“Every time something bad happened, I would turn to poetry — it would give me calm,” said the poet, Sajid Bahar, 26, who lives in the city of Khost. “It’s been seven months that I can’t write. It no longer gives me calm. When I sit down to focus on one incident for a poem, 30 others flash through my head. My words do not have the strength for all of them.”

united we stand divided we fall

as he did in Afghanistan,

instead, leaves fall here
where the sun shines upon
the faces
of pennies
left there upon the ground
with these leaves -
like footsteps.
stained.

the wind
with words she carries
"i love yous" and "goodbyes"
it rains
but the earth does not shake
trees fall
lightning strikes
but the ground does not seem to move
when he falls
in Afghanistan,

there is silence
there is noise
there is beauty and
there is madness.

to rest in peace
is to be whole
with a heart that beats within the world
among the people

“In a different country, at least I can go up a mountain, sit by the water. At least my mind will be at ease.”

-The New York Times

105 people die each minute
according to google
and for the first time
i put it into perspective
and watch the clock for 60 seconds
to just take a moment
a moment to just feel the loss
of people I'll never know

and i breathe
and i cry
and i listen
too

a song that reminds me of a lesson
of letting go
like day and like the time of night
while i do in fact like the dark
for the reason i can hide
with open eyes
to stare at the stars through the ceiling
that keeps me from flying away
in the middle of the night
i stay awake
to take another minute
and smile
because 250 people were born.

Acoustic guitar in a subway station sounds
nice, until it floods with rushing
waters, soon drowned
by the screams of the travelers
who drop their bags-full of life
at the moment. And they start to run
up stairs and toward streets
yet the motions are slow and the scene is silenced.

A girl dressed in blue jeans, ripped slightly, removes her jacket
a luxury of patchwork corduroy ,
a birthday present from her mother, or perhaps it was her mother's long ago. She wears it to remember, to imagine:
what if?
she is young,
yet her wisdom is proven,
and her love makes light in a tunnel so dark.
as a man rests underground
she covers him with a coat of colors
and so softly whispers goodnight.

She runs
and they follow
her light.
She escapes to the city above
where stars fall into the waters that make way to the streets
a dream or a nightmare?
she can not decide,
but she closes her eyes anyways
this way, she may never know.
like September, she falls,
and with the world she turns.

from eden
not east, but west
where the sun did set
for the first time
a spark
of madness
ran wild through a garden
where skies tinted red their world below
shadows cast by flames
the first color to be read about in stories told
in the beginning
the sun did set
the color red unlike any other
started to fade
into the darkness where they ran
to discover the night

the stars are projectors and we are merely figures
floating through sounds sent to us
by movie makers
dancing through space and time

the stage is set in space

we film now farthest from the sun and we wait
it's quieter here.
to dance without music is to pretend
to make believe
it has been quite some time since i'd last heard my favorite song
i am unsettled
as i should be in the role of the vagabond.
so i start to sing
and they tell me to continue on and the stars shine brighter.
blinding.
i see nothing. stunned.
i close my eyes
tears flooded with memories of a place where greens and blues
make me want to see
the world,

my world
i look to you
and i see it. i can hear it.

the music echoes throughout the system solar
vibrations sent through constellations
and the stars begin to shoot
the final scene

the beginning.

darkness.

i found myself on Mars

after i thought i lost my mind in Salta

until time told me
i rather lost myself in my mind
the language of my Atlas
too hard to read
especially in the still of the night
i sit so still
still so alive we are
we lay, lying among a graveyard of stars
and i open up to a map full of madness
black and white in a world full of color
where these red sands of Salta
make me think of Mars

i found this one barely breathing
on a Tuesday afternoon buried beneath the sands
of time . speaking of time,
a couple light years away
i'd find the book i lost again
stained by the sands
of Mars.

i almost lost my mind in Salta

then
i found myself on Mars.

to note:
This Atlas has no copyright, so I have been cautious with my beliefs in regards to map accuracy. If I shall lose this book once more, for public knowledge, the one who finds it must know that there is the risk of getting lost. Do not fear the maps. You may come across unknown paths. Keep going. Find yourself.

The foot prints with color.
Stamps across the streets where
cars create a sense of second pace,
passing by the signs now faded green
reads not Route 44
but rather Route 4..something..
Will they ever repaint it green?
What's the point? You wonder
when you're late for work and you may barely
make it, because your gas tank is on E yet again.
What else is new?

New job. New wife. No kids.
Because, can you really afford it?
Price tags are merely fiction
and I know this because of what happened once in second grade.
The library was my favorite place.
It's one of the only places that one is never alone.
I was the only one in class to mix up fiction and non fiction on the test.

And still, I am confused.
For I walk this world with carbon footprints
tears like rain drops-acid even,
and not the kind that spin inner thoughts with color.
Instead, the kind that is not kind at all, but
hurtful-scars the surface of green grass
left to fade like an old photograph.
And the colors fade like roadsigns
that the cities overlook.

Lights can be blinding.
No flash photography in the museum please.
I'm living nonfiction.