Every time I think of 9/11

I see burning flesh

Dripping off the bones

Of Iraqi children in Fallujah

Now Gaza

I tend to memorialize the forgotten

The collateral damage

Eclipsing our unpunished crimes

Maybe it’s because I’m a numbers guy?

Kanazi speaks and performs with an urgency that commands your attention; his voice is forceful, lawyer-like in the way he pleads for justice. His conviction of opinion may offend the faint-hearted. Needless to say, Kanazi is never at a loss for words.

“I write a lot of angry pieces,” he confesses. “All you gotta do is turn on CNN to write a poem. Thanks to our government and media, I’m never devoid of creativity.”

While Kanazi uses his past growing up as the “the brownest thing going in a small western Massachusetts white Catholic town,” for inspiration, he wasn’t always so comfortable talking about his Palestinian heritage.

“Look, Arab Americans usually go two routes,” he says. “It’s either I am Arab hear me roar, or I want nothing to do with you people.” Remi was the latter. “I wanted McDonald’s, I wanted Coke, I was the fat kid who didn’t care and I rejected my Palestinian ancestry.”

Remi began singing another tune when he connected with Arabs in college. “When I talked to some of these people, there was an enormous feeling of embarrassment, of not knowing where I came from, and that pushed me to find out.”

After a brief stint as a business major at the University of Massachusetts, Remi moved to New York. He didn’t begin writing until about four months before 9/11. Following 9/11, his creative output only intensified:

“The backlash against Arabs, the mischaracterizations, the vitriol, it made me want to write,” he says.

Kanazi, who grew up politically conservative, began independently reading and researching, delving in progressive politics, Edward Said and “anything I could get my hand son.” He saw Def Jam poetry on Broadway and was drawn to Suheir Hammad and Carlos Andres Gomez. “It blew my mind how spoken word was so progressive and interlinked with socially conscious hip hop; it moved me in a way I wanted to emulate,” he says.

Activism drives his work. “I used to write op-eds, but I felt the youth was yearning for voices, for artists to say ‘this is me, and I’ not afraid.’”

In 2005 Remi started his poetry website PoeticInjustice.net and began booking shows.

“The first show I ever did was at a Palestinian Relief Fundraiser at St. Georges church in New Jersey. Natalie Hundall and Maysoon Zayid were reading that night.” The event organizer-Remi’s brother’s friend’s mom- read some of his poems off PoeticInjustice and asked him to perform.

“They said I would perform for ten min, and I was so mad at myself for agreeing, thinking I was gonna make an ass of myself. I was shaking like crazy but then I did it and it was the best feeling ever.”

Six months later, the idea for Poets for Palestine started. An anthology of poems edited by Kanazi, it unites poets, spoken word artists, and hip-hop artists calling for humanity. Remi relied on open-call submissions and help from within the Arab American artistic community, eventually personally asking writers to submit their work. Networking within the Arab American community was key.

“There was and continues to be an immense amount of support from the Arab artistic community, which I know sounds funny because Arabs are so well known for their dividedness.” He laughs. “Everyone gave their time for free or did it for dirt cheap. If it wasn’t for the Arab American community I don’t think I’d still be a poet.”

Remi’s maternal grandparents are from Yafeh, his paternal relatives are from Haifa. They all fled to Lebanon in 1948, during Al- Nakba, the creation of Israel.

In 2007, Remi went back to Palestine for the first time, visiting the land his ancestors dreamed of returning to. “You can read as much as you want but nothing can replace the experience of being in Palestine, feeling it, and connecting with people on the ground.” When he says that, you get the sense his mind is wandering back to a specific encounter and image.

Remi’s grandmother passed away in the summer. He credits her for influencing him as an adult, and for the love and pride she instilled in him. “She was always talking abut Yafeh and wanting to return,” he says. “When I look back [at my younger self], I constantly feel, like, what the hell was wrong with me? The more you reject your roots when you’re younger, the more you actually come back to them when you’re older.”

Remi finished his fall U.S. tour last month. During performances, he talks about how PoetsforPalestine came together, but focuses more on his own poetry, performing ten to twelve poems per show.

“I tackle double standards, war and politics, but my main focus is Palestine, so I talk about what coexistence means, what justice means,” he says.

