“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

“I try to envisage the passengers
seated in neat rows.
Everyone knows the real risk
is at take-off and landing,
but after an hour delay,
their plane was soaring. Relieved,
they whispered prayers, dreaming
of families and friends at arrival gates
clutching coffee cups and bouquets.
I like to think it was calm,
the plane blanketed by night’s caress.
Cellphones put away,
the cabin lights dimmed,
babies cooing in cots,
and refreshments on their way.
176 hearts beating in one narrow womb.
Closer to the heavens,
I know their journey was short—
earth angels for a while
who were returning home.”

—Kamand Kojouri

ref·u·gee noun: a person who flees for refuge or safety

“We are, each of us, refugees
when we flee from burning buildings
into the arms of our loving families.
When we flee from floods and earthquakes
to sleep on vouchsafed mats in sanctuaries.
We are, each of us, refugees
when we flee from abusive relationships
or shooters in cinemas
and shopping centres.

Sometimes it only takes a day
for our countries to persecute us
because of our race, religion, or opinion.
Sometimes it only takes a minute
for the missiles to rain down
and turn our towns into ruin and destitution.

We are, each of us, refugees
longing for that amniotic tranquillity,
dreaming of freedom and safety
when fences and barbed wires
will spring into walled gardens.

Lebanese, Sudanese, Libyan, and Syrian,
Yemeni, Somali, Palestinian, and Ethiopian,
like our brothers and sisters,
we are, each of us, refugees.
The bombs fell in their cafés and squares
where once poetry, dancing, and laughter prevailed.
Only their olive trees
remember music and merriment now
as their cities wail for departed children
without a funeral.

We are, each of us, refugees.
Don’t let stamped paper tell you any differently.
We have been fleeing for centuries
because to stay means getting bullets in our heads.
Because to stay means being hanged by our necks.
Because to stay means being jailed, raped, and left for dead.

But we can, each of us, serve as one another’s refuge
so they don’t board dinghies
when they can’t swim.
So they don’t climb walls
with snipers aimed at their chest.
So they don’t choose to remain
and be killed instead.

When home turns into hell,
you, too, will run
with tears in your eyes screaming rescue me!
and then you’ll know for certain:
you’ve always been a refugee.”

Kamand Kojouri

“I urge you to listen.
I beg you to pay attention
for these are the most important words
I will ever pen:
Do not succumb to the half-life!
To the indifference and apathy of those cool
and aloof individuals. Nothing affects them,
their lover cries out desperately for affection
but they shrug their shoulders—for they are always shrugging—
and transcend the messy drama of the human situation.
O this transcendental invincibility—I tell you: the shit
of the bull! We are not gods. We are human.
Even Christ chose immanence
so He could feel as the people felt,
suffer as they did.
You must revel in your neuroses,
your sensitivities and sensibilities.
Burn your excitable character, do not extinguish
this fire. Stay within.
Taste the immediacy of living.
Be in life with others.
Do not yield to the hypocrisy
the world demands!
Do not succumb to the shadows,
to the half-light, to the half-life.
We are not gods.
Be human.”

Kamand Kojouri

“I am not separate from you, my neighbour.
If you are my enemy then I am my own enemy.
If you are my friend then I am my own friend.
Today, I have stripped off my masks
and come to know myself.
I am Christian. I am Jew. I am Muslim and Hindu.
I am European and African. Asian and South American.
I am man. I am woman. I am intersexed.
I am homosexual. I am heterosexual and asexual.
I am abled. I am disabled.
I am all these things because you are,
and you are all these things because we are.
I exist in relation to each of you, this is what gives my being meaning.
Why must I label myself like a bottle of wine?
When I am the bottle, the wine, and the drunkenness.
Why must I label myself at all?
When I am the flesh, the light, and the shadow.
When I am the voice, the song, and the echo.
Tell me why I must label myself
when I am the lover, the beloved, and love.
I am not separate from you, my neighbour.
And you are not separate from humanity.
We are all mirrors, reflecting one another in perpetuity.”

Kamand Kojouri

God is not dead—She has forsaken us.
We wipe our angry, hate-filled tears
after another shooting, as a man
polishes his gun outside a mosque.
All those stolen lives—we scream
for justice! But God has quietly left
our temples and churches.
She will not return, for what WE have done
is much worse. We have murdered
humanity.
God has deserted even the devout of us
who save our love and compassion
for those good and righteous, as we abandon the bigots
brimming with hate. Yes, those least deserving
of love, but the most in need of it.
God’s agony rings in our hearts. She wails for the future
shooters. Though we reject them,
God greets these cracked and confused creatures—
the least deserving of compassion but the most in need of it!
These suggestible souls who are susceptible to the systematic vitriol
spilling from cult leaders and politicians, brainwashing them.
We’ve read their spiteful tweets, but when we pass
them in classrooms, in trains and markets, we dismiss
those seemingly small opportunities for kindness.
We don’t know—and how ignorant we are—
that every time we ignore them,
we sharpen our daggers
and stab humanity in its pink raw flesh,
not in dark alleyways. No, we do this openly
in broad daylight, for hating them
shows how loving we are. For condemning
them proves how moral we are.
But every shooting illumines
the failure of our collective duty to love
as God loves, to be compassionate as God
is compassionate.
Your prayers heal, yes,
but for God’s sake, let God be.
I say: First,
resurrect your humanity!”

Kamand Kojouri

“Your whatness
is what we share with you,
our togetherness.
Your thisness
is your separate essence,
your distinctness.
I love you for your whatness,
for the me in you, and the you in us.
I love you for your thisness,
your eternal soul,
deathless and endless.”

Kamand Kojouri

“We are all lost,
so lost, vulnerable and insecure.
We are separated from love at birth,
we are separated from God,
from each other.
All we want,
all we yearn for
is to connect.”

Kamand Kojouri

“Let my silence grow with noise
as pregnant mothers grow with life.
Let my silence permeate these walls
as sunlight permeates a home.

Let the silence rise from unwatered graves
and craters left by bombs.
Let the silence rise from empty bellies
and surge from broken hearts.

The silence of the hidden and forgotten.
The silence of the abused and tortured.
The silence of the persecuted and imprisoned.
The silence of the hanged and massacred.

Loud as all the sounds can be,
let my silence be loud
so the hungry may eat my words
and the poor may wear my words.

Loud as all the sounds can be,
let my silence be loud
so I may resurrect the dead
and give voice to the oppressed.

My silence speaks.”

Kamand Kojouri

They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.
They want us to barricade our doors
and hide our children.
Their aim is to make us fear life itself!

They want us to hate.
They want us to hate the other.
They want us to practice aggression
and perfect antagonism.
Their aim is to divide us all!

They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness.
They want us to burn our love
and bury our hope.
Their aim is to take all our light!

They think their bricked walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.

They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you I bleed.

They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate,
and we will never be silent.
Let life be ours!

 

—Kamand Kojouri