The Mark of All Beginnings...

I promised myself that I would stand next to you as you fought your battle. I promised you that all will be good, that I would make it easier, that I would stand beside you till the very last moment, till the very last breath.
And here I sit next to you, watching your breath weaken, your skin turn pale, as your soul fights for its existence. I put my hand in yours and you squeeze it, letting me know that you are still here, telling me that your love for me is what is keeping you. I get up slowly; kiss your lips as my tears fall on your face. You are dying, a graver death than that of cancer. A death with no remedy, with no deliverance promised. The body once perished is relieved off its pains, but the soul is never.
Your tears appear now from under the closed eyelids, and they get mixed up with mine that fell on your face, and I can't take it. Silently I sob, silently I swallow my tears, and silently I kiss you. But you hear me. You feel me as I burn us down to the ground. I wish I could control it, but I cannot. You squeeze my hand some more, and I feel it giving me life. Suddenly I am the one dying, I am the weak one, and you are the one bringing life into my soul. As though the remainders of your fragile spirit are creeping into me, nourishing my agonizing soul.
I start to shiver, and you are as firm as stone. You, lying there in your hospital bed, supporting me while I should be the one supporting you. I cry, and I allow myself to sob aloud, until I hide my face in the side of your pillow. I hear your weak breath, and realize I should calm down, for your sake. I get up, and start my weak attempts to wipe my tears. And then I hug you. I hold on to you for what seems like eternity. And I say goodbye…




I had been looking for years and years for that one person to be able to love. And he came just like a dream come true. I saw in him the one person to break my defences and unlock my heart. I do not think it was love from first sight. It was pre-destined love. Love before sight. I believed myself crazy for falling for him, but crazy I wanted to be, if it meant having him.

I remember counting the hours, and timing my sleep just so I would be able to wake up and find him awake, and talk to him. I'd promised myself never to give my heart so easily, and never to go through unprotected love. But he came to me an intoxicating drug, a disease that took hold of me, never allowing me to breathe. And I was happy.
I was falling in love. And I was surprised, that this time everything was perfect. He was available, he was there, and waiting for me to say the words. Ironically enough, he comes to me, and tells me the words I'd never imagine hearing, or reading but in tragic love stories, and corny cheap movies. He told me he had cancer.

I'd never known someone who had died of cancer, except for my cousin Ali. But it was such a long time ago that I can barely recall it. I think I was about eleven years old, and he was seven. I remember it happened so quickly. One day we were on the beach, both our families, the next he was in the hospital. I remember the grown ups making such a fuss about it although I did not understand why. Everyone went into hospitals. I found nothing strange about that. I also remember them talking about his possibility of being exposed to too much sun. Again I did not realize that Ali's case was crucial.
Then one day my father came waking me up. As always, I pretended not to hear him, for maybe he would go away and I could have more time to sleep. Then he said it: Baba, Ali Mekdad died. I still remember his face as he said it, full of pain. His eyes had cried, I could make that out clearly.
I sprang into my bed. What?
It was all I could say. It felt so strange, so weird. How? He's only seven. How could he have died?
My memory then flashes to the funeral. I saw a lot of people, most of them I did not know. His parents had been divorced, and I'd never seen his father before. I would never, ever forget that scene: Men crying, men including my father. My heart was about to burst, as I felt my throat go sore. I kept the tears in. I fought them out. Ali could not have died, why cry over him then?
Then I remember his mother, my aunt, being carried by two of her sisters, as she cried and screamed in the middle of the street.
'He told me to give his savings to his sister.' She would scream non-stop.
'He told me he wanted a burger once he got out of the hospital. You didn't get your burger Ali. You didn't get your burger ya habibi.'
I couldn't take it anymore. I burst out crying. It isn't fair. Why should I live while he's in that tomb being mourned by all of those who loved him?


At first, conceiving the idea was what I went through the most. I even began to doubt his claims, but I never shared these doubts with him of course. He told me about his battle with Leukaemia that started 8 years ago. How he was able to win once. Giving him 4 years of pleasure, and peace, until very recently the cancerous cells began to reappear. And how the doctors and his parents were doing their best to hide the horrid truth from him, and how he was able to figure it out. And how he had little time left, and how I should not be involved with him. It was too much to conceive in the course of our little conversation we were having, and that began with our admiration to music, and our love for Loreena Mckinnitt. I wished our conversation would have ended there.

