabilities and the moment was urging her to unshackle her inhibitions, to share more of what she really felt.

I thought about what I just said as the silence tempered the mood into an agreed introspective freeze.

Was I really that fragile, that afraid? Unable to share the truth of myself with anyone because I was repulsed by it all or was it because I was apprehensive of rejection? Am I crazy for thinking it was unacceptable for someone to squash you at will, after you’ve slowly desensitised yourself into sharing a part of you? I rationalised that it wasn’t. That people who did that with disregard deserved to be hurt back.

Could I kill someone over that? I could. I remembered the rage I felt when I was bullied when I was younger and my work I had been struggling with for a week, destroyed by a kid who thought it was cool. I was only twelve years old. Work I had spent hours on, deeply engrossed in, only for him to think it was funny and cool to destroy it. I still remember the coolness of the steel chair legs in my clenched blue fists as I picked many up, one after the other and hurled them with everything I had, directly at his head with no consideration for his life.

At twelve, I was quite comfortable in knowing he could be seriously hurt or die, because what I lost meant that much to me.

I could kill if someone discarded something that meant that much to me.

No, I thought, grand as the the fairytale of believing perhaps that someone could hold your heart in their hands and protect it, the temptation to discard it, the ease of discarding it for their own comfort would probably overwhelm them and they’d ditch your vulnerabilities at the earliest convenience to make themselves comfortable.

I’d much rather not hurt anyone, so I won’t allow them to hurt me by giving too much of myself.

Beautiful as her tears were, they suddenly became bound by a used by date. How I wanted to give her access, how I wished she could hold that part of me forever, safely, but I couldn’t believe it and back into my cocoon I went, and it felt as if the physical space between us grew hands that pushed us away from each other and back into everyday niceties.

Her face was kind enough for me to believe her, but not hard enough to accept the reality of how dark some of us are.
Better for her that she live in a world where she didn’t have to see that part of human capability, the compulsion to meter out justice.

People cannot walk around thinking it’s acceptable to hurt others without knowing there is a consequence.