أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower] Quotes

“Broken tree branches
Scattered flowers
Bent street light poles
Cut electricity lines
Dead birds
But the weather is beautiful, and the breeze is refreshing…
My heart is full of an after-storm peace and tranquility…
The real tranquility is the one that follows not precedes the storm…

(July 1, 2015)”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“My mom gave me life
When I gave her back silence not a grandchild,
She reconsidered the entire cycle of life…

(July 1, 2015)”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“[Our Contemporary Lexicon]
As years go by
And lives are wasted,
As we lose everything,
We discover the real meaning
Of the words shaping our lives…
Words that have filled our contemporary lexicon,
We know the words yet don’t fully grasp them,
And the more we hear them,
The more confusing they become…
Words like
War
Bank
Justice
Media
Capital
Investment
Advertisement
Weapon
School
University
Hospital
Humanitarian organization
Civil society
Ethnicity
Race
Religion
Modernity
Backwardness
Secularism
Trade
Love
Family
Prison
Home
Immigration
Visa
Passport
Borders
Democracy
Elections
Car
Plane
And countless others…
Words that may pretend to oppose each other publicly,
Yet are secretly in bed with each other
Making love, acting as synonyms and French kissing…
Words that in reality
Walk hand in hand and are united against us
To achieve the mutual goal of depriving most of us
Of having a decent life with dignity…
Words used by allies and foes alike, as needed!
Words that have become rustier than our souls,
Yet their fake glitter continues to deceive millions upon billions
Of people believing faithfully in them
Or working hard to access their imagined benefits...
As years go by,
We learn late in the game
That all the meanings we ascribed to such words
Are in fact killing us
Raping us
In the homeland
On the border
And in exile!
As the game continues,
At a late hour,
We discover that
Our worries and sleepless nights
In hopes of a bearable world
Have all been wasted in vain…
What is happening today
Has happened throughout history…
And the game shall continue
Until we reexamine this lexicon
Until we destroy it
And rewrite all its pages
To erase all the monsters its words
Within all of us…

(February 6, 2015)”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“We don’t say ‘I love you’
To those we really love.
Only to those we are deceiving
Or wish to console…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Like a scared child
singing to himself in the dark,
most people sooth themselves
With the worn-out phrase:
'Life goes on…'
without being able to remember anymore
Why should it go on?
Few are those who dare to ask:
How could life go on under such lifeless conditions?”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Under this pine tree I let you down and you let me down. Under this tree, you betrayed me and I betrayed you. Right here, I forgot you and you forgot me. Under this pine that they call 'evergreen' we both discovered that nothing lasts forever.”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“The Meaning of 'Home'

As I travel from one city to another

From one country to another

From one sorrow to another,

I encounter thousands of faces:

In streets, shops, parks, and cafés.

They all ask me the same painful question:

'Where are you from?'

As if they know, I am from a place that lost itself and lost me

On a long, cold, and sad winter night.

They ask me: 'What is your country known for?'

I tell them: 'My country is known for exporting sad stories,

refugees, and displaced people.

All those who were cursed by being born in it.'

Similar questions continue to be asked in cocktail parties,

In hypocritical and mediocre gatherings,

In conferences and boring meetings.

Some pretentiously ask me: 'How do you define "home"?'

I respond with Ghassan Knafani’s words ringing in my ears:

'Home is for all of this not to happen.'

April 19, 2014”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“You weep
thinking I’m off to a better place..
I weep
thinking I’ve left you at a place
better than the one I’m going to...
Oh, the game of places
Oh, the winds of misfortune...”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Dear God,
Grant me faith, but don’t make me faithful.
(July 1, 2015)”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“I lost all hope
Ever since I discovered
That one home can’t contain me
One life is not enough for me
And one death won’t do…

(July 1, 2015)”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“The darkness of the night knocked on my door,
When I opened,
It ran away in fear…

(July 1, 2015)”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“[Imprisoned Poem]
Somewhere deep inside me
There lies an imprisoned poem
A poem that is
Buried
Chained
And holding its breath
Ages ago…
A poem about futility
The fragility of words
About alarms, if sounded,
They’d be either destined to silence
Or get written on the walls of indifference…
There is an ancient poem
Imprisoned in my soul
Waiting to be released impatiently,
In due time…
Like a house cat
this imprisoned poem keeps eagerly watching
Every move outside the window,
Without any participation…
And like a house cat,
Whenever this imprisoned poem
Gets exhausted by the triviality of reality,
It sleeps for long hours
Only to wake up and find
The status quo unchanged
And the strings moving the puppets uncut…
It then looks out the window in sorrow
And goes back to sleep once again
To dream of a less ugly world…
My imprisoned poem has vowed not to release itself
From the deepest points in my soul
Until everyone else is awake
For its release to be meaningful…