In the spring, Remi will head back to Palestine to teach a course as part of the Palestine Writing Workshop and will be participating in Palfest, a yearly literature festival in Palestine.

“I’m a little afraid because Israel has been jailing Palestinians-especially non violent outspoken ones,” he says with a nervous chuckle. “But I’m looking forward to it.”

I ask Remi if, like many Palestinians, he prays to God for freedom from oppression. His answer is, not surprisingly, political:

“In a post 9-11 world people want to say, ‘Oh it’s fundamentalist or religious zealousm, but when you look at Palestine, it’s occupier vs occupied, colonzier vs colonized. The problem is disposition, apartheid.”

I’ve touched a nerve.

“It’s ridiculous when people say Jews and Arabs can’t live together because of Hamas,” he says. “Israel didn’t reject Hamas because it was religious- before Hamas there was Fatah, the PLO, secularism, the problem clearly isn’t religion.”

Remi’s poem “Coexist” is a tribute to Palestinian resistance, as the only thing that keeps the people from becoming extinct.

I don’t want to coexist
Not like good guys and bad guys in True Lies and propaganda
Put on blackface as cab drivers or deli owners in racist comedies
Not bomb Dunkin Donuts with my Kuffiyeh
Fist pound Fox News
Or let you steal my food and call it Israeli salad
I won’t Mess with the Zohan
Or let him turn the rocks of Palestinian children into balloon animals
While Israeli soldiers snipe our children’s heads, shoulders, knees, and stomachs
Hollywood snipes ears of young ones with lovable tales of blue and white heroes
I am not looking for your approval

The last lines read:

I don’t want to coexist!
I want to exist as a human being
And justice will take care of the rest!

They’re wrinkles
On the face of history.
History is a tired woman.
History stands by the side of the road,
Her cheap necklaces toll for you.

These old scars,
Rock against people,
Time against more time,
Cannot be kissed away.

After my body
Has stopped complaining
At the end of the rope,
After your feet enter the slippers
Brought to you by another woman,
The rock will still be telling
The same story to itself.
The ending never changes.

Implacable but steady,
The city never stops blushing,
As if it has an amusing secret.

I think it’s adding footsteps
To its scrapbook of desecrations.

No one righteous,
And no one to blame.
We have forgotten its loves
And big and little deaths,
And it “forgets” to bless us on our way.

Then I washed my hair,
Made myself prettier than even Fadi can,
Lay across our bed with my feet pointing east,
Hands across the body
Where everything began.

We made them up inside our heads,
Inside this bed.

Now you’re walking down the road,
Your top buttons unbuttoned,
Your tie and face askew.

Now you can’t enter.
Now.

Forgive me my cowardice,
My poppy mouth,
That bent down
Searching out a kiss.
I’ve been rewarded richly for this.
I have the freedom
Only loneliness can affix
Like a medal to breasts run dry.

Tablecloth violated
By sweet little drops
And spills.

Until the moment
Of no more,
No more.

A simmering,
Singing tongue
Resting behind the teeth.

Then it goes,
And the lights
Are dimmed in the restaurant.

The waitress
Slides out out of her pump
And inspects her tired toes.

The cook rubs his forehead
Where the hairnet
Hugged him too tightly.

The sleeping dumpster
Quietly digests
The remains of the night.

The way back is long,
Through puddles and cobblestone.
The way back is so long.

You know what? Just get over here.

I’ve been thinking… Remember those days? When we moved seamlessly through life, often asking ourselves if it could possibly be any better? If the passersby, the colossal statue we shared with them and the same one we fought over, were true to reality? Was it merely an attempt of evading a series of conventional bores? Or did we really come across love in its most infant form?

And just about…here! I usually trip over one of two magnets in my head. Crossing field lines I jerk irregularly in a bind set by gravity. Rest assured that this is only a metaphor describing the deformation of my train of thought; call it a train wreck. For some reason I cannot describe it otherwise. The allegories we subscribe to as dreamers… do they restrain us from arriving at the ultimate epiphany? Train wreck. Ha. Was it merely an attempt of evading a series of conventional bores? I hope not, I’ve given into that particular allegory long ago.

Train wreck.

Have we based this value on nothing? Train wreck.

