Happy New Year!

I wish you all my dear Friends a Happy and Wonderful New Year 2010!

Khaled KEM

One year!

My dear friends, bloggers, writers, poets, and dreamers:

Many thanks for your friendship, support, comments and ideas. It has been already more than a Year since I created Khaled KEM. I know that I have been inactive in the last few months but I am still here and there. I am impressed by the progress and creativity I touch in many of my friends blogs. I will be back to the world of blogging very soon.

I wish you all Happy Holidays!

Khaled KEM

Good news!!

I am very happy and delighted to announce that two of my poems (My kitchen and Delivery) have been awarded Honorable Mention in the category (non-rhyming poetry # 28 and 29) at the 78th annual Writer's Digest writing competition. This year there were 13557 participants in 10 different writing categories. Nice news in such a busy and stressful time I am going through trying to finish my graduate work. Hopefully in a few weeks, I will be able to write and interact again with all my friends right here and through their wonderful blogs.

Wish you all the best.

Kh

Poetry Any Day!!

I would like to thank all of my dear friends that kept visiting my blog and leaving comments on my posts these last two months. It has been a long time since I had a post but I knew that you, my friends, would forgive me. In the process I lost a few of you because I was unable to visit their blogs regularly and share my thoughts with them. I hope that they will understand that it was not by any means a lack of interest on my part. I am so busy wrapping up over 5 years worth of graduate work and I have had to make this a top priority. I would also like to let you know that I still manage to find the time to visit all your blogs regularly and read your posts. Yes, I have been following your thoughts, dreams, poetry, images, trips and news. I wish you all the best.

Open your mouth

Open your mouth and let the bugs out
Floss between the two front teeth
Make a tunnel
So you can escape
So you can breathe
Open your eyes on your mouth
Don't be afraid of its darkness
Search your tongue
And what is hidden beneath-
The words you have been missing for years
And if it's too heavy to carry the meanings
Smuggle them past your tears

© 2009 Khaled KE Mahmoud

Poetry Sunday

The Portrait

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
through I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.

Stanely Kunitz

Poetry Sunday

Evasive Action

..the clip ped possessive moment, the barber on his porch
cutting his son's hair, who looks for a second straight into the sun
and then back at his son's head now a golden, nodulous remnant,
a flower if he likes or Lenin's bumpy skull, he puts his scissors down
and goes inside and apologizes to his wife, who doesn't understand,
but who accepts his words like a private harvest she's storing up,
and then the son, who's going into the army, comes in, half cut,
and sees them and thinks he understands years of bickering,
but doesn't, and goes on to the battlefield where he writes his sister
saying we are not far from the truth of things, watching beyond his hand
two scorpions pick at each other, and thinks of days by the river, of his
father recovering from cancer, singing a song his grandmother memorized in
Vienna
and his father, who hated his own mother, cursing her, revoking the song,
and the next moment he's blown apart and then sent home in a metal coffin
and the parents and the sister get up early on the day of his funeral
and eat breakfast silently on the porch, and this is going on barber after barber.

Charlie Smith (Word Comix)

Poetry Sunday

Heart(less) in the City of Worries

I tear off the high pocket caressing the folded 3’’ x 4’’ black and white picture
(stamped January 197 ),
unbutton the red silk shirt ®,
plunge a cutter (lost and found) deep into the flesh (∼ 4.7 cm),
outline an isosceles triangle (72°, 54°, 54°) over the engulfed chest (tattoo of a baby dragon),
press a couple of ribs once fractured (teenage fight),
reach through thin forgiveness the murmuring muscle (45, 44, 43, 42, 41, …),
pull it out gently with both hands (first manicure),
drop it in a shaded plastic bag full of ice (childhood lunch bag)
and wander heart(less) in the city of worries.


I walk above buildings, bridges, trees, people
creating Boulevards
(Papa’s Boulevard, Mama’s Boulevard, Sister’s Boulevard,
Mrs. Pauline's Boulevard, La Brunette’s Boulevard,
The child in Geneva railway central station’s Boulevard).
I fly with pigeons (up to ~ 400 feet),
stay in their nests (bed and breakfast),
discuss news with neighbors’ hawks,
and text message earth the green gas level.
I learn how to swim with ducks (10 mph) and eat from muddied bodywise bread.
I join squirrels running in the traffic under cars.
One lost the fur of his tail, another lost two nails and I lost prespective.
Annoyed by the plastic bag
I pick three requests from people’s classifieds (5541 posted).
Ten years old is desperate for transplantation.
After going through my charts (blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, memoirs,…),
and predicting what might be the boy’s feelings (love, fear, doubts, desires…),
his mother rejected my heart.
An unsettled lover asks to lease it as long as he loves comfortably.
Over a steady long relationship he is getting exhausted loving in fatigue.
Admiring its mosaic and remarkable size,
a collector of coincidences offers to exhibit it.
Placed in a frosted velvet box,
my heart travels to the grocery store, Lucien café,
the park, Paris, Barcelona, the neighbors’ window,
the office, Zurich, a local retail, and a few motels.
Numbers and numbers have been watching my heart.