(November 17, 2014)”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Nothing in this world scares me
More than applause!
Yes, I suffer from what can be called
‘Acute Applause Syndrome’!
Applause the bread of the hypocrites
The talent of the frauds
The compliments of liars
For other liars…
…
Each time I hear an applause,
I’m reminded of all the dirty hands
That applauded
Wars
Genocide
And massacres…
I’m reminded of all the hands that applauded
Political parties
Ideologies
And religions
That kills humanity and humans every day…
I feel the clappers holding my breath
And raping me in daylight…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Nothing in this world scares me
More than applause!
Yes, I suffer from what can be called
‘Acute Applause Syndrome’!
Applause the bread of the hypocrites
The talent of the frauds
The compliments of liars
For other liars…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“I’m red poppy from the mountains of the homeland
The winds are my tunes
The thunder is my voice
When I object what is going on…
Rains are my tears
When I’m speechless
The gushing sounds of water
Are my hearty songs…
***
I’m red poppy from the mountains of the homeland
When I welt,
I shall leave smiling
And assured that my seeds
Shall create vast meadows of wildflowers
For future generations
Wiser than you and I…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Here goes my train
Sounding its whistle once again
As it continues its old journey
To a new station
A new foreign land
A new exile
A new illusion
A new face
A new death…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“So many are the people
Who don’t teach us anything…
So many people do us a favor
Because they don’t teach us anything,
For if they did,
They’d kill many beautiful and alive parts in us…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Love wasn’t created to make us happy,
But to test our ability
To endure pain and silence
To teach us how to sing
While enduring…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“As he saw the reflection of his exhausted face in the teacup,
He couldn’t recognize himself,
But he was able to see in that face
A thousand burned wishes
He saw in his eyes
A thousand broken dreams…
A tear rolled from his eye and fell in the still tea
Shaking and blurring
The reflection of his face in the teacup,
Just like the remainder of his days…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“You’re crying because you think
I’m going to a better place
I’m crying because I think
I’m leaving to a place
Better than the one I am going to…
Oh, the game of places…
Oh, the winds of misfortune…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Yesterday I learned that hours are nothing but bodies
We kill upon confronting,
Or perhaps they are the ones
That backstab us as soon as they are behind.”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Yesterday I learned that hours are nothing but bodies
We kill upon confronting,
Or perhaps they are the ones
That backstab us as soon as they are behind...”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“We must revolt against the malicious and political game of ‘revolution’ as we know it today. According to this game, revolution is nothing but the transfer of pain from one group of people to other less fortunate and wretched groups. According to this political game, ‘revolution’ is merely imposing injustice on new groups of people. According to dirty politicians, ‘revolutions’ are just moving privilege from one elite to another.”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“They say: there is time for love and time for death...
I say: we don't realize it's time for love
Until it is almost time to die...”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Exhaustion

Salima sat in the fancy hotel room

In the evening time.

Here she is again in another foreign city,

Attending a conference discussing “human rights”.

Her eyes roamed the room.

She suddenly felt a severe chill in her body.

She suddenly realized that she is exhausted,

But her exhaustion is not that of one day,

It was one of a lifetime!

It fell upon her abruptly.

The thoughts of the bygone years

Nested in her head,

Were suddenly awoken.

One thought after another.

She realized at that moment

That she is tired of responding to

The same absurd questions

About her origins

Her ethnicity,

Her religion,

Her hobbies,

Her favorite foods,

Her education background,

Her age,

And her occupation.

Questions asked frequently by people who don’t care.

She suddenly realized

That throughout her life,

She never found a friend who could really understand.

The evening was about to draw its dark curtains.

She remembered that ever since she was a child,

She had been hiding her favorite words and writings

In notebooks that nobody will read.

She has been murmuring her favorite tunes,

In places where nobody could hear her.

The evening was about to draw its dark curtains.

She realized that her true thoughts and feelings

Lived nowhere expect inside of her head,

And there they will most likely die.

Her head had become like a prison for her thoughts.

The evening was about to draw its dark curtains.

She suddenly realized

That she had wasted so many years of her life

Looking for someone who might understand.

And each time she thought she had found one,

She found herself in yet another prison.

She looked through the window of the fancy hotel room

And saw that the darkness had covered the entire city.

September 9, 2017”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“The Problem

The problem I have, my friends, is too complicated.

It is not only that I no longer have a home,

Or a roof over my head.

It is that I no longer wish to have one.

I confess to you; however, that

Even if I wished to have a place to call home,

My wish would be impossible to realize,

Because I have been erased from everywhere.

Yes, the mercenaries

And those who worship the dollar notes,

Under the names of religions and ideologies,

Have erased me from history.

They have revised and rewrote my story.

Everywhere I go,

I find them lurking and waiting for me,

To blockade me,

To suffocate me,

And to steal from my mouth

The few crumbs of bread I have left.

And so, I repeat, my friends,

My problem is too complicated.

I don’t have a home,

I no longer want a home,

And I couldn’t have a home to shelter me,

Even if so I wished in my wild dreams.

June 1, 2017”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Photographs from Distant Places

(1)

In distant villages,

You always see the same scenes:

Farms

Cattle

Worship spaces

Small local shops.

Just basic the things humans need

To endure life.

(2)

‘Can you stay with me forever?’

She asked him in the airport,

While hugging him tightly in her arms.

‘Sorry, I can’t. My flight leaves in two hours and a half.’

He responded with an artificially caring voice,

As he kissed her on her right cheek.

