مونولوگ

مغز استخوانم
استخوان مغزم
می لرزد
و هیکل مریضم چرا نمی میرد

ناراحتی؟
ناراحتم
ناراحتی؟

نفس که می کشد مثل ماهی باد می کند
نخ و سوزن با هم عشق بازی می کنند
صدایشان را تکّه پارچه می شنود

این کت و شلوار تنگ است
می گویم یخ زدم
منبسط
تنم سنگین و زیر چروک های چشمم چه دنیای پلیدیست

چای کم رنگ
یا پُر رنگ؟

یا اصلاٌ بی رنگ، چه فرقی دارد؟
با این علوفه کسی داغ نشد
مگر دودش کنیم

بیا اصلاٌ من را نگاه کن
و خلوتِ انگشت سبّابه ام را
در خوذ ارضایی با خودکار
و این سوزن ها
این سوزن ها
را نخ کن و لبانم را به هم بدوز.

دسامبر 2008

It wasn’t the coffee, I swear. Maybe the music or the barking dog across the street. But everything shrank and I was a little child screaming for a fair division. Screaming for a permission to sing, to be bare, to be fair, to be ...to be!

Whoever is reading this, you don’t need to sympathize with me. You don’t need to think about what made me the little child that I am always going to be. Carefully swinging on a big black tire hanging from a tree, anticipating death or another manifestation of life, I am still screaming, with a closed mouth; my eyes swell up as tears climb my nostrils with every gasp.

Forget about good or bad friends; forget about dishes and digital cameras. I can hear the atmosphere of Iran, I can taste the gasoline-filled air or the breezy hill-tops of Shemran. Yah, all of this Orientalist, mystical, shit, I feel it. You may not understand, so don’t pity the young aspiring writer /journalist in exile. She’ll go back, to finish screaming for a fair division of rights, land, ideas, the good, and the fucking bad.

It wasn’t the coffee. It happened when I realized that people who experienced the pre-revolutionary Iran, are getting older. I realized it’ll get really difficult in 20 years to know the truth about things, no matter how many 9-min clips there are on YouTube. Because now, all the blood that was shed, all the puppets carved out of infected trees, are silently anchored in some forgotten nightmare that no one wants to remember.

xxx

Kiss the cracks that weave and mingle on the wall
The careful folding of each cause

Sinking in a passerby’s exhale
Escaping through his teeth.


A whispering apex shivers in its disguise
Be further, away, apart,
Leave me
And this deluded sense of smile
Brooding
Dissecting the location of an unnatural suspense

The partial prostitutes hover by, waiting for my signal

And the late-morning seeds irrigate the kitchen floor
Impregnating the memories
of our empty cup-handles holding us.

Rotten apples
exiled in the fridge,

kiss them (don’t) kiss them all.

subway season

There are clammy handprints all over the poles, and every inhale brings in second-hand, rusty air. People’s body temperature gets confused as they sweat under their jackets, and go out on the breezy streets to uncomfortably dry up.They are all hunched back and nervous. Most of them are listening to their ipods, drafting texts and emails on their mega-phones, or doing Sudoku.



I wonder how we used to commute before and what it meant. I picture the adventurous roads we used to discover, and as I close my eyes I imagine that the noisy clash between the metal body of the train and oily rails, is in fact the sound of a horse trotting rhythmically on a stony street.

Then I realize its my stop, and embarrassed from my romantic delusions, I put on my favourite song and swiftly exit.

(insulting) word of the day

frump : (noun) A girl or woman regarded as dull, plain, or unfashionable.

Synonyms: dog

Usage: Her hairstyle had not changed since the early 1970s, and she did little to shed her reputation as a frump.

(n1)

I just burned my hand while pouring tea.
TEA.
Then I put some toothpaste on it and sat down to type my essay.
But I don’t have an essay to type. And that seems to be the only thing that I talk about lately; The fact that I have to write an essay that I don't have a topic for yet.


Yet: seems to be a word I need to get rid of.

Sincerely,

- t

run

It was the nostalgic enterprise of an emotional reaction, made to destroy. “I can’t be any more clear…do you understand?”

“Are you going to vote?”

“For what?”

