John Najjar

Sitting in the corner, back to the wall,
the observer becomes the pen, and feels no more;
skin is flayed; here the silent screams can be ignored;
we are all homeless here, shut out into the cold.

We are left to walk the back streets,
memory so icy cold, frozen;
these back streets are cracked and broken,
lined by deserted and crumbling buildings,
all haunted by the ghost of time passed

In this age of surface and broken pavements,
each moment a fleeting side show
caught in perception,

held by memory,
I sit in this bony apartment,

searching through these archives,
what seemed certain then, now is seen for what it was,

an illusion.
How easy it is to see
only what you want to see;
how easy it is not to hear the cries of the innocent,
the homeless
who must find deserted back streets
so they can sleep.

Lies
black on white, white on black;
I too am a liar

but I always tell the truth;
though some lies reverse to become? truth;

this is the secret of words, so precious few realize,
to be not to be,
to lie and tell the truth,
to sit within the mist of illusion
but not tell lies,

Words are precious things, they rule us but we also rule them;
but to rule is? to submit to them,

to lie is to tell the truth, it just is how it is with them.

To hide, to seek, to tread? a white, dusty path; I do not know.
To give all to nothingness,
to know that is your birthright.
I do not know;
reflections of ourselves is all we know; reflections of reflections we get lost in this mirrored maze;

I do not know but grope for the direction,
reflections of reflections;
I am no teacher, I am but a student, a student of the self; my heart, my Art.

Without this refection of nothingness,
I fade into the night,
the darkness,
I struggle, I cry, I fear;
I am like you, we all do;
but there is nothing to fear;

Truth is simple?,
the only truth, the universal truth, the one truth that lays the foundation for all others is this :

We fade, we shimmer though we wished we could burn like the sun, for eons;
we cannot but be a falling star,
a flash in the night,
we must surrender everything to darkness
for without it
we are but shadows that float in the night,

shadows cast by the light.

We all fade, some shimmer.
Life does pass in? a flash
and we move from dark to dark;
Without the night, there can be no light,
we are stretched between the light and dark
with nowhere to hide, we must accept our plight.

We fade at sunrise;
shadows, we linger only in the night;
and must run from daylight.

For Debbie, my dead lover, on the 5th year since her death.

Beyond reach soft whispers
Come and go delicately;
I still reach for you.
I find only emptiness.
Silently the dawn breaks
My bound heart.
I still search for you
only to find cheating shadows;
Fragments, memories, phantoms;
Those gentle words you left behind.

The day finds me sitting alone,
with your words to keep me company
Lingering over these words
Each single connotation
wraps me in silence.

Through words I look back
To remembered yesterdays.
Those fleeting fading days
we spent together

Appealing to your words
I trace each one
looking for other possibilities,
meanings that can slide under
this cruel measure of reason.

So my days are spent
Reflecting on each slippery connotation
looking for something solid
to fill my heart.
These fragments only bind
my grieving heart to this distant present.

Still I measure each word
you left behind
what else can I do?
Lingering in this shadowy place
I am a prisoner walking the yard:
each word a step
in this struggle to find meaning.

Experience remains a tapestry
woven from loss and gain.
I am torn between a head
that reasons
and a tattered heart that knows.

Left to trace borderlines
I weigh possibilities
one past against another
Looking for connections;
experience still remains
wrapped in silence;
I will not let this rocky world
shatter me.

But memory is more than words,
A sound touches my heart
I am filled with another time
Emotion, impressions, colors
Flood over me,
but the distant moment returns me to myself.

Silence whispers into the night,
as I toss and turn
seeking you in my dreams.
I long for your wildness
Just one delicate embrace;
To reach beyond
To touch velvet softly the darkness.
Silence still whispers at dawn light;
My heart hungers, a lonely sax;
Desire moves past my blood;
bare tenderness
Longs to be touched.
I whisper your name into the night
You cannot answer me;
I remain tangled in desire.

To Johnny Olson from Mad Swirl magazine, whose poem “Joe” put me in such a mad swirl.