(3)

I was walking in one of Bucharest’s old streets,

In a neighborhood that looked harshly beaten

by Time,

And severely damaged by development and globalization.

I saw a poor homeless man

Combing his dirty hair

In a side mirror of a modern and expensive car!

(4)

The shape and the color of the eyes don’t matter.

What matters is that,

As soon as you gaze into them,

You know that they have seen a lot.

All eyes that dare to bear witness

To what they have seen are beautiful.

(5)

A stranger asked me how I chose my path in life.

I told him: ‘I never chose anything, my friend.’

My path has always been like someone forced to sit

In an airplane on a long flight.

Forced to sit with the condition

Of keeping the seatbelt on at all times,

Until the end of the flight.

Here I am still sitting with the seatbelt on.

I can neither move

Nor walk.

I can’t even throw myself

out of the plane’s emergency exit

To end this forced flight!

(6)

After years of searching and observing,

I discovered that despair’s favorite hiding place

Is under business suits and tuxedos.

Under jewelry and expensive night gowns.

Despair dances at the tables where

Expensive wines of corruption

And delicious dinners of betrayal are served.

(7)

Oh, my poet friend,

Did you know that

The bouquet of fresh flowers in that vase

On your table is not a source of inspiration or creativity?

The vase is just a reminder

Of a flower massacre that took place recently

In a field

Where these poor flowers happened to be.

It was their fate to have their already short lives cut shorter,

To wither and wilt in your vase,

While breathing the not-so-fresh air

In your room,

As you sit down at your table

And write your vain words.

(8)

Under authoritarian regimes,

99.9% of the population vote for the dictator.

Under capitalist ‘democratic’ regimes,

99.9% of people love buying and consuming products

Made and sold by the same few corporations.

Awe to those societies where both regimes meet

to create a united vicious alliance against the people!

To create a ‘nation’

Of customers, not citizens!

(9)

The post-revolution leaders are scavengers not hunters.

They master the art of eating up

The dead bodies and achievements

Of the fools who sacrificed themselves

For the ‘revolution’ and its ideals.

Is this the paradox and the irony of all revolutions?

(10)

Every person is ugly if you take a close look at them,

And beautiful, if you take a closer look.

(11)

Just as wheat fields can’t thrive

Under the shadow of other trees,

Intellectuals, too, can’t thrive under the shadow

Of any power or authority.

(12)

We waste so much time trying to change others.

Others waste so much time thinking they are changing.

What a waste!

October 20, 2015”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“The Cats in the City

Location: an Arab city.

Time: the age of defeat. The twenty-first century.

General atmosphere: “fancy” neighborhoods.

Expensive houses painted in tombstone colors.

Beautiful and well-maintained gardens.

Flowers that no one dares to smell.

Imported cars.

Imported devices.

Imported clothes.

Imported foods.

Endless consumer shops for anything and everything.

Between every other restaurant,

there are shops selling cosmetics and souvenirs.

Between every other consumer market,

There is a worship place.

All consumer shops are built skillfully

On the scab of the same old wound;

A wound that can flood the city with blood and death

With the slightest fingernail scratch.

As I walk farther from the city,

The consumer shops vanish.

The lights are suddenly dimmed.

The cheering and the hustle and bustle of the consumers go silent.

I see myself in total darkness.

I am alone hearing nothing but the sounds of my footsteps,

And the meows of hungry stray street cats,

Covered with the ashes of daily existence.

A thin and hungry cat approaches me,

She meows in despair and starvation,

Begging me for her bite of the day (or the week?)

I throw her a small piece of my sandwich.

She picks it up and runs away

To celebrate her temporary gains!

She leaves me alone wondering in darkness:

What reflects the reality of this city more

The 'fancy' neighborhoods I saw earlier,

Or the starving cats in the darkness?

June 8, 2014”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“The Eternal Friends

The three eternal friends, Time, Loneliness and Death, met at a small old café.

'You won’t last long. I will destroy you at the end,' said Time to Loneliness.

'And I will drain every minute and every second in your life.

Nothing will give you joy no matter what you do or how hard you try,' Loneliness responded.

After a short silence, once Death pronounced its sentence, Loneliness vanished and Time passed.

June 20, 2013”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“The Vase

The bouquet of flowers in the vase is two weeks old,

Or maybe a little older?

They are all wilted and dead now.

The scene is much like a mass grave,

Each flower has died in its own way.

The first flower—the biggest in the bunch—

Opened as widely as it could.

Each of its petals dried up.

The second one seemed as though it had tried

To bend itself towards the end of her life,

It broke her neck as she dried in silence.

The third flower tried to close after opening,

As she felt her life was coming to an end.

She died closed.

The fourth flower looked like she had started to sacrifice herself

For the sake of everyone else around her.

She, too, dropped most of her petals,

And died naked, except for one or two petals.

The fifth flower didn’t have time to open,

Or perhaps she realized the futility of opening up in such a tight vase.

She also wilted and dried prematurely and half-opened.

The sixth flower died very young,

Before having a chance to bloom.

The colorless water in the vase is now yellowish and dead.

Yes, waters die too.

For colorless waters, death can be colorful.

April 12, 2013”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]