Rain and Embers Read online

  Rain and

  Embers

  Rain and

  Embers

  Ali Nuri

  Rain and Embers. Copyright © 2019 Ali Nuri

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States of America No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  Ali Nuri asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Ali Nuri has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks, and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

  ali-nuri.com

  LCCN: 2019911021

  ISBN 978-0-578-55554-6

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-578-55149-4

  Hardcover ISBN 978-0-578-55900-1

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Edited by Elizabeth Catura

  Book Design by Emir Orucevic

  For Jeffar

  autism does not define you

  nor do mute reflections

  render you speechless

  you spoke in smiles,

  the only words

  worth hearing

  Contents

  To Be a Murmur

  The Undesirables

  Cultural Chimera

  Scorched Earth

  The Devil’s Music

  Wisdom

  Sumerian Wings

  Eve and Her Mother

  Ode to Your Wings

  Fantasia

  Ouroboros

  Cartography

  Dualities in Clay

  Dead Matter

  Visions of Eminence

  White Shroud

  Pantone 448 C

  Hide and Seek

  The Mirage of a Forest in the Ruins

  Ballerina—

  Blue Doors of Elysium

  Say it Slowly

  Between the Chambers of Dyslexia and Dyspraxia

  Dead Language

  Arabian Ink

  Rain and Embers

  بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

  Giver of Divinity

  Rot

  Holy Waters

  Gravity

  Man-Eater in the Mirror

  Namesake

  The Father of Dust

  Descendants of Ali

  Forced Pilgrimage

  Salt Garden

  Icy Puzzles

  The Void and its Siren

  Minerva

  (req·ui·em)