It was the trivial uselessness of bookshelves and paper cutters, dark framed glasses and grey clothes. The superfluous attempt at becoming the next “Hamlet” or “Hedayat”.

“Your references are weak.”

“Are you going to vote?”

It was the only thing this herd of superior beings knew how to do. Clashing with the next door tomcats and the pole dancer on channel 478.

“The polls are fictive, you know?”

I was simply agitated. Loud laughs made my head hurt. I always thought migraines are genetic.

“Do you watch porn?”

I walked out on them. I went for a jog and then followed the road and realized I was tired, too tired to go back. I was out of breath and my mouth tasted like thirst, drought, sweat, salt.

“ I bought pepper. How could we be out of pepper? It’s in the left cabinet on top of the stove.”

I was hungry and hated feeling like a martyr again. What was I dying for, what am I deprived of? How long did I run? 23 minutes and 56 seconds. 20% discount on a $ 78 jar. The second biannual study on third generation exilic memoirs. Lover number 13. Liar number 3905. The 5000-year history of the second becoming of monotheistic religions of the glorious pi.

“Who are you voting for?”

خواب

خواب عجیبی بود. انگار با مستی تمام در حال لرزش در جلوی چشمانم بود و من بی اراده در آن تاب می خوردم. خواب عجیبی بود...صبح که بیدار شدم به فرید گفتم و نگاه عجیبی کرد و گفت که همیشه همین را می گویم.

خواب عجیبی بود رنگها چرک و کثیف بودند و 3 نفری ما کنار یک دوکِ بزرگِ نخ ریسی، به بلندی درختی قول آسا یا یک کشتی بزرگ ایستاده بودیم. دوک می چرخید و می غرّید و هوا را به جریان می انداخت و همچنان که سلسله وار جو را در هم می شکست آدمهای گوناگون از لای آن به جای نخ می ریختند بیرون. لخت و ترسیده، می دویدند و از دید دور می شدند. من دیگر وجود خارجی نداشتم و کم کم از زمین فاصله گرفتم و از دوک و آن دو دور شدم و باز هم بالاتر رفتم تا دلم حرّی ریخت پایین. امّا دل نداشتم چون وجود نداشتم...پس دست یا پا یا، دل، نداشتم.

در هوا چند مارمولک سبز گِلی می خزیدند و با هم بحث می کردند و برای خود می پلکیدند. پایین را نگاه کردم و پدر بزرگ دوست بچّگی هایم را دیدم که یک بار خانۀ او همگی با هم کارت بازی کردیم و من هر بار که می بُردم پدربزرگش پاهایم را نوازش می کرد...آنجا ایستاده بود و به من زُل زده بود. تععجب کردم چون به غیر از او هیچ کس -حتّی خودم- نمی دانست که آنجایم.

به زحمت مسیرم را عوض کردم و روی پشت بام یک برج خاکستری، که قدیمی بود و انگار فقط روی همان برج آن روز شب بود، فرود آمدم. در کنجی چند ماهی قزل آلا که پولک نداشتند و معلوم بود به تازگی کسی آنها را "پاک" کرده است، سرگرم قمار بودند و با لبهای نوچشان برای هم بوسه می فرستادند. نزدیکتر رفتم و دیدم دور تا دور آنها شبهه حباب های سفید و کدری هستند که نفس می کشند...هر کدام به اندازۀ یک چرخ ماشین. بوی تعفن همه جا را گرفته بود. پیرزن لختی که چهره اش معلوم نبود، دست اش را روی سطح غلیظ یکی از حباب ها گذاشته بود و چیزی زیر لب زمزمه می کرد...سرش را متداومأ تکان می داد انگار که می خواهد پشه های نا مرئی را از خود دور کند.

از آنجا پریدم پایین. فکر کردم ای کاش بدن داشتم تا کیف می کردم. کیف در دست جاذبۀ زمین بودن و کیف پرش را. همچنان که با بی وزنی سقوطی آرام و پوچ می کردم، خودم را دیدم که لخت و عور زیر دوک لمیده ام.

خواستم خودم را صدا کنم ولی دهان نداشتم...وجود نداشتم. و در چالش جیغ زدن از خواب پریدم.

