To My Future Self

By: Husam (Sam) Salman

I can empathize with you no more

Self of now, a prelude to success

From a man to his words

Would I dare challenge -

tomorrow by today?

For if this ripening fruit

Seems so juicy as to harvest now
would only sour the tongue.
Teachings will arrive, seasoning the taste

For tomorrow’s sweeter bite(s).

When space and summer soften and
Filling the barren land with hope,
Murmurs of confidence mature

Blooms reassure the garden,

Today was not all for not, but
You do understand,

I just read you.

Your future self can thank me later.

These Spring Sundays

These Spring Sundays

By: Husam (Sam) Salman

My father use to get up early on Sundays
He was the start of my habits in putting everything away,

then with his over worked back he cleaned every surface
My mother beside him, this labor in weekends memories made
of vacuums sucking louder than the TV .

If anything, when he did this, we resented him.

It'd jar me awake, my heart in my throat from fright

Forcing me to spill out of bed onto the floor to escape.

When dinner was ready, he'd be the first seated,
We moved more slowly,

and would rise from the TV heads unturned,

He was allowed the only laugh and crass raising of a cheek.
Lamenting the fearful unrelieved anger of that host,

All spoke softly to him, laugh free so not to upset…further.

He, who had taken us from total obliteration
Brought us from Ur to Canaan then here to New Babylon
I was childish, rebellious, what little I knew, what did I know
of love's unyielding limits and lonely avenues?

After the Birds Have Flown

After the Birds Have Flown

By: Husam (Sam) Salman

In the first line of the final text,
Too many things were wanting to be said at once,
My mind once again beheld your naked, faceless love,

Seized and wounded: why paw at me further
Hasn’t your absence been satisfying you,
For you to be, on your terms with your half wit?

In the first line of the final text,

Too many things were wanting to be said at once,
My hand composed only a quivering dance in the air.

He seized my mind and crippled growth with disregard;
I stood shivering, with shaking limbs and weak knees, 
Then leaped into the river….

In the first line of the final text,

Too many things wanted to be said at once,

I regained faculty of my hands

Composed to him like no story before,

Of impersonal gestures? of a kissing coupled strangers?
Of forgetting me from the world?

(He was already closed to too many things.)

In the first line of the final text,

Too many things wanted to be said at once,

So I drew him near to me.
Brought him to kneel at my heart

The ruddy setting evening light, I imagined,
was casting its glow upon his brow,

Would catch the glisten in his eye, as he read

These words and would at last know

“I will hold your feather forever –

Just like the love I have for you.”