The allegories we subscribe to as dreamers… do they restrain us from arriving at the ultimate epiphany? The generosity of your existence is unbreakable. Lay out in front of me only what you can provide and only what I desire.

A walkway. A pendulum of skin and bones, fueled by anticipation. Another metaphor, sorry. Train wreck.

A life that’s a feast fit for a troll,
A grain of sand that’s bursting with the world,
- All the things you say you want.

Don’t hurry, love, to claim the throne,
The last son always gets it anyway.
Don’t eat the apple with too-shiny skin,
Or strain to see a glimpse of goddess-flesh.

Some joys we need protection from and more.

The back of your head contains sweetness I’m afraid will spill,
I’m always chasing it in a crowd.
It’s like a high a young, toothless woman mumbles about,
When she accepts an offer of a cigarette and remembers better days.

She has never known sheets so white,
She will envy me as I’m flying toward you.
I have given her another gift – an empty beer bottle
That joins others in a clinking chorus in her bag.

I’ve stained the rim with lipstick I mark you with,
The ghost of a kiss is all that’s acceptable here.
You kiss me with your eyes in the street,
And other men I walk by do much more.

I would like to take all these people and wring them out;
Or make their eyes boil and burst in their heads.
They will run down like egg-whites, their fake tears,
For things they don’t know enough to be sorry for.

They’re lucky I don’t track dirt to my bed.
They’re lucky my curses are like matted fur.

I will shake my futile fist
Or I will rip my yellow hair;
It won’t matter, it won’t come,
Once it is no longer there.

Someone shuffled in the night
Like a clumsy incubus.
Overturning this and that,
Chasing cats under the bed.

I will find a yellow tooth
Stranded in a smiling wound;
It’s too sweet and it’s too trite,
It was pleading for a bite.

It’s a long way to travel -
From a hospital drop-off lane in Gaza or Kinglake
Through fiber optic cable.

They’re shuffling their feet
On someone’s living room threshold.
They’re ruthlessly beating dust out of their jackets,
And sniffing the cooking,
Wondering if lemon juice will do it.

Ya Allah, they are tired.
Their blisters are scabbing over.
Their push-up bras spoon up rivulets of sweat
Under the laving lights
Of some studio or another,
Like goblets of wire and lace.

They are standing near the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour,
Considering how a bullet
Could be so thoughtless
As to rip a rabbit hole through the sidewalk
And beckon to their daughter.

It’s not their daughter,
What the winter soil fell casually pregnant with.

People in the news
Are wrapped in the yellow of taxis
Speeding away from the curb.
Wrapped in a baby blanket
Slash
Burial shroud.

They are asking the impossible.
They should really just go back
To shooting cute animals (on camera, habibti!)
In their backyards.
They should win lotteries and tennis sets,
Not a visit from a couple police officers,
Their faces like twin Vermeers in the porchlight
At one a.m.

They howl for you to join their ranks
Like zombies
From a shopping mall parking lot.

They are perniciously beautiful
Like meteors fizzling.
You want to be among them,
In the airlessness, above everything you’ll ever know,
Slamming into the waiting arms of the atmosphere.

They are immortal,
Blood and starlight in their hair.
They travel first-class on interstellar waves
And the muscular backs of cosmic ghosts,
When the Sun has already swallowed the chattering Earth.

I have weathered and leathered my hide,
I’m just a wraith now, love,
Wraiths don’t bite.
My teeth are glittering in a glass
Like jewels from a woman’s neck.

God, how I hate the blood in this town,
How pale it looks, how thick it runs,
Like cream of tomato stoppering a throbbing vein.
Not that I would know.

I cannot will my smoky fingers back to flesh,
I’m hypnotized by my night-light and video games.
The prayer is calling, the cock is crowing,
But I’m going outside and lighting a cigarette.

I squint at the dark through eyes you kiss.

Raise a cross above your head,
So I scream and writhe on the floor.
It’s always the men in the business suits
You must watch out for.
Oh do I ever know.

My rare rose cries petals for you,
And my body of air
Weeps wool and cashmere,
Like a coat rack in a good restaurant.

It’s all I could ever do -
Lie awake afterward and watch over you.
A car passing, a dog’s bark,
In the darkest patch of night – a stray star.