Like rain…
Like rain our friends have fallen, like the sun they will continue to shine, like wind their spirits surround us, this is the time.
Like thunder we warn, like lightning we strike, Like fire we burn, the end is in sight.
We are a mother’s strength, We are a child’s will, We are a family united, we will not be still.
The deception has been broadcast, the wickedness has been seen, the rape has been exposed by the Sea of Green.
Poem by Patty Blake from a recent dream
Our Flesh
Our Flesh
Our flesh was pink and soft and gentle
Our blood was warm, it ran its course
Now our skin screams with million of voices
For what you have done
Our bodies were made for a caress
of warm breeze on a summer night
during a stroll on Azadi square
But now these streets see different signs
The clothes are scattered on the ground
And instead of clothes, our nakedness is covered by the wounds
How can you ever imagine an axe eating your own body
This is not a Hollywood movie
This is me, but this is not my life
The pain oozing from my body is a thread
To the crowds running through grey streets
I think the earth is spitting sand, conjuring veils of dust
in shame at these iniquities
But still the pain is oozing from my very own body
from every single onlooker, from computer screens
and squeezing my very soul out
It needs to get out!
“We must turn this culture inside out”
said Rumi
But he did not mean the gut
Our prison has grown too small
It needs to burst; we need to fly out
Still our incomprehensible flesh fits so perfectly into this world
It sticks, it does not understand departure
It wants to stay a little longer, it wants to feel one more kiss
It touches, it attracts, it can be morphed into anything
and when the clothes are torn off by the vultures
and its nakedness stares into the mirror of reality
We ask, who wrote these folds, who carved these wrinkles,
who sprinkled these spots
The hand of transience has played with our colors
But still its touch was a simple caress
Now our cells speak a new language
That we did not know we had
New kinds of pain, new tunnels of suffering shutting off the brain
Who knew bodies could collapse and fall apart, outside of TV screens
Who know how blood flows, so fast and bright
We will never see red the same again
We will think all those movies stupid
We will try to recollect how was it before the missing pieces
of me and you of us
Before our minds turned into shattered glass,
still flashes of brilliance, but flickering light
But regardless we need to fight
Remember we are still here, we are still alive
It’s just that the wolves gnawed at our hearts
They drank our blood
But we spit them out
By Daku at Coffeehouse at the End of the Universe
Kimber’s Iranlog: Friday Prayer on Twitter!
Friday Prayer on Twitter!
A relatively new twitterer, @Pray4Iran, tweeted an alternative Friday Prayer sermon for #iranelection followers at 12 AM Tehran time today. The whole sermon is published on the Pray For Iran blog which has been visited frequently throughout the day by twittrers who missed it.
The completely non-denominational, sermon was obviously a huge success, and may have had more followers than the “real” Friday Prayer sermon in Tehran, which according to some inside sources gathered only about 200.
That Lump in my throat
Iran: “That Lump in my throat”
Forty days have passed since violence broke out, a blind violence ordered from above and executed from below… [...]
We buried young martyrs, the number of whose days didn’t exceed the number of days of freedom in our land. We lost those who were children of our war, seasoned in the era of patience and perseverance of a people who had, throughout these years, lived with bare minimum so that their tall dreams could animate their future.
Pity, “what did my child have except a green band?” one grieving mother asks, the green that has come to symbolize this post-presidential election movement, “what was he asking for except for his vote?” I remember days when we had time to cry over the body of our dead. I remember those days that we would have grand ceremonies. I remember those days when we would adorn every street corner of this city with the name of brave men and women of this land, so that we wouldn’t forget them.
What’s happening to us? Where are we going? [...]
Today you shed the blood of our children. Today, you return our youngsters to us in bags, mutilated, bruised and disfigured. We are not even to mourn their deaths. Is it against your laws?
Let us cry for them. Let me be present at the farewell ceremony. Let me commiserate with mothers and fathers who have lost their sons and daughters. Let me kiss their foreheads. Let me stand in prayer before their lifeless body… because that lump in my throat hides a swallowed scream that was never allowed to come out when it was only a whisper.
Source: Tehran Avenue (Iran), Op-ed by Ahmad Kamran, July 2009
