Psalms of Violence and 3 other poems

I remember a masjid giving us names.
We were eating the sky to hide grief
below the places in our skin. Father had already bought an Izzar at home,
to cover violence to ourselves. And I know
love starts from hiding between cities. God dissolves in my mouth every morning,
as I watch a gay man begs to wear my name
with fear at the beginning of his voice. There’s a fire eating his freedom,
it sits with him to burn. Amen!
And I remember him drowning today
inside your body
somewhere I cannot name, I watch him become soft,
gave himself away to the tongue of fire.
On slow evenings, I read about them, men without names.
And I read about scripture; “For God so loved the world that he drowned everyone in It.”
This is how violent men drown
inside queers to meet other men splitting into refugees,
because of them, and because of home.

When you are depressed, you remember everything about you.
The next thing you hate is how you appear to the world,
and you begin with questions: if you are visible when you watch the clock
raise its middle finger to your eyes.
Then you remember your therapist, who died a year ago.
Today, you think of her.

I remember your silence, Sonya. The day you said I was free, I remember it.
And I remember everything before we learnt the Quran,
before we found out what stays between transgender and war.
It was you, it was me, it was us.

I feel like someone is running in my body.
I feel like there’s a paper written: “we hate you.”
I feel like there’s a group of people killing queers in my body.

Today, I write to you. I swear: I do not want you to read how religion messes us up
into not believing in a God. I do not want you to hate yourself.
I do not want you to see how we set certain dates,
hoping we would disappear on those deadlines.
I do not want you to love what kills people like us.
I do not want you to feel how it is to feel your gender bother the earth.
I do not want you to feel the loneliness that carries our body.
I do not want you to read about our wishes: hoping to extend your days,
hoping not to die.

My brother carved a map to show us how to run,
and he guides his index finger through our bodies
to locate a refugee camp burning in our stomachs. So, I search for you in Nairobi
at the mosque to steal your fear. And I watched the city spread before us
—gay men lining up,
and angry women in the mouths of young boys searching for refuge.
Where we hid, women raised their skirts to show us homes,
to give us history, and to teach us how to escape from grief.
There’s a village at the end of my prayer, perishing,
to the bastards who walked off with my brother from sleep,
to be lynched on trees seeking sound.
Chapter one:
It always starts with your fear running back to you,
to pay homage to soft boys in your eyes, to remember the sadness of earth.
Chapter two:
There are black males in your bones, travelling from country to country,
to escape from a mob marking their bodies.
Chapter six:
And burnt men I can’t name walk in your veins
like voyagers, guiding their fingers through borders on the map,
to move out from an area prone to earthquakes

Here, I know about the plight
born out of wandering the darkness of home,
and passing through contours out of myself into the wild
that inhabits ghost boys, wanderers, and nomads
in search for bodies, who sit on the pier counting roads out of the village.
God counts our names
on prayer beads from north to south, to the origin of queer.
I know about the plight of men here,
who seek ways to enter my body to be free.
They travel cities to find themselves, they walk across my lips,
and leave me shouting names of men
whose bodies once became dust, and the remains of burnt cities.
We are nomads here. I open my body into forgetting all unhappy routes
when I arrive at each border with a country in a suitcase. And
the immigrant officer unpacks it like his clothes;
at its base, ants in departures fleeing away for salvation.
Salvation is not a found thing, nor the hardening of soft boys filled with love.
Tonight, the road is going back to them
from a place where you cannot dance
till your body tastes of freedom,
from a place where men who kiss men are lynched,
from a place where they brought women to heal us,
&
from a place where we become hard.