2 poems 🤠

wanna read some new poems by me?

i wanted to share my poems on my substack because i’ve been enjoying this way of working through my feelings, this way of sharing with a larger audience, this way of expressing myself, this way of grieving, this way of feeling excited. i remember not to put my whole life into the poem and then everything starts addressing the “you”. make of it what you will. are you you?

then i thought, if i publish them here, no magazine will take them. i won’t get paid. but i don’t care about money (positive) i care about getting to eat. but for real, i don’t think someone paying me 50$ for a poem is going to make or break my bank account. maybe i’m delusional, since I don’t have much money, but money has never been a concern for me. not because it hasn’t been an issue. but because i never wanted to learn how to get “better” at money. i don’t care. money comes, money goes. my sister tries to explain saving accounts vs TFSAs vs RRSPs and i blank. i tell her, say this to me when i’m not high. i say, i might not get it even if i’m sober. i say, it’s going through my head, in one ear and out the other and not even activating any of my brain cells. it’s calm in there. a calm hiding the fear of poverty? maybe. the fear of poetry? bad joke!!!!! but i’m not delusional. i know that people will house me if i lose my apartment, friends will feed me if i must be fed (and i must). i don’t worry, partly, because i have a robust network of people in my life who will support me if i need it. but i’m also fiercely independent. i’ll tell you i don’t need it most of the time. but sometimes, as felix, lee, shae, remind me sometimes, as my therapist and my sister kris, and the world reminds me, i need help and guess what……? that’s….. OKAY!!!!!

hell yeah.

so here are my poems. i will be reading them tonight in montreal @ 8pm @ sala rosa if you wanna swing by.

buy me a drink if you want after reading them. especially if its at the reading ;)

___

poem #1

excerpt from grief diaries:

1)

i have to let life rush in.

i have to execute my shame. my guilt. the french guillotine sure is looking shiny, sure is looking pretty.

i polish her. keep her sharp, keep her ready.

should i kill my darling because there she is.

is she a darling or not? does she sound good enough to your ear to dare be

a “darling”                       does she deserve praise                                judgment?

the darling can’t be themself                            the darling must prance                      

the darling must speak

what if the darling is tired?

is the darling tall? is she weak?

what if she no longer wishes to fawn?

                                                what if he jumped out of the bushes screaming                       would you still want him to speak?

my sister says, i think that’s part of it for you as a poet, you know, you’ve got to externalise it// she says, eli eli look at me, who even needs AI when i can do this? // she gets it// she says i’m starting grief studies classes tomorrow and even though we haven’t talked on the phone in months//i too am starting my own grief studies//in my own way//cause look look, i am writing this book.

2)

i left the grief rush in.

my pillow is stained with tears and the grease from my hair follicles.

when i was 13, my dad bought dozens of chickens, expecting my sister and i to help kill them. i didn’t want to kill them. one day, he says to me, help me out. he’s holding a chicken above an empty barrrel. he passes it to me, says, the guy at the feed shop said the most humane way to kill them is with a nail through the throat, goes right up into their brain. no pain, they die instantly! before i can ask my dad if he has seen this method, he’s got a nail in the chicken’s throat and it won’t stop squirming, sending out distress calls the other chickens in the coop can hear

i screamed kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it as blood leaks from the flailing chicken into the large barrel below, blood pools on my hands.

kill it kill it kill it kill it

he takes the chicken out of my hands finally and rings its neck. it keeps moving until it stops, eventually its nerves offline. i don’t eat any of the chickens but spend hours in the shed, plucking their feathers.

the oil from their feather follicles looks like a doodeh, i tell kris.

i missed you, she says

when i was sleeping

i didn’t have a dream about you

i didn’t have a dream

i make the song up and we sing it together

3)

i tell yousra that I am going to put her in a poem and she says, الحمد لله. dreams do really come true if you’re patient. one should never give up hope.

we try to teach wai-yant how to say الحمد لله in the airport. chris says, i don’t know that we should be screaming in Arabic, here of all places. i tell yousra i really want to scream the word bomb. on the plane, i snore and yousra records it, so i can’t deny it happened when i wake up. chris and wai-yant can also hear it, sitting behind us, though chris says, “at first, I thought it was just the plane sounds.”

wai-yant doesn’t say الحمد لله but this would have been the perfect moment.

