VidaKashizadeh

Watching the words
Blind words
Dumb words
I taste them
They burn the tip of my tongue.

Shall I venture?
Will I
Could I
Could I not?
I made a poem last night
Half asleep
I forgot or got for
This is the substitute
The saccharin
You watch me
With your beautiful eyes
And renounce their beauty
With the ugliness of your
mouth.

The words that slap me
The words that straighten
my life.
All those sentences
Like bars of a cage
Put me into place
They c losed on me
At first I was well behaved
Then I was suffocated
And reborn with rage.

How long would I need
To make a tongue
My mother’s?
I need a mother tongue
Which is heard

I want to watch the words
Make love
And watch new meanings
At their birth
I want to watch them contract in pain
and call it labour.
Breath is after all
The mother of words.

I breathe hoping
To give birth
I breathe to rebear
my tongue
I blow
Hoping for blossoms
of words
flying out of my mouth
I am hoping
I will breathe out
An expression
Which will make you
see me
I am putting the words
On top of each other
To make a pyramid
So that you
With your child’s eyes
Will perceive my anc ient heart.

* * *

Come soon
Don’t let me wait long
Did I miss the point
Did I injure your heart?
You gave me the wrong
words
And I grilled them
charcoal hard.
It is as if we had no
ears
Just tongues

* * *

Of all these words
We haven’t got
One in common
You smile
I c lench my teeth
I laugh
You scream

The rhythms repeat themselves
So does fashion
And
Identity
Hangs in the air
Like a spider
To build a net
When knowledge is trapped
in your head
When you think you know
yourself and the knowable
vacuum hits
You spit your science
- my friend – upwards

The earth is gasping
And the spider starts to swing again
From a decade
To another
You repeat yourself
In a different way.
There is no historical dialectics
It is crap swinging
* * *

When you kiss the words you blow
I snap them in the air
It makes me think of
the last fireworks
of the GLC
It was rage spent
Cracking
And blooming
A dreamt of
Sun
Melting gloomily

The arthritic beauty
Of the building
Lying beside Thames
Half asleep
Dreaming of the past
And avoiding the future
She hates Big Ben
For trying
To wake her up.

Whenever wherever you cross that bridge
You hang between
Time and space
Separated
You hang between
Somewhere and sometime
* * *

Cracking the words
Words that crack
Words that crack you
Words that bring you up
Words that make you grow
Words that make you tiny tiny tiny tiny
Words that smash each other
Those that make you love
And learn to hate
Hacking words
Hackneyed words
Those on carriage
Fatigued words
Those that say nothing
Going round and round and round the point
Those that delight
But we are not sure why.
Words that are like vomit
Showing
Poverty of mind
Beautiful words
Which are nasty
Ugly words
Which are alright.

Words which bring punishment
Talents get crushed
First it was the sound
Then the word for GOD
First it was the whistle
Then the chase for sound
* * *

I fear to stop
What if it never happens again?
Or I feel I am somewhere
Not located on my inner map
Will I find this place again
If I left it now
I am galloping
In a small space
I should be tiptoeing
Gazing at things
detailed
Or not give a damn
If I ever find it again
* * *

I once loved someone
Who had no mouth
When I made love to him
Words turned to little stars
Sparkling from his head.
He was my dumb lover
With no body to spare
He was my imagined poet
Who had no words
I chose him as my muse
But also teacher
That’s why I became dumb
For so many years.
* * *

I have got a baby
Who hasn’t grown well
Now she is ready
To go back to my womb
To grow whole and be reborn

We are going to start again
This time
My baby
Is not going to stop again.

Grow baby grow
Blow baby blow
Let the words nourish you
Let the words be the water around you
Let the words flow through your navel
Let them touch your heart
Let them make you kick
Let them flick
Let the words turn to breasts
Feed you
Then wean you
Let them spoon your food
Let them help you walk.
Let them love you baby
Most of all let them love you.

Grow baby grow
Blow baby blow
The WORDS.

Vida Kashizadeh
7th February 1995