Monday, June 9, 2008

Of Death, Love and Starvation

I found him in a cradboard box
down in the barrio
The stinch of death
the feel of subordination
the look of a scarecrow

we fell in love
made love under the bridge
had fried rat for dinner
fell asleep in the arms of destiney
in the sewage
under the stars

we shared our daily bread
and morning dose of cocaine
who cares about the living or the dead
in this city of eternal pain

hold my hand
cut my vein
let me bleed on the sidewalk
where we slept under the rain

lose hope in this life
for we have another
we slit out wrists
doze off into reincarnation
we are creatures of the night
without a law or a name
we don't apologize
we have no shame

we are the rats we fry
the bats that on our blood feed
the rabid dogs howling our cry
we are the ghosts and the evil seed

If we were only dead
we would live endless nights
making love on rooftops and graveyards
smoking our dope
dying with every sunset
without a care or hope
or a peice of bread

Sunday, June 8, 2008

The Underwear Act

Once upon a time there lived a community of fishermen in the coastal city of Mosquito. The simple people did not have much contact with the rest of the country, and went about their daily business of living without a worry about change and technology.

After the governor fleed the country to live in a remote paradise island with his swiss-bank money, a new governer was appointed, who later appointed new municipals in all the cities of the governorate, including Mosquito.

The munucipal came from the northern mountains, and was not familiar with the lifestyle of the simple fishermen, but he was pleased with their dedication and love for peace.

One day, a fisherman walked into the municipality office to report a stolen boat. As the municipal recieved him in his office, the man walked in and before talking, wanted to tighten his loosening sarung. Before the fisherman wrapped his sarung tightly, he opened it revealing his manhood to the municipal and his assistant.

The municipal was outraged; how can anyone not have any shame and not wear any underpants??

His assitant explained to him that no one in Mosquito wore undergarments due to the extremely hot and humid weather. The municipal was even more upset and disgusted by the backwardness and indecency of the fishermen. That very night, he drafted a bill making underwear a citizenship requirement.

The next morning, the bill was introduced to the local council, whose members took offense at the inexplicable act of not wearing underpants. In a week, a law was instituted which required every citizen of Mosquito and the whole governorate to wear undergarments regardless of the weather, and put in place a 50-day imprisonment as a punishment for the inobedient of this law.

This is how Mosquito came to be the largest producer of undergarments in the country, after the fishermen stopped making fishing nets and worked to supply the great demand for underwear.

A Man's World

It makes me pretty sad and pissed off about the results of the primaries .
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Obama, he seems to be a decent guy, although i don't really believe he is all the change people assume he is. But anyway, since the beginning, as everyone was so worried that Obama will not be regarded as the democratic candidate because of his lack of experience, I was 100% sure that Hillary was not going anywhere with her campaign. You wanna guess why? well, if you know how the US is, you would definately figure out that it is still a man's world there as much as it is in other countries that have never had a female president. There are many people who believe a woman would do an even better job in the oval office, but they are a minority. The "American Idiot" was not made up by Green Day, these people exist. And even if some people are racist, trust me, their sexism and machismo is bigger, and they would rather vota for a man of any race, even if he is of Afghani/Saudi origin with a last name that starts with "Bin" instead of voting for a woman.
The world truely sucks. And even though I am not a huge fan of Clinton herself, because I see the US government as a big company in which the CEO does nto make the calls, but the board of directors, and policies do not change that much anyway, but I wanted to see a woman doing what she was told she can't do.
People did not vote based on experience or quality of the candidate's character. they did not evaluate these two candidates based on their political vigor and leadership skills. They thought about whether it would be better to have a black president, or a female president. And between people's racism and sexism, one was more intense than the other. In reality, people did not care Obama is black, nor that he had Muslim origins, all they cared about was that he has a dick...simple as that.
This election year is a shame on human kind, and really, a shame on the US, for failing to be like the states that accepted females as leaders. Third world countries like Indonesia, Phillipines, India, Pakistan, and the list goes on.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

For Your Own Good

I shall sit on this chair
and tell you what to do
for your own good
force a gag into your mouth
wrap you in a plastic bag

throw you in the dunjeon
feed you to the wolves
maim your children
rape you once and again
to keep you safe

I am forced to
enslave you
sell your kidney
auction your soul
hang your mother
to protect your property

for world peace
i have to skin u alive
i have to shut you up
brainwash you
drug you
invade your home
terminate your kind

For your own good
I will submiss you
send your newborn to war
torture your wife
burn your harvest
take away your rain

To better your life
I pollute your river
to encourage competition
I tax your air
step on your lung
drink your blood

To free you
i kill you
i kill you
i kill all of you

you don't have to thank me
I do this
because I care
it's for your own good
and mine