I was before making a choice there: either accepting the fact that we were not meant to be, walking away, and saving myself an inevitable heartbreak and thus living in peace; or staying, falling in love with him deeper still, fighting, suffering and watching him die as my heart shredded itself day by day watching him go away. Irony hits again, that I chose the second.

If it has been a normal love story, it would have been the end, or at least the beginning of the end. But when it comes to me and Marc, it was the mark of all beginnings...

Lilly and the Willow

Under the willow she sat
Mourning with her guitar
A sad, sad song came through her lips
Followed by a tear… only one.

The breeze rustled through the willow
An icy chill filled Lily's heart
Brought the tune back to her song
And filled the hollowness inside

Childhood memories,
So bittersweet
Hurting, cold and alone
Lily stroked the cords, in pain they wept
Under the willow,
Lily found her home

The wind then came,
It was Lily's time
One with the wind,
She began to fly
A thousand pieces she split herself
Tiny shards unseen by the eye

Gone away, along a journey
With her guitar
Lily is a flying soul that all forgot
Except the willow who kept her song
Sang it alone, every night
Reminding itself of Lily's heart…

Melancholy of a Lost Boy:

Born from darkness, a starless night my mother, and the bloodshot moon, the father I never knew.

It is me, the forever lost, unnamed and unloved.
Every step I make in search for myself leads me astray, far, far away from home.

I write you what I could not have told you. My pen tells of my pain and delivers the unspoken cries.

These dying lines are the last before my endeavor to find my lost lifeline.

Never cry for my absence, I already found peace in the forgotten track onto which I shall be sailing. I have buried my past under the dust of times and shall only think of what is yet to come. My only wish for the night remains that you shall never taste the pain that I have tasted.
The garden of hope that I've cared for since the day I was born, shall blossom with red flowers, colour of the blood with which I have watered the dying soil. I shall lay my back there, comforted that after the pain, remedy came and my wounds turned into scars that shall be buried under my skin with the passing of years.

When you read my verse, only think of the moments to come for the poet's dream to flourish. Think of his cry for freedom you've ignored for so long, and think of his beaten wings that are craving for emancipation.
I've given my words the tears I fought for years for fear of weakness. Now these words have become the eye with which I shred my pain into pieces.

The world now wants me. It needs me to be just another flying soul in the universal unit. And being wanted has become a thrill I've never known.
Time will tell how I will turn out to be, and I shall embrace the days to come with wide spread wings.

Now you, I wish I did not love you the way I do. For it has become the poison that fills me with guilt. My love for you shall never cease, only the memory shall dim. And the voices inside my head will keep their constant screaming only they will diminish themselves if I ignore them long enough.
There's so much more I wanted to say…
I wish the night would find my heart hidden in its realm…
I shall live no more to shame you…
I am sorry…

She...

She was the canvas onto which I painted
My colorful joys and my days to come
She gave ink to my wounded pen
That wrote the verses of a desperate dreamer.

Will the world ever know, and understand
Without her, the poetry within me is never found?
Will they realize she is the art with which I pronounce myself human?
Hopeful they will, for I leave none to indulge my being.

I leave my masterpieces to glorify her existence
Her non ceasing incandescent beauty
I leave my art to perform its magic
In moving and disrupting emotions of generations to come
To show how much a poet has fallen deeply,
Madly, and completely
Into the grasps of a love he never got over
To show the omnipotent, god-like power of the human heart
In raising the dead, and putting suffering to an end.

You who read these lines learn
That this poet's intention was never to be called upon
Remember not his name, but remember the reason for his verse
Learn that this dreamer sighs as he wishes
An end to his mortified soul.

I say this bitter farewell, with an unshed tear
I am sorry…

The Poet Screams...

His insides lurch,
Agonizing still,
Thunder struck,
And hail fell.
A shard of ice
Pierces through
The hot blooded veins.

And the poet screams!
'Relieve this pain!'
Through the congealed blood
The ice creeps,
Reaches the heart,
And it turns blue
And it hurts like hell,
An icy hell…

And the poet screams!
'This is not me!'
Fire burns
But is it enough?
The fire of love
It is not enough.

So the poet screams!
'I will not be!'
Days come by
And the poet's core
Freezes down
Furthermore
He loves the pain,
He enjoys the ice,
And after years,
He no longer screams
After years,
The poet dreams...