  Inspiration

  Icarian Sea

  I Only Found Three-Leaf Clovers

  Cradling Stress

  Casket of the Damned

  Log # 435

  Crusade

  Linear

  Stubborn

  Sin City Pilgrimage

  Metrophobia

  Deceitful Visions

  Treachery Through Time

  White Noise

  Necropolis of the Sun

  Nearing Nirvana

  Gratitude to Joy

  May Artemisia Bloom

  Tomorrow

  East and West

  Ishmael’s Monomania

  Dredge

  Currents

  Misplaced Sapling

  Between Roots and Ash

  Sailing to Pacify the Storm

  Urban Jungle

  Racism

  Not an Immigrant

  Almost Human

  Nasir

  I’m Looking Up

  Human Connection

  Isolation

  Earthly Sickness

  Obsolete Letters

  Hush

  Canvas

  Muse

  Devotions

  California Daydreams

  Kaity

  Chrysalis

  Snow White Butterfly

  Dawn

  Mornings

  Selene

  Iris

  Regrets of a Life Not Lived

  The Window of Longing

  Grow Ancient

  Spider

  Waiting Between the Pauses

  I Do

  The Breath of Love—

  The Shape of Absence

  Your Air is So Familiar

  Sophia

  Fan to Sea

  Log # 666

  The Feather of Truth

  Love as Adulation

  Biblical

  Embers of Babel

  Humanity’s First Sin

  Cli·ché

  Carbon is Poison

  Questions

  I Let a Fifth in Today

  Sigmund Freud

  Baptized in Tears

  Faith

  Feelings

  Georgia

  Oscillation

  Senseless Decades

  Poker Face

  White America

  Lessons Learned on the Hill

  —already forgotten

  Earthly Inheritance

  Rusted Robot

  Silence

  Goodness

  Ra

  Pegasus Folds Blank Sheets

  Tautology

  Inner Beauty

  Euphoric Efflorescence

  No Other

  Ablaze

  Scarlet Horizon

  Madness

  Obscene Obesity

  A Letter to a Thousand Faces

  I Hear a Whale’s Song

  Static—

  October

  Relative

  Miscommunication

  Between the Bloodlines

  Clockwork Asylum

  Log #1

  Log #2

  Insomniac

  Just the Echoes Remain

  The Conjuring

  Naïve

  Twilight in Lions

  Night and Day

  The Promise

  —Your Name

  Naked Art

  Atlantis

  One Step at a Time

  Euphoria

  Someday’s Dream

  Heart-Shaped Nostalgia

  كُنْ كَالزّهرة

  التي تُعطي عِطرَها ،

  حتّى لليَد التي تَسحقُها

  —الإمام علي بن أبّي طالب

  be like a flower

  that gifts its fragrance

  to the hand that crushes it

  Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib

  To Be a Murmur

  I hid my voice

  it sounded wrong

  the way it said my name

  I hid my voice

  they said not to speak

  in the native tongue of my mother

  I hid my voice

  not all tyranny

  is the same

  I hid my voice

  they told me not to say such lies

  that the Holocaust had long since gone

  that they've learned much since then

  I hid my voice

  it gave life to atrocities

  in distant lands—

  in camps torched to ash

  I hid my voice

  it only sang of s
orrow

  and sadness had no place

  I hid my voice

  it dared to make me human

  if they had only wanted to listen

  I hid my voice

  but I haven’t forgotten how to move my mouth

  to form the words that weigh heavily on my chest

  The Undesirables

  نور الف شمس

  بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

  ربي ارحمني لأنهم لا يرحمون

  though my lips are dry,

  the taste of alcohol still lingers

  forgive me, ancestors

  for I had thought them waters of divinity—

  gods and deliverance found in the bottom of bottles

  but I'm still sober with horror

  please grant me the serenity

  to begin on the right side

  of where I had been left

  born to shifting sands,

  I am a flower without roots

  learning to bloom in the wind

  carried across sun-kissed deserts,

  a king exiled from paradise

  I wore my father's sins

  how dare he stand as a pacifist

  without a choice

  rising to fight against

  Saddam's tyranny,

  evil’s ugly face

  though the Iraqi Shi’a lost three revolutions

  time couldn't age them, restless they never became

  fear couldn't silence what pride couldn't tame

  though it coursed through their veins

  lions without a kingdom

  nomads without a home

  Roma reborn—

  riches to rags

  to stitched-together tents

  made of trash

  the wealth of refugees

  can't be measured

  in what was left to burn

  in unholy flames—

  towers of Babel

  scorched Babylon

  but napalm couldn't torch

  a righteous wisdom

  passed through the centuries

  lingering inside unwavering DNA—

  the swelling voice of Imam Hussain

  Shi’a refusing to bury belief,

  to find solace in safety,

  to drown salvation

  in unjustified peace

  our ancestors

  from nearly 1400 years ago

  marched from the ancient past

  to stand by our side, not to fight a hopeless war

  but to continue a struggle against hate

  monsters masquerading as kin

  demons preaching torture—

  the mutilation of innocence

  in hands not meant to hold

  anything

  except for a plea

  asking for redemption,

  humanity's absolution

  Cultural Chimera

  I have two names

  speak two languages

  a refugee

  of two places

  struggling with being

  the wrong ethnicity

  twice over—

  in the eyes of my roots

  and where I am asked

  to bury them

  torn

  between east and west

  sun and moon

  an eclipse

  that doesn't get to witness

  the magic of its being

  resisting against the image

  of supposed impossibility,

  delaying its birth furthermore

  the unity of two

  without conflict

  an omen

  that even in darkness

  miracles are born

  Scorched Earth

  I found your redemption

  in the love you have for her

  your daughter,

  my sister

  half my blood

  but the whole of me

  and yet I never forgot the red glow,

  the way you made grey metal

  burn bright with anger,

  the way it seared my skin—

  the incineration of my innocence

  no, I never forgot the pain

  felt in the short seven years

  leading up to then—

  still feel somehow

  nearly three decades in

  I’m sorry—

  I want to try

  and remember

  only your smile

  to keep only

  your faith in me

  and bear witness

  to the father you are

  in her eyes

  The Devil’s Music

  in eyes,

  I saw how an iris

  comes to resemble a nebula

  the patterns like sonnets—

  a universe from darkness,

  shadows into life

  the color of green

  when only ever witnessed

  were blues

  Wisdom

  green grass

  as vast as a blue sea

  yet 'neath the soil

  the stench of decomposition

  reeks

  the color stained

  a dirty brown

  maggots, worms, and centipedes—

  a thousand ghoulish creatures

  gorging themselves

  on dead flesh

  the withered and discarded

  remnants of a life

  that only ate

  light

  Sumerian Wings

  eyes rise and fall,

  bidding farewell

  to forgotten ruins—

  an almost towering city

  now resting only in memories

  yet somehow still perched

  between two rivers

  Babylon offended ancient Mesopotamian gods

  upon reaching to repaint a moonlit indigo sky

  wishing to dress the heavens with beautiful vivid petals—

  fragile flowers meant to be worn as colorful dresses

  hanging elegantly on the curves

  of fiery, radiant, naked stars

  newfound Eden withered away

  becoming lost to time

  twice now

  humanity has been exiled

  from promised paradise,

  a third when a refugee fled the garden

  attempting to escape a serpent

  clothed in the skin of a tyrant

  a reflection peers

  from within salted waters—

  reminiscence of home

  a Tigris leaps

  on another beast

  branded Euphrates

  they still run

  on a yellow

  wasteland

  my desert-colored skin

  Eve and Her Mother

  beautiful

  childless

  desert

  and a flower is born

  humanity, too, follows suit

  a silent womb no more

  birthed from

  her or him

  earth or god

  no matter the architect

  be it mother or father—

  the womb

  should have been

  a tomb

  she is much older now,

  older than her age

  he dies a myth,

  an absent father

  watch them wither away

  into dirt

  into dust

  into sand

  Ode to Your Wings

  dear you,

  flying out of sight,

  too close to the sun,

  you who did not burn

  orchestra in remorse—

  the song of a butterfly

  between two fragile wings

  I hope that when we fade

  our secrets stay with us,

  stay with us in the grave

  hidden away beneath the dirt,

  beneath our lungs, buri
ed deep

  within the earth

  let time make them ancient,

  let them rot with the passing of years

  for the truth is not meant to be shared—

  people will always be strangers

  even if we've made them a home

  within our souls

  I'm afraid of waking up

  to a world where you see

  and I am not what you saw

  Fantasia

  I close my eyes

  and the dream

  begins anew

  they're all there too

  every human soul

  just as they were before

  yet even in this place

  beyond the reach of time

  beyond the scope of space

  they remain broken

  tiny voices in the dark

  shadows in the light

  symphonies

  without an audience

  a stage, a sound

  Ouroboros

  I seek simplicity—

  hungry for creativity,

  just asking for a little originality

  such a cliché age

  recycled lines

  repeated phrases

  reiterated existences

  I’ve become a half-starved writer,

  a gluttonous man of letters,

  devouring every poet

  trying to feed an

  insatiable hunger

  craving adventure

  yet can't afford

  to move an inch

  somebody free my mind

  from these unanswerable questions

  help me discover the echoes