I have been down back one ways
I have faced the odds
Within, those without too.
Joe, john, johnny, or hello Joe.
I have know hunger
the odds within me
Would always get me, Joe

hello, Joe.
“It hurts when a mate dies
Does it not?”
are all our dreams fading?
Sometimes, I do not
Want to be here,
Joe;
I have always been a lonely poet,

an exile, a stranger to myself,
Or what I was expected to be.

This nation was baptized in blood
in Turkey.
Some we look up for failures;
Ned Kelly, Les Darcy,
Lenny McPherson,
Turkey;
hey Joe.

I raise my glass again to the God Dionysus
The God of the vine
who taught us to turn the fruit of the vine
into wine.

What you you think, Joe,
the land of the brave and free is it fading?

“The Leaves of Grass”,
Billy Holiday,

“The Death of a Salesman”,
Lenny Bruce,
Martin Luther King.
are our dreams dying?
are they, Joe?

Well Joe,

what is it to be a man?

What is this thing or something else,

this phantom or ghost that haunts us,

that we must yield to

but nothing else not even death.
Hey Joe?

I have felt you here around me.
I caught a glimpses of sparkling light.
I am used to having the dead around,
I live with them.
They can do me no harm;
and besides I need the company,
Could only have been you or Ricky,

Joe.

Ricky died last November.
For Ricky

enough was never enough.
He died from a toxic tonic.
It is not Ricky,

it could only be you

Joe.

Ricky told me with relish,
the last time he had plenty,
how he fucked his brains out.
Ricky was a lost soul

he needed his tonics.
The only way

To escape the voices
in his head.

Hey Joe,
I know you are listening.
All my heroes

died at Gallipoli.

I have never met my real father,
or had a mother’s love;
hey Joe

My first father my uncle
he use to go to Tommo’s,

A two-up game;
Used to drive the coppers crazy;

it did,

the location changed daily,

they could never find it,

to bust it.
it was invitation only,
in a day before mobile phones;
that meant you had to be in the know.

Lenny McPherson,
Joe Misner,
Tom Domican,

Tilly Devine,
Kate Leigh;

Hey Joe,

The world is stranger than fiction.
is it not?
I know
how fate can turn in upon us;
you do, too,
don’t you

Joe?

Birth is woman’s business,
death is the only thing for us.

It just is how it is.
Women must yield to the pain of child-birth;
we are taught to yield to nothing.

Love is always stronger than pride
is it not?
let me tell you about an angel
the fact is I do not know her
but I know she is beautiful with a delicate touch
as only a woman can have;
I who have loved and lost,
as love always does;
we expect too much from it;
but what there.

what else is there,
hey Joe?

Hey Joe.

The mind is the last boundary
and where it will take us,
I do not know.
I do not know anything;
not even if it is the mind or the heart.
all I know is that we must love;
is that not so,
hey Joe.

I sit here at this table
A stranger amongst strangers
Outside it is raining.
The rain brings to mind other times
When I sat writing
Attempting to define this phantom
That haunts me.

Looking up
I watch the world
Float by before my eyes.
The past is no more
The future yet to be
I have only this moment
This dying present
That lingers
Between nothing and nothing

I place each word along side another
Treading out this path
That can lead nowhere
I struggle with words and their meanings
Wanting to catch this non-existence
That is the flow of my life
A caged tiger
Caught in the confines of language
I pace each line away.

The sky is reflected on the wet path
My being is mirrored by the world,
Reflections of reflections
Leave me stranded between darkness and darkness;
Lost in this world of shadows
My being is extended outwards.
Each fluid second withers away
Leaving me stranded between a non-existent future
A long lost past.

Each dashing second
Brings to me
This emptiness
That lingers through out my being.
We exist for but a short time
Before we are sent down
To where we do not know;
Alone
I sit here
Looking for meaning in this existence

Alone I sit here
Better not to have been born
Than to live through this emptiness
That is in my heart.
I am left stranded in this place
That I do not know
The path mirrors the sky
Trees reach towards an empty heaven
Still I am left in darkness.

I walk outside
The leaves of plants
Reach out
Lovingly they hold out their leaves
The rain caresses them softly.
Amongst discarded cigarette butts
And other objects thrown away unthinkingly
They sit expecting nothing
Lingering in this moment
They do not need a reason to be.