فرید ازم خواست خوابم را تعریف کنم. خواب عجیبی بود. "ازش هیچ به یاد ندارم."

this is not this is it

vice amplified
strengthen my shame of being
holding a name
my naked mind
your graceful disguise
forever red

how do i
Do
sin so softly
in the absence of affection
presence of a drunken repulsion
rejecting time

this is my silly life

the rhythmic dance
engage the ink with a paper
as turfs of smog
attack my lungs

this is my sin.

as it goes

...Maybe, and this is mere hypothetical fallacy, but maybe she could use her imagination somewhere else. Maybe she could create a whole new town with orange pavements and botany trees. But in this small corner of the world, her whole being was clinched in her fists, buried in her pockets, and waiting for the street light to turn green...

finally

The tomb opens
He emerges
With hands as cold as a frost
asleep on my window since last winter

And lips
Moistened with trust.

again

She quietly put on her sunglasses
Decided to do it again
Actualize the forgiven brow of a sunless dream

Everytime she saw it
It was a different manuscript
Crafted and crippled

As if one day
It all belonged to him.

====================== idiot ================

Make it stop .
they are pulling my hair, arms, my leg... and i’ve heard some even eat your liver; right in front of you.




anyways i am a visual person. Literary. if this blog decides to become real, then it needs to change its shoes. I don’t like it.

isn’t it horrible that i chose things to become real? "i give them life", with a naive misconception of them not existing without my permission. It seems like i’ve forgotten it has all already begun, and i am behind.

""
show me yours i'll show you mine
how many times are we actually going to fall for this trick?

sorry sorry sorry

gravity?






gravity?

" titled "

“There is nothing misty about it,” she says, with a mockery in her eyes. She knows it’s not true but all she needs is the reaction; that inaccessible solemn angst that goes through his eyes while forgetting the difference between the question and the response.
“Ah, they all talk about it. Over and over and over and....” she gasps, catching up on what comes out next:

“They talk about it but they don’t listen. Sometimes even forget there’s someone standing there possibly wiser than...” she can’t finish a sentence.
She has forgotten.
She knows.

There was never that intimate moment of abuse. That volunteer act of generosity between two strangers in bed. She sinks lower and carries the pen with her, and you can hear it moan, trapped inside her clammy fist. Her every word leaves a trace of...

“... the cliché, the false righteousness of the intellect . What to leave and what to erase?”

How would I know unless I present it to you?

unfinished comments of grey

my hunger
my nest
my skin

Endless affinity with the paperback dream
slowly residing in the hollow
Back
Ground
of an infusion rested to seek.
(this color makes you grey)
Cherished by a suffocating
obsession becomes my reality as sounds unravel to define–hurt-merge-become

Blogging for my course

if you can do it, i can see it


I wish there was a middle ground that we could follow. A median between free speech, verbal harassment, and censorship.
It is a scary world, this internet-crazed world. I Google (that is a verb now) my name and my Facebook page comes up. It is all a bit absurd because in Iran, Facebook is a filtered website so if you try to find it a huge yellow pop-up appears instead of the web and says: ‘The Islamic Republic of Iran has filtered this website. Please notify us if this address has been mistakenly filtered.’

“Notify”!

Now that’s even more obnoxious. Not only there is no one to notify, but if you actually try to hunt down a “representative” and let him know that you can’t open up a social networking or a porn site, he will probably tazer you down and take you for questioning. One of the ways the Iranian government maintains control over its population is through phone tags and internet filters.

Other than that, it makes me wonder and usually very uneasy, when I think about the effects of bookmarking and folksonomy. On one hand, the fact is that for example the protests in Tibet can no longer be hidden by the Chinese government, giving the advancements in cellphone-pictures or the the creation of YouTube a worthy cause.

On the other hand, with the increase of individual selectivity, people are getting lazy with reading or learning about anything that is not of immediate interest or significance to them. The online world is becoming more and more dominant with specific categorizations of news (from politics to pop-culture), targeting specific groups of people (Fark for example).

I can imagine that in the future, when an issue like Tibet comes up, no one would know about it unless they Google it. That’s an extreme projection. But all I’m saying is that even though customizing our exposition to the million different stories out there sounds exciting, the most important or alarming issues are not always the easiest and most soothing ones to know.