4)

we lived with a lot of secrets. that shit eats you alive.

hungry hungry hippo but the hunger never stops.

i felt like i had experienced an exorcism and then i got so hungry.

it was that guttural shit. that nasty goopy stuff. it hurt. it hurt like hell.

this might be the closest i’ve gotten to experiencing a miracle.

how lebanese of me, harissa on my lips.

5)

my disability has taught me how to better take care of myself

sometimes I talk about my pain so gently it surprises even me

my therapist, also gentle, is no bullshit

she says you have to trust how you feel

felix says you have to trust how you feel

my sister says you have to trust how you feel

i start to trust myself

little by little

i say good dads don’t do that and wonder how much i’m revealing

6)

the man sitting beside me in the café smells so much like cigarettes

it annoys me

he smells like you

why did he bring you into this café with me

while I’m trying to work

7)

all work and no play makes eli tariq a dull boy.

i play. i laugh. sometimes i think, how would a 13-year-old without anxiety talk to someone they like, and then i try to do that?

noor tells me be brave. she tells me

we are going to be brave.

8)

the snake eats its tail

where did the tail begin? 

or was its mouth the beginning?

i told you that i think beginnings are important

you told me, slow down

9)

i can’t keep living this life if i don’t start making more money off my writing.

my body is falling apart, and i need to make more money off my writing.

i think the epistolary form will never stop being deeply romantic to me.

and dare I say it, erotic?

i have to keep up pretences

i have to keep that in the poem or else I will have lost the battle.

labour is the body of the poem.

labour paid for this laptop and labour typed these fucking words.

art is beautiful and fuck capitalism, but bitch, pay me more than 50$ for my poem, come on!

10)

my sister and yousra fight over a lamp inside my house that they both decided should be theirs. i couldn’t decide who to give it to, so they had to duke it out. i don’t remember who won. i don’t remember who owns the lamp.  

the lamp can’t just be a lamp, can it?

11)

i’ve never not loved my family and sometimes that hurt me

it felt like something left my body, something dead that’s been living inside me

maybe poetry came out

my sister and I talk about coincidences, talk about grief.

we loop back               i tell her,

“you’re my favourite thing about our childhood.”

she says,

this is how it was meant to be, and I believe her.

the survival of the fittest is bullshit

my mom    my sister        and i survived

kicking//screaming

it just looked really different for each of us.

she said:

we need to talk more openly about death

i said secrets have fed us for years

i said can’t you see i need to eat

i start to make my bed one day, throwing all the blankets and pillows on the ground. I wipe crumbs off the bed, tighten the bottom sheet. i make space for myself. i cry. i debate. i scream. i wait.

12)

i remember what i like about the internet//what I like about connection//so I get high with my sister on facetime and things feel like they were always meant to be this way//she tells me you’re my favourite person and i say, i’m sorry I left you even though she doesn’t need to hear it.

+++++++++++++

poem #2

psa: recycling is fake

I step out of my (door)

way, imagine the possibilities that sunlight might concoct

for me. i ride you and the pleasure outweighs

my hyper vigilance. i wonder if you are okay, are you okay? is this

okay? i don’t want to know how you feel if you don’t know

want to tell me how you feel. but this addiction to knowing

plays in the background, my brain running so fast

it doesn’t know how to stop.

we dress like cowboys

so we remember how to play. we dress like cowboys

ironically. it is not colonialism. it is camp. it is gay.

we flit about trying on new ways.

i like when you’re nervous. when you’re soft with me.

if we make everything gay, we can avoid the hard things

in life. i remember when you told me you trying to hold on

to the feeling of kissing me as it leaked through your hands,

and that might be the most erotic text i’ve ever gotten

camp as pretending, camp as an excuse, camp as

the way to wash away the bad feelings. camp like an iced coffee

driving you anxious. camp like fuck me daddy or mommy

and it’s chill. i tell them, “i just want to have my brains fucked out

and then i will truly reach thembo status”. i too am in control of my body.

i too get to decide what i want. every time you smirk,

i notice a little more lightness filling my insides.

______


metonymy press is also fundraising!!!! we need money to print books//pay ourselves//do workshops//print essays//publish cool as hell queer and trans and bipoc lit//it’s vulnerable to ask for help but here we are :) would love if you shared the fundraiser or sent a few $$ if you can afford it.

much love,
eli tareq