This blog is just a sample work and to present a few of my poetry.

Where shall I begin? I have so many matters to tell you of, that I cannot wait any longer before I begin to put them down.
-Jane Austin: letters to her sister

For Women of Afghanistan

As I walk in the streets of Kabul,
behind the painted windows,
there are broken hearts, broken women.
If they don't have any male family to accompany them,
they die of hunger while begging for bread,
the once teachers, doctors, professors
are today nothing but walking hungry houses.
Not even tasting the moon,
they carry their body's around, in the covered coffin veils.
They are the stones in the back of the line...
their voices not allowed to come out of their dried mouths.
Butterflies flying by, have no color in Afghan woman's' eyes
for they can't see nothing but blood shaded streets
from behind the colored windows,
and can't smell no bakery's bread
for their sons bodies' exposing cover any other smell,
and their ears can't hear nothing
for they hear only their hungry bellies
crying their owners unheard voices
with each sound of shooting and terror.
Remedy for the bitter silenced Amnesty,
the bloodshed of Afghan woman's life
on the-no-limitation-of-sentences-demanding help
as the voices break away not coming out but pressing hard
in the tragic endings of their lives.

Woman, are you the brown March Violets?

"I saw an angel in the Miramar
I curved and curved
until I freed her out".
-Michele Angelo

My utopia brushed
an unusual current
turned into
autobiographical circulation of
devilish misplaced luck

as a woman today
I have
never had much fruit
much happiness

My parents ambition
not to see me sealing my body
to the sad painted windows

Men with unknown identity
without faces
decide for my very existence

My voice
a recorded statement
I am a hopping sparrow
..........Maybe tomorrow
behind the veil
the flesh
dies away
all the pain
the sorrow

of being a woman
in Afghanistan
in the year zero, zero, zero

I tried
I tried
to pour burning oil on the crying cells
on my body
Inside
only
inside
the
burning oil
were the poisoned houses of wishes!
A mushroom in the city-world-of universe
From trying to pass the dying
the head first and then dripping bread
comes

Shifting
from one age to another
Lively playing with death

I die-to-die and live to live
If I could only live
a noble life.

- Sheema Kalbasi

Some years ago I wrote this poem for Women of Afghanistan? and their sufferings?

ncte-talk
and on rawa

I Discovered The Treasure

all empty from clothes
my naked skin
in touch with reality

the harshness

candles lightning clouded room

clouded room satisfied from my making love
-all night long wondering who meets at each second

parts of my body wet from the rain

wet rain bathing satin legs
nipples facing stars
bed sheets smoothing the warm wet night

as hard as it is
I discovered the treasure

Your mouth upon mine
my skin soft tasting the salt


innocently searching for the roots of pubic hair

I have a line of lovers waiting for me, I with my refusal to spell out the names
-no longer the shell closed
pearls broken
past virginity at the side door

Come faster to show the bones the right passage

Homing with eagerness stationing the silenced poems

I?m just a wild honey
smelling your blossoming ties
unfold your heart
breeze me with charms

although my thoughts are wet and cold
I just want to return to your flesh
to feel alive
my belly on yours, not yours on mine

touching your magic place
so expressive

I want you not to come
-undone-
I am done

- Sheema Kalbasi
also on iranian

"I am a woman"

I am a woman
I am a lover
I am a poet
I am a daughter
I am a wife, I am a mother!

I lost childhood
with the oldest storm
I washed virginity
to the prayed-for rain!

To the wind
To the earth
To the sand
I am still a Woman!

To the stairways of
cracking walls
I am still a Woman!

Remember
the story of Tin tin in China?
The pictures!
Women bounded
Growing, but not their feet!
Hardly walking, hardly picking even a tiny thing!

Their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons
These are women
Paintings on the walls!

You twist your lungs!
There you feel a woman!

I am still forbidden
In your wild wide words
Fragments of encircled litany!

Remember me
The woman in me
So that I don't fall into a limbo!

Fluorescent lights
Resembling my breasts!

Pale portraits
of my womanhood
and
Mecca turning blue with my shame!

Liquid angels
Call secret meetings
to break
the borders of silence
Hidden in the closets
are my thoughts
My actions
are too purple!

- Sheema Kalbasi
also on art-arena

september is around the corner

...after the attack on September/11/01:


"More Than Ever There is No Difference"

Peace… peace…please let me live without fear

September/ 11/01

I cannot walk
My nerves have failed my knees
Doctors say: She is scared
I cannot write, my hands are short
my soul dried up
not one word
empty chest
blinded eyes

no poetry for me
I am too black to write
Born on the wrong side of the world
my eyes are too dark to see
Once I wrote about the roses,
Now the joy is lost!


September/14/01

I do not speak
My accent is too bruised
Not one word, one word to say, to write
I do not go (out)
I cry
baby in my womb vomits with anger
I don’t want sex
I don’t want food; I don’t leave the four-walled room
I am tiered
I don’t want to hear, to see, to read
I want to have the bluest eyes
I want to have the blondest hair
I want to have the tallest legs (to show off by the sea?)
Does it sound American enough?
I want…
I want…
I want…
I want to know why when those bluest eyes,
blondest hairs, bombed Oklahoma,
racial profiling wasn’t on the news!


September/11/01

God please let it not be…Iranians,
Let it not be Middle eastern, let it not be!
Please God let it not be those who look like my brothers

Don’t you go (out) today!

My brother sits at home all day long, all night long!


September/20/01

No
No poetry for me
the sounds of spring,
flying birds!
the Mud,
covering the ears!
tears falling,
Fear’s pulling
…I fear

lives lost in the ashes
Broken souls

Unborn child
For you
I will change my very being
Tonight
I will ask god to give me... blond hair
I will ask god to give me...blue eyes
I will ask god to let me
I will ask god to let me
I will ask god to let me…
Today I heard
Today I heard
Today I learned
Today I learned a new word: Hijackers
Today I learned: my hopes are dried
Today I know not being born in the right part of the world
With the right looks makes me another black woman

October/07/01

I am not an Arab
I keep telling them
Well what’s the difference?
You are a Muslim!
I am not a Muslim
Well what’s the difference?
…

No, not even you know
the difference
between Indians,
Afghans, Muslims,
Sikhs, Hindus and Jews.
more than ever, there is no difference.

-Sheema Kalbasi
also on poemsforpeace.utoledo.edu

jj has posted my photo essay "Ground Zero" on The iranian times

"Mama In The War"

You took us,
your children,
under your hands, mama,
beneath the steps of our home's first floor,
to protect us from the bombs.

You never slept
and in the hot summer nights
your only mission
was our safety.

You are my president mama,
you and all those women,
who protected
and still defend their children
against the pregnant -with-hatred
soldiers of death
...all around the world...

Under the bombs, you showed no fear.
The drastic changes in our lives,
you took
quiet and peaceful
with your inner love and belief
and tried to dispel,
the terror of death
from the
filled-with-fear eyes
of your children.

You made a new reform of solidarity
and election of bravery
in our home.

You drove us to
the polished satisfaction
of holding each other's hands
trough the rough times...

In the deepest corners of my memory,
deep in my heart,
deep in my thoughts,
of blackout
and no candlelight,
I could see your blond hair,
brown eyes
and comforting face.

My vote goes to you, Mama.

- Sheema Kalbasi