Jam Hamidi's Blog
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May.24.2013
They say it's beautiful,if only you could read.
The rhyming pattern,distinct in audition,
meant to be recitedby the people in need.
Every now and then,it draws attention,
by breaking free,to a specific display.
And this, they claimmakes you belong.
You know what I say?I say you can say
whatever you...
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May.15.2013
I'm not thinking of the read,
as young as I was,
and certainly as removed
as the gauche Iranian boy
in Western Tehran,
of the infamous book
on the American dream.
And yet there is something
to be said of an incomplete
understanding of a whirlwind.
We, the young, had an idea,
passing by the estate...
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Apr.22.2013
It's futile to parade your self-righteousness to the underworld.
I say underworld. Since it understands well a symbolic gesture.
Symbolic gesture: the act of puncture of the collective mind.
The purpose of which is as old as the racket of whispered protection.
They say you can hurt to...
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Apr.15.2013
Three of them are eying me through their good eyes. With the green hair net, I would have done the same. They are younger than I anticipated. I sit down next to my mother. The room is large and the light bright enough. I become invisible for a while. "Code Blue. Code...
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Apr.08.2013
is such a metaphor for the passage of time.
As if we know by instinct what it used to be -
mountain, palace, vase, flesh, technology.
In an older world, on Mars or the moon,
it roams the surface, mimicry of water
that was too fragile to much endure,
too precious to linger, that boiled to the...
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Mar.14.2013
Do you rememberhow we first met?Not being cleverI was clueless, more or less,of the provenance of thingsor what became mine.
Lying awake, some nights,I could hear heated debatesfrom my parent's room.Their fear seemed abstract.A mathematical line
starting in our homeand ending in a pointthat could...
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Mar.07.2013
Surrounded, in this smoky bar, by the scepters, lost in apathy and ether and wine, my arms flattened, my whiskey far,
when suddenly Inanna appears.
Immortal Inanna. White marvel Inanna. Inanna with the signs laid out in her hands. Sandals on her feet twigs on her forehead. A measuring tape in one...
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Jan.02.2013
Leg over tart leg, gravity flows as honey on such a warm day.
Men, boys in disguise, nod out atop one another in classic display,
while in the foreground, preparing for the paying, the tar dealer sings.
A much younger man, barefoot, hence a labourer, yet king among kings.
I notice the mat...
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Oct.04.2012
No you can't win.There is no brick wallto separate your faithfrom the neighbour's lord.
No field of energyto keep your borderfrom yet anotherdesperately murderous horde.
And everyone must pay.Women must be strippedof their cherished physiqueand hidden away.
Men must endurethe humiliationof no bread...
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Aug.10.2012
My poem published hereleft me unsatisfiedwith the imageryof our weaponized nation,
us accustomed to killing,but not to being killedin the padded comfort of our own civilization.
But our bullets being real,and our armies vastand far flung,the question is not moot.
Ideology, this paintinginto which...
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Jul.20.2012
Streaming in ones and twos
in the dark night,
in between reality
and manufactured fright,
we run for our lives.
The masked man crackles.
The smell of gas in his laughter
as sharp as the pain in my leg,
as juvenile as the enjoyment
of modern entertainment.
It now follows
whichever way...
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Jun.11.2012
During my daughter’s graduation ceremony I thought nothing of my mother’s tears of joy, I presumed.
No, she said, I was remembering my own, no pomp or relief, only difficulty. The road ahead loomed.
These kids, these girls, nurtured, all their families gathered to celebrate, all colorful, you know...
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Feb.15.2012
Today, Jim Jones learnsthat they are comingto investigate.
They have heard, here and there,that the people insideare tired of their fate,
tired to wear the burdenof an idealismthat strives to isolate.
That encroaches on life,on love, on style, on(and he says this aloud) the Intimate.
Jim Jones,...
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Jan.29.2012
Jim Jones says: to Russia? You think Russia is gonna want, no, it's not gonna, it's, it's, it's - you think Russia is gonna want us with all this stigma? We had some value, but now we don't have any value.
Jim Jones prepares. In his head we hear the cogs of despair. He stumbles on a few words.
He...
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Jan.03.2012
Gasping for air, my bane of morning, I suddenly wake up.
I know I'm responding to my quick heartbeats as running in my sleep,
but knowing doesn't help in the night bazaar that I've just ran in.
I was made of speed. Making the right turns to the domed keep
of oil lamps hissing at cinnamon body odors...
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About Jam
I live and work in Victoria/Canada. I began writing poetry in my teenage years and kept up with it. I have completed 3 books of fiction and two plays, and working on my third. All are self-published.
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