Sheema Kalbasi

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 bodies 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 Afghani women'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 Afghani 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 carved and carved

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.

"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!