"For Women of Afghanistan"

by: Sheema Kalbasi

Back | Home

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 body's 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 woman'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 curved and curved
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.

Top