“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 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,
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!”
“What a terrifyingly beautiful thought
that you are the beginning of forever.
I love you, and life for me
has just begun.”—Kamand Kojouri
“In life, there are brief and momentary opportunities that ask us to assert our existence. Although a creative impulse, they can be destructive, because they make us veer away from our normal patterns and habits. Life is compelling us to take these small acts of rebellion so we can go beyond the edges of ourselves, and by doing so, we end up rediscovering ourselves. These moments are a great reminder that, like all other animals, we are, and will always be, wild.”
—Kamand Kojouri
Total number of trees planted to date: 1,920.
I wrote my first haiku in honour of #GeorgeFloyd. Inspired by the beautiful poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar & Dr Maya Angelou. Also, the iris plant is named after the goddess of rainbow, referring to the “wide variety of flower colours found among the species.”
#BlackLivesMatter 
“Spring irises bloom.
The caged bird no longer sings—
a knee on his throat.”
—Kamand Kojouri
I had such a lovely time chatting with the award-winning journalist, Emily Buchanan, about my new poetry book, God, Does Humanity Exist?
I know I sound very serious and sombre, but her voice immediately put me at ease.
Click this link to listen to the interview (Starts 38:42 mins in):
Thank you to Pippa Quelch for the wonderful introduction and chat. It was so lovely to speak to her about my new poetry book, God, Does Humanity Exist?
Click this link to listen to the interview on the Mid-Morning programme (Starts 1hr 37 mins in)
“It is a strange time, my dear.
A novel virus haunts our streets.
Days feel like weeks,
weeks like months.
We’re blasted with new news every second—
yes and then no and then yes and no,
feeding our primal panic
to hoard goods and leave shelves
breadless, riceless.
They tell us the pandemic
makes all equal—the poor and very rich—
then why are the poor poorer
and the rich profiting?It is a strange time, my dear.
Army men are marching our streets.
They force us to stay inside,
threaten and arrest
for a walk in the park.
They wage small wars against us,
but this battle began long ago.
The elite technocrats are crowing
in their silicone valleys
as corporations grow
and small businesses fold
with mountains of debt—
the centre cannot, will not, hold!It is a strange time, my dear.
Mainstream media reports
the world has never been safer
as they terrorise the chambers
of our minds.
This stress, this anxiety
is killing our immunity.
But we must do it all for the elderly—
or so they say!
When have they ever cared for our elders?
When have they ever cared for our vulnerable?
We go to bed dreaming of toilet paper
while they dismantle the world economy.
Family businesses go bust
all so we can protect the people,
but only the people are suffering!
At the end of this, those retired
will have peanuts for pensions.
They are stripping us of everything
whilst our eyes are fixed on our screens.
And how dare we say it’s a strange time
when
in seven months
we’ll make America
great again.”―
Kamand Kojouri 