aqsaqedas

[aqsaqedas]

There's a hunger

Feasting like a forest fire

In my heart

[aqsaqedas]

woven from the deepest levels of personal dysfunctional chaos:

threads which stem from the fibres of my own fucking being,

despair gave way to loneliness, loneliness gave way to death;

trapped within my own grave, rotting from within, decaying.

[aqsaqedas]

“Beirut of the West”

They said, “Beirut, the Paris of the East,”

As if splendor must be named through the beast

That once drew maps with blood and gold,

Claiming hearts it never could hold.

But what is Paris, if not Beirut's shade?

A pale reflection of the fire we made.

Before the shells and foreign plans,

Before the puppet strings of Western hands.

Your jets screamed over Martyrs' Square,

Not with grief, but market shares.

You came not with olive, but with oil,

And left us buried in broken soil.

And still they call it praise, a gift-

To name us with imperialist drift.

As if beauty here must wear your crown,

And not its own, once passed down.

So say it right, if names must twist:

Paris is the Beirut of the West-

A copy, faded, of a city blessed,

Then burned, by those who claimed they helped.

[aqsaqedas]

currently reading A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry, and i can’t stop turning the pages. this anthology—edited by cole stewart—brings together generations of poets, from mahmoud darwish’s haunting memories to dareen tatour’s fierce urgency.

each poem lands like a small revelation:

darwish captures loss and longing so vividly you almost feel the weight of every word.

ashraf fayadh reminds you that writing can be its own kind of resistance.

naomi shihab nye blends sorrow and hope in a way that feels like home and exile all at once.

i love how the book moves between voices you’ve heard before and new ones like fatena al ghorra and mustafa abu sneineh. they write about olive trees and checkpoints, kitchens and crowded cities—everything feels immediate and real.

reading this feels like standing in a field where each poem is a blade of grass insisting on growing through the cracks. it’s raw and beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking, but always necessary.

if you want a collection that makes you rethink what poetry can do, give this one a try.

[aqsaqedas]

Unfortunately said situations are the ones that make money

[aqsaqedas]

Literary Cannibalism: When Texts Consume Texts

Kamel Daoud's The Meursault Investigation is a powerful example of literary cannibalism. It rewrites Albert Camus' The Stranger from the perspective of the brother of "the Arab," the nameless man killed by Meursault in Camus' novel. Daoud gives him a name — Musa — and restores his humanity.

This is literary cannibalism as resistance. The original text is not just borrowed from but interrogated, deconstructed, and reassembled. It becomes a tool for reclaiming erased voices and exposing the silences of colonial narratives.

Other examples in this tradition include:Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which retells Jane Eyre from Bertha's perspective.

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes, which reframes The Iliad through the voices of women.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, which explores the minor characters in Hamlet.

Literary cannibalism is not just homage; it is often an act of critique, reclamation, and transformation.

[aqsaqedas]

I'm tired.. I've been trying to reach people to help me with my campaign for 3 days now.. There's no more flour in our house.. I have 4 children and my wife. If anyone would like to help us..

The other solution is to go to the death traps, the American-Israeli aid distribution centers, and I might return or die. Even now my children cry when I tell them about this. They are afraid that I will die and not return to them.

I know my campaign is for education and rent but I can't even afford to buy food anymore.

This is our campaign.

[aqsaqedas]

[aqsaqedas]

[aqsaqedas]

[aqsaqedas]

[aqsaqedas]

Sometimes it feels like you've lived your whole life in a house that's always a little bit on fire. Like it's usually just in one room and you make sure to wet the walls around it so it doesn't spread and that usually works. You were expected to take more responsibility over fire containment when you were like seven because it's not like you can expect your parents to always be 100% on guard about making sure the whole house doesn't catch fire, and you figure that's just how things are like.

And sometimes as a kid you visit your friends' homes and some of then whisper to you - grimacing with embarrassment - about how they're not supposed to tell anyone this, but there's a whole room in their house that's currently on fire. And you're like yeah it's ok I'm not supposed to tell people about the way our house is a little bit on fire all the time, too. And then you visit some other friend's house and there's no trace of fire anywhere, and you think "wow, these people are really good at hiding their house fire."

And one day you show up to work like "hey sorry I'm late, I forgot to wet the walls before going to bed last night and my whole house burned down", and you're startled by the way people react, acting like that must be the worst thing that has ever happened to you. And you're just like "chill, it's been years since the last time this happened, and it wasn't even that bad this time", and that just makes people more shocked, acting like that's the weirdest and most concerning thing they've ever heard anyone say, which only confuses you more.

And then someone tries to explain to you that people aren't supposed to have an ongoing house fire. Most people actually never experience a house fire in their lives. Like not even once. Not even a little bit. The normal amount of having your house be currently on fire is zero.

[aqsaqedas]

Me but the entire English language

[aqsaqedas]

As someone who tries to be informed about current events at most times, I can not recommend

[aqsaqedas]

[aqsaqedas]

If, before you slipped from this world

You found the time you always longed for

To write a poem, to paint a picture

I would have made my body a canvas

And carried it until we met again.

[aqsaqedas]

When I die

Don't bury me in a garden of death

And do not burn my body as will my soul

Instead let me be the fertilizer

To the plants that will make

One last feast among friends

Or bury me below a tree

So I may give strength to fruit

For generations to come

Don't let my death be a waste

Let it be joyful