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

A Thousand Times

A thousand times she had risen
with the sun
Baking the bread of the day
Making lunch for a thousand guests
Washing clothes of a thousand children
she had once borne
Vacuuming a thousand steps
Falling down the stairs
under a thousand stars
A thousand times she had cried
in front of the mirror
Looking at her face
of a thousand wrinkles
Broken soul
Injured heart
Bruised body
Under a thousand layers
of blackness
Lost years
Twenty that felt like a thousand
A thousand times she had prayed for her husband
to never come back
to marry a thousand wives
And for herself
to never have another child
Another bruise
Another chore
Another world to carryon her weary shoulders
Another thousand worries and oven burns
A thousand times they’d say
She died young
That woman of twenty years
and a thousand smiles
and a thousand tears
and a thousand children
and a thousand bruises
and cooking pots
and wrinkles
Twenty years
they say she had lived
but they don’t know
that she was
a thousand years

*a poem I once published.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Artist Dilemma

Art has always been an important form of self-expression for me. I am mostly talented when I am deeply depressed or outrageously angry. I feel very inspired to make the best art when I am in a dark place, and my best works are those I made under the influence of hallucination and inner turmoil. I do believe that you gotta be twisted to make real art.
These beliefs are the main reason why I only experimented with traditional art only for a very short time, to soon abandon it for abstract and surreal forms, which enabled me to truly "become free."
For the long time i was a closet artist, I kept giving birth to work with twisted ideas and a strong pessimist influence. I felt my heart truly came out onto the paper/canvas, and I really did not care for anything else but the story my work told. I would start with no idea whatsoever about what the drawing will turn out to be, and I just let shapes form and lead me to complete the work; it was their story, not mine, and I was only the means to tell it.
After I opened up, learned more forms of art, and was encouraged to not only feel like an artist, but express that in public, with all the wonderful inner glow and booste of confidence that provided, I felt pressured to make art that attracted people instead of art that pleased my soul.
Displaying my work to enter exhibitions forced me to selected "themes" for drawings to fit the popular demand. The even bigger pressure was financial; needing to make money out of art. I feel as though I am betraying my art identity, and denying those shapes and ideas the chance to tell their story through me.
This has caused a lack of inspiration and I fell into a non-productive spell and ill humor. It seems as though art is angry at me and wouldn't tell me any stories to put onto my paper. I have no talent without my deformed faces, twisted ideas, and anger towards the world.
This got me thinking, would I ever be able to make a living out of art?

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Trapped in Vagina

I am currently in a part of the world in which women cover. You see these unrecognizable blobs of black and wonder how anyone can tell who they are or what they are. How the hell do their kids know which one is their mom?
In this culture, women supposedly cover like that to prevent being seen as sex objects, and out of decency. Nevertheless, you see these women constantly harassed on ths streets by men of all ages and often groped and sexually attacked. And something I noticed is that the more covered up a woman is, the more harrassed she is. So how is this cover NOT making her a sexual object?
My theory is that in any patriarchal society, a woman , no matter how much she covers and tries to hide her womanhood, is automatically seen not as a whole being, but as her reproductive organ. Women are not seen as people with brains that create and hands that make, but as vaginas that exist for sex and reproduction.
Therefore, anything that makes a woman recognizable as a woman will therefore make her seen as a sexual object. Can a woman really hide being a woman? If she covers her face to hide the delicate features, baggy clothes to hide the buldge of her breasts, black wardrbe to hide her curves, or a scarf to hide her hair, can she really hide what makes her a woman? Doesn't the black really define who these women are and make them recognizable as women?
There has been a fundamentalist movement in this region to force women into covering more and more based on the above-mentioned argument that the current clothes do not hide enough. And the more these women cover, the more they are asked to cover more, and the more they are harrassed on the streets and seen as walking vaginas.
These women, no matter how they act, what the accomplish, how they carry themselves, and no matter what they wear, are always seen as sexual objects; they are trapped in a prison that is their vaginas. They can become government officials, soldiers, intellectuals, artists, or anything else, but they are not seen as who they are or what they do, and they are stll defined as a hole made for the pleasure of men and for bearing children.
If these women cannot satisfy their societies with being respectful members of the community, covering up, and also fullfil their duties in the bedroom all at the same time, then what the hell can they do? I have a simple solution.
The only way these women would not be seen as sexual objects in these communities is to figure out a magical/scientific way to remove their vaginas and leave them at home for the time they are to be used. Maybe even for those who do not wish to use them, get a "vaginectomy" and get rid of it once and for all.
Let's assume this is possible. Do you really think these women will stop being treated like peices of meat, like sexual objects that exist for sin, or will allow them to be fully functional and respected members of society?
The reality is, the vagina is not the prison for these women; their backward, sexist, authoritarian and patriarchal societies are. Hiding who they are and what makes them women will not free them, but will add shackles to those already pulling them to the ground.