The heart is in the bag.
I am still holding the bag.
I remember an inmate once said
"Coming out of the bag,
you start your life by walking out the pet in you three times a day.
You get caught in life loans and you struggle to make your monthly minimum payment
(27% interest).
You buy a lottery ticket acknowledging the odds
(A team wins 4/3 in the NBA playoffs after loosing the first 3 games).
The dreams are so true,
You believe you are alive.
You end up caged with the beast in you holding your chain "


Hitch-hiking towards simplicity,
I loosen the screws retaining the me.
I slowly rock my body past and future until I hear the tics of fallen concerns.
I kneel down,
I salute the ants marching towards my heart.
I (de-/re-) assemble.
I roll my body over the last opportunity.
I arrange my inner layers in a lighter mood,
Do|Re|Me|Fa|So|La|Te|Do
I jump to a highway of destiny.
A stranger picks me up.

A stranger (Choose the appropriate answer)
1. Someone you may not know
2. Someone you choose not to know
3. Someone you are hesitant to know
4. A funny word
5. We are all somehow strangers

S(He) stares at me at every occasion begging for nothing.
I smile and offer the plastic bag.
The facial wrinkles straighten up erecting a population of blisters once dead.
The eyes fluoresce the bulb (25 W) over my decision.
S(He) opens the bag and slides skull, eyes and hair inside.
After moments of the moments,
(Da vinci made up his mind and forced Mona Lisa to smile,
Newton finally noticed the fallen apple, and I was able to taste what is between my tongue and the clouds),
(S)He runs out of the car,
drops my heart on the ground,
wobbles away covering his/her/your sewed chest with sad hands
assuring it is not his/her/your/their own,
being reached for again (and again, and again, ∞….).
I’ve never respected the unexpected (thinking backwards).



Under angry rain (Overcast eyes and 35 % precipitation of memories),
with no coat and a hallow chest
collecting water (2.3 oz) and hale (0.9 pound),
I cross the street of pain (twelve blocks and 2057 days).
The plastic bag dripping events, blood, and crumbs,
dogs barking on my right side,
wolves sniffing on my left side,
crows on balconies chewing voices,
adults hiding in their laundry,
and children tucked in their parents’ mistakes.
I throw gifts, bones, skin, candies, promises, bills, fish, and salt.
I move target of all desires.


The sun is still crying over my face.
Fading pedestrians are leaving behind wasted shadows,
slowly burned by a torchlight (batteries 2A).
An old handwritten sign rolled over a rusted iron bar implanted in the middle of the city
is kissed by the All.
You can hardly read the carved words-
We sell attitudes and repair broken ribs.
The ice is melting in the bag (80°F).
I follow the sign for years.
I end up at a tiny tin door separating the 11 and 12 blocks.
The darkness arrives in time to cover what is left of me.
Exhausted, I knock using my forehead and weak legs,
seven, eight or nine times.
The door opens at 54°.
My hands tremble up and down.
I am told to leave behind clothes,
shoes, the folded picture and my plastic bag.
Holding my heart
I squeeze myself in
Screaming
Do
Re
Me
Fa
So
La
Te
Do
Hands help to pull me
in/out.
The door closes (0°).
My lungs become clear.

© 2009 Khaled KE Mahmoud

Poetry Sunday

Passing Scenes (While Reading Basho)

Copyright: ImageBank

I am traveling by train
to the city,
I am traveling
in brilliant sleep
into the past

Meantime composing
a letter
to my inner no one

There were hives at the
edge of a wood

The mind shines
in the
window

The most beautiful house I ever died in

Everything's imaginary

When I hear the dawn gulls cry
even in New York
I long for New York-

Franz Wright (from Field, 2008)

Poetry Sunday

Phenomenology, Or Later, that Same Day...

The cat comes back, the doctor calls,
things happen in ways you can only
begin to imagine. The story
comes after, remember? You turn
the strange into familiar with what is
at hand. Most of your life is like this:
memory, mercy, the ballast
of desire, heavier for the words
you've wrapped around them,
and lighter too.

Lorri Neilsen Glenn (Combustion, 2007)

Poetry Sunday

A Taste of Ourselves


Avocado firm
Stubborn
Avocado soft
Responsible

Blue berries
We keep our distance
Raspberries
We kiss

Pineapple
Rough and tender times

Guava in frosted January
When we care

Cherries
Cheers
A misconception

Green olives or Pistachios
I couldn’t decide
She left

© 2009 Khaled KE Mahmoud