خود ازاري

با تاريكترينها بودم
و بازي اهنين يك صدا را تكرار
تكرار
تكرار

تا انتهاي اشتياق به رنج

غفلت به تنم گشادي ميكند
و من پلكان ساكت را
با هر تزليل مي رقصانم

listen to me

grab on to me hold my hands i need to confess i need to tear down a curtain i never made.
I drizzle and move a little to your right i try to look straight and keep the vomit inside,
fidgeting like a moth why do i care why you care. Why do i care how he repeatedly chews on a piece of gum.




dammit, spit that shit out.

may I?

My show has fooled everyone and me
My business is a tangled consciousness and a seditious brick

I my myself and you so much that them and they and others
forget to say hi

My long journey begun years ago when someone decided
when no one assured
and everyone failed.

could you pass the bread please

forgive & all ow
nod to resist
beyond a semicolon for yet another preparation
partici p ation
the fine line of lassitude
crossing through
organs

skin torn flesh born
automatic redemption
pass
porting
mass reporting
lover of a coherent panic

Back off

Privacy;
We all want it. Preserve it. Cherish and love it.
Anonymity, control, confidentiality; These words seem less tangible in today’s online world. The internet has certainly changed our control over what we call ours. But there are obviously two sides to the argument of protection and deterioration of privacy policies.
- Features like Facebook and Gmail can use our private information such as search habits, favorite products, age, gender and location to target advertisements. This may help us find what we need better and find an efficient way to connect to our needs on a daily basis.
- This information can also make the life of journalists easier to discover, uncover, and present news to the public.

Oh, but wait:

- What if you don’t want this information to be public?
- Some experts suggest this violates privacy laws.
- How do you protect your name and image to be used in ad targeting and product promotions?

I found this: a ten step manual to protect your privacy online

1. Look for privacy policies on the Web
2. Get a separate email account for personal email
4. Clear your memory cache after browsing
5. Make sure that online forms are secure
6. Reject unnecessary cookies
7. Use anonymous remailers
8. Encrypt your email
9. Use anonymizers while browsing
10. Opt-out of third party information sharing
Extra! Use common sense


Wow! This seems like a lot of work for a medium that was created to save time.

make me

I am the right measure of love and make
I am making love
I’ve become detached to the concept of human relations and i know it well where it’s taking me.
But I’m in for a ride.

The line of her back stretches on the bed. She scratches a page of his mind. A sip of the half full bottle of last night’s wine.
Its easy to fall inlove with white and black sheets. Difficult to leave, but they stink if you don’t .

I anticipate the neighbour’s frowns. And compassion. And seduction.

I need a new bruise.

ponder

fourteen years ago my father drew me a pond. It was sitting in the veranda of a friend’s home in Yazd. One of those ‘kah-geli’ old gardens.
the water-colour pond is made up of dark and light greys, with a hint of teal on the corner. The figure of two lean and lonely trees is reflected in the water; drawn to perfection, in my eyes.
‘For my dear Tara, 1372.’ It says on the right hand corner.

every time I look at it I wonder why my dad dedicated this to me. I was only 6 years old back then. Why did I have to know about the abandoned pond, the water in it, or the rusty tap? Was he telling me that life is stagnant, was it the splash of teal that I had to look forward to?
or am I the dry tap, waiting to be opened.

my mind runs on. But... what if, he just drew a sketch of a pond in front of him and wrote his daughter’s name on the bottom, as a gesture of gratitude? No subliminal messages, no paternal guidance behind it.
And if so?

stories from under the pillow

I concur, for a while I have been dumb. Mute as a bat. I hate microphones.

I remember the day I followed a little mouse all the way to your house. The cold tiles on the ground kept me awake, but how difficult it was for the petite mouse to climb the stairs. The crisp moonlight was scattered in the corridor, and I never told you but I hated those curtains with their washed out floral ornaments. I tried really hard not to step on my chaperon.

For your own sake you should have left me curious and seditious longing behind the door. I should have resented trusting the abstract idea of ‘what’s behind the door’.

I drank you and it wasn’t enough, I drank more and I felt sick, I puked and I wanted some more.

