These are a series of poems written in honor of Cal's Sentient City contest. You can read them independently, but they're meant to flow together and have some kind of meaning as a whole.
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(1)
kabul khanoum, where is your mama?
I cried for you when the bombs came down, &
I cried for you when the sun came up.
when I came out to play, the alley was empty,
with dust where the children used to be.
the women wear scars for shawls and
the men wear veins for sleeves. pipes laid bare,
skin laid bare—a calamity of cells.
when I saw you last there were claw marks in your arms.
there are men in your streets
and widows in your bedrooms--
kabul khanoum, where have you gone?
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(2)
bismillahir rahmanir raheem
a’udlu minash shaitanir rajeem
I hear shaitan sleeps beneath these streets
and pretty girls are what he eats.
I hear he likes the virgins best--
to take the soul and leave the rest.
(bones—
he’s picked them clean. what’s left
is a rotted cage for miscellany;
for the parts no one was supposed to have anyway.
veins—
he’s sucked them dry. if there was ever
a drop of water on desert sand, so there
would be a drop of life in your brittle arteries.)
Daughters, daughters, listen in—
for shaitan knows all kinds of sin.
and if he sees your lovely face,
it’s your pride he’ll soon erase.
sister, did he take your voice from you?
or is this silence your beauty anew?
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* khanoum: a Persian diminutive; like a Japanese "chan".
* "bismillahir...": "in the name of God, the benevolent, the Merciful, protect us from Satan."
Note: Radio Shariat is the government radio station of the Taliban. During the Talib occupation, it was the only radio station in all of Afghanistan.
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