September 3, 2023
“Who are you to refuse yourself?”
Kamand Kojouri
Category: Uncategorized
You Are Here
July 11, 2023
“You are here
Kamand Kojouri
sitting in front of me
but so are all your lovers
your friends
and family too
every person you’ve been in life with
is at our table drinking wine
and I wonder
have we ever been alone? Truly
alone? and how can this be
when I, too, don my tribe
like pearls when I wear
my people like perfume”
I don’t know
January 20, 2023
“I don’t know how you carry
an ancient knowing
or why you smell like starry skies
and church.
Everything is human nature
yet you are supernovas
piercing night’s heart
with your wounds of light.I don’t know when you learned
to dance with God
or why you paused to witness me.
Everything is eventual pain
yet you are time suspended
and blessings
constellating.I don’t know why this had to be
Kamand Kojouri
or why it couldn’t be anything
else. Everything is an unbearable
burden yet here you are,
my universe’s
Amen.”
for Mahsa Amini
September 27, 2022
“O woman
who is not separate from us
who is chained beaten strangled
this song is for youO woman
who is not separate from the homeland
who is oppressed silenced persecuted
this fury is for youO woman
who rages against this regime
who marches resists protests
this prayer is for youO woman
whose wild tresses
are tied with a noose
this cry is for you
we rise together for youO Mahsa
Kamand Kojouri
from your blood
poppies will grow
this revolution is for you”
TODAY IS A WRITING DAY
February 4, 2021
“Today is a writing day.
Kamand Kojouri
My head is spinning with rapture
as the words rise from my throat.
I am dizzy
from holding the world in my palm.
At dusk, my lantern and I go
in search of cries of the destitute,
the displaced,
and dispossessed.
I lend them my pen
and offer them my heart.
Today is a sacred day.
My skin is anointed with their blood,
and I am ready to battle the darkness.
With hope as my shield
and love as my sword,
I will not return until dawn.
Because no one must be forgotten.
Because victory is possible.
Because anything is possible,
for today is a writing day.”
YOU, OVER THERE
February 4, 2021
“You, over there.
Kamand Kojouri
You, who’s always looking
over his neighbour’s fence.
The beauty of this world is wasted on you.
I say, the beauty of this world
is wasted on you.
You use your eyes to cast disapproving looks.
You use your tongue to degrade and denigrate.
And worst of all, you use your dirty hands
to reach into pockets,
thinking happiness is found
in coins.
But happiness is the bird
that will never fly near you,
because it knows your desire to cage it—
like you do with everything else.
You cage love so two men can’t share it.
You cage hope because you can’t stand faith.
And you cage God so people think darkness
is all there is.
But the only thing you’ve successfully caged
is your petty mind.
I need you to know one thing:
There will never be a cage to confine
our light!
We, here, we are free.
Free to dream.
Free to love.
And free to be
who we want to be.”
A PART OF US
February 4, 2021
“A part of us remains
Kamand Kojouri
when we leave somewhere.
It is a part we can never reclaim
even if we revisit the place,
for it was never ours to begin with.
There is so little of us
that belongs to ourselves.
This body is the earth’s.
This heart is yours,
and hers, and theirs.
The only thing that is our own
is our freedom of will—
the freedom to choose
our perceptions in life.
All else is borrowed.
All else is everyone else’s.”
My World
February 4, 2021
“My world is full of beauty,
Kamand Kojouri
but you avert your eyes.
My world is full of light,
but you only worship the dark.
My world is filled with song,
but you exalt silence.
My world is filled with delight,
but you cut throats that ring with laughter.
My world is adorned with exquisite art,
but you smash sculptures,
destroying ancient civilisations.
In my world,
people rejoice with one another
and share each other’s burdens,
but you only preach vanity and greed.
What do you know of courage?
What do you know of resilience?
My world is so vast,
it welcomes even you—
for your drop of hatred
will always be absolved
in our ocean of love.”
SITTING IN THE COURTYARD
January 28, 2021
“Sitting in the courtyard,
Kamand Kojouri
I watch the woman sweeping.
I luxuriate in the sound
of the bristles of her besom
against the ground. She sweeps
in an invisible pattern only she
understands. I study her hands.
They are blackened with chimney dust—
not unlike the soft dust she’s now sweeping.
It rises in a cloud above her, which makes me
wonder: Where does it come from?
The dust on our overworked hands and travelled
shoes. The dust we inhale and cough
into our handkerchiefs.
The house dust, the road dust, the concrete dust,
and cosmic dust. Where are they born?
Perhaps they come from our aged bodies.
We shed our skins like we shed our beauty—
not all at once.
And we walk freely on this blanket of dust
without paying any mind to our ancestors,
though we walk on them! Tread softly,
for you tread on Yeats’s wrists and Poe’s
elbows. You tread on van Gogh’s ears
and Keller’s eyes. You breathe
in your grandfather’s lover and the little girl
you were when you were four. You smell them
after the first rain in a long dry spell,
or when an old lamp smoulders the bulb quite well.
These all serve as reminders
of our dusty secret:
we are all dust
under
dust under
dust.
So next time it settles,
remember to ask the dust!”
October 14, 2020
“What a terrifyingly beautiful thought
that you are the beginning of forever.
I love you, and life for me
has just begun.”—Kamand Kojouri
Kamand Kojouri 