I leave and I find a burgundy bottle under my pillow filled with you.

shoe laces and memories

digits
unfamiliar stories of untold absurdities
too habitual
to win my calligraphy.

like scissor on an ice
-cube
permeating a fond collapse of an unfinished
cupid

as i conjugate the summers one after the other
making sense of past tense
and proverbs
the grammar of forgetfulness
woven on a rusty swing
tangled around my neck.

this is not a

I need Farsi
fonts
I require an examination of each space between the letters
Of
myname.
The hazardous fountain of his intoxicated blood
pouring on
vowels describing a bird long time ago long ago forever ago.

cupped

The interior of an empty cup.
Refusing to be filled
hesitating on the impulse of
the dark stain left for the coffee reader to
unveil-
I speak in a low tone. Someone is coughing I can hear its monochromatic repetitions, dusting away.
I speak in a lower tone when I tell you my bones ache. They ache from growing inch by inch displacing the muscles attached to them.

People around me are rushing to the subway entrance with their fists in their pockets ... my shoulder brushes on someone’s cold red jacket. The tube, the tunnel, why is it such a waste of time...why is my destination the ultimate place to-breathe-to-move? We sit quietly on the most isolated scarlet and grey seat, diving in those light books and these heavy shopping bags. The comfortable etiquette, the solution to civilization and Western democracy, is gushed out on the cover of a book this girl with gold locks is reading: Middle Eastern People. Like the herd, or the mysterious creatures on the other side of the moon. Desperately oblivious.
I contemplate all this and I don’t speak to anyone. Yet sometimes they smile back.

I see my nails grow and break and grow back again, trying hard to stay plain, as my revolting mind rejects time.

I reach out for the cup and the heavy unforgotten steam clings around my hand. It has been ages since the cup was full. A brown coloration has penetrated a deep hole into it, and if you tilt the cup on a 45 degree angle you can see a thin crack moving through.
Ahh..but who cares it’s just a fucking cup. I’ll get a new one tomorrow.

What is Tara?

I have been absent for quite a while.
I will share with you why:
I turned 20 on January 5. Amazingly, I couldn’t be happier about my life when I flipped the calendar to that date. I feel like the weight of getting through teenage years and becoming what I always hoped to be, is now off my shoulders. I see what I was: the 14 year old immigrant who stepped into a world of agitating dispossessions. And somehow between reading the works of the legendary Iranian writer Sadegh Hedayat and decoding Shakespearian old English at school, I realized I can consciously and attentively select each fragment of the future me. This may sound like a post-structuralist narrative of my growth, but in actuality of it I was perpetuating this image as far as I can remember.

And so, thanks to my Online Journalism class, I was pushed to start writing on this little blog of mine again. This program (journalism at Ryerson University) has been an interesting roller coaster of new uncertainties and old expositions. Since the first day of class, I tried to introduce myself as an ambitious “journalist” with a passion for politics and literature. I say politics, in its purest most philosophical nature. And I realized this is what I am going to do when at the age of seven I rescued 78 ants from drowning in a leak in our basement.
But you must understand, I still think and sing in Persian. I lack the tools to convey to you what I deeply mean inside, in this English-fluent world of today. My weapon is vocabulary, and I have yet to master it.


I am supposed to write about citizen journalism. You can check out its definition on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism.

There are people in my field of study/work that either want to look good in front of an Entertainment News camera, or take pictures of a 12-year-old abused girl in Oshawa. I am in no place to judge them or their goals but I can say this: I don’t want to write about shifting moments in human history, I want to be an agent of change, or revolutions, and fresh comprehensions. Is this too big of a bite? I don’t know! Only time can tell. But with the drive that I seek in me, with the movement I feel in my mind, I know I possess unique experiences that will lead me to this agency no matter what. However, if I don’t channel this towards something “good” it may become the most destructive force of my life.

Citizen Journalism? Yes. It is a great invention and discovery. If there is one good thing about technology and consumer capitalism it is our opportunity to voice out and record the present as we see it. AIDS, feminism, WTO, post-modernism, homosexuals, terrorism. These are the words defining the length of our insignificant short lives. Let us become politically aware, socially critical, and aesthetically functional.

My dearest reader, I come from a family that many envy and many detest. I come from a background that is the most misunderstood culture of the world. I have been exposed to experiences in such an early age you must never know or question:

Will you be my ant?