if you look into the clouds, you’ll see that hell is our only inheritance.
Poetry | Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi | Issue 45
And To Keep “Vibrant”
in the end we're losing to our dreams, false textures of civilization dreaming up a new guise. “the bus is crowded.” is our party slogan. what does reality owe to the carnal? from orange segment to the receptionist’s mouth: this peeled immensity perfected by the hole. in the end I said having our feelings met is an aperitif we can only find in museums. and we went there: those god-rays of light in hanged paintings but God is the material of another epoque. downstream a purely accusative light, dribbling consonants across a conceptual poem like DRUMS across our heartbeat: sweating in a basement hearts sidechained to the clatter of our teeth. DANCING to crumbling nations like a torn up petal no fjord can partition: waves crash-/ boycotted soda stream. and now speech again, cut in the trade embargo where trees named US in return.
in the end we're only aroused by low-income housing: in the end there was only one vowel and we kissed it all the time. the rhyme, the song, the cat, the call we found ourselves in the middle of, the chant, the percussed little stutter of keyboard before we reached this part. in the end I listened to the “pleasant hum of industry” ambient across some new nothing we had bought. nothing with hollandaise draped all over it on Sunday. nothingness tented all over the stereo field. Nothingness and the Windsor hum.
AND ROOMMATES AND GINGER AND LAUGHING AND SYMPHONY
in the end, doom. in the end vodka, vibrating in the whisky glass beside the sofa. in the end rum and coke in the wine cup.
AND LISTENING AND SHARING AND SYMPHONY. no one wanted this. some of us came to it tired. some of us are still listening. does the voice speak still? has A voice become THE voice yet or are we waiting for larger words to conspire?
I’m writing the great American novel from Lisbon. I’m writing the great American novel on the banks of the Mekong delta. I’m writing the great American novel on my lunch break in a factory in Malaysia soon dragged back to my 9-5 because we are the lucky ones. if you look into the clouds, you’ll see that hell is our only inheritance. impressionist waves and brushstrokes of heavy rain against the god rays of another epoque. in the end all this unending. in the end this hunger.
AND ROOMMATES AND SHARING AND LAUGHING AND SYMPHONY
the danger after the "siege" of, the bomb siren only a white page can drown. the sliced ginger burbling in hot oil, pissing off tired roommates with pungent smell. we’re still sitting mid-sentence because we're just scaffold, doomed to listen to rodents grind their teeth against live wire.
in the end the book accomplished US. in the end economic formality. the book was an original place but we were late there.
a death identical to insurrection and listening. and sadness. and symphony. a minor chord brushing the velvet on the gift box.
in the end a sand filled hotel room.
in the end YOU! YES YOU! who is your god? who pays the dollar behind YOUR dollar huh?
in the end the eye comes equipped with visions, counted in prospects of antiquity. to think for centuries we held fire hostage to rhythm.
in the end an AS to mirror words across
illusions of homes in endless cities. illusions of hands in the collapse of fiction. illusions of friendship in ginger. AND LAUGHING. AND ROOMMATES. AND SYMPHONY. AND OLIVE OIL
stone AT wall
nothing AT all
a self on incline down the Freudian-slippery recess in a back alley tagging “Oedipus as God”.
in the end I’m spilling through the book, blocking the view of the painting. the longer I bang my head against the painting the more my face appreciates in value.
in the end the word contributes itself to indifference. to repetition: a general cavity with its own internal relations to the lexicon. if I verweile doch, if I horizon line if I constitute human being. if I politics of eros if I Celan’s death fugue if I the kitchen table as a function of fluourescent light:
pitch-blades of copper chime before that urgent meeting of all five senses.
at the party with new people and no no no not writing ABOUT money writing money ITSELF.
sensed it. cigarette AT wall. nothing AT all. sat in it silently. showered in cold water -HIS ARMS NOT MINE. resting on our heartrate: pomegranates and ginger and laughing and symphony attending our altar.
tears again rolling down white noise. spinning blades of the portable AC on the portable pillow stained with midsummer cum. some of us leave some of us die. some of us are a month’s rent behind some of us get a second chance at love. same person same room same jeans with sun-kissed kitten sleeping on top. "Heavy Flow" insistent on the OH LORDs of it all. armed with sustainable belief in destruction. handing out maps for the safest toilets in the city.
sensed it, cigarette at hand. caught in jealousy. met you in Orange Pekoe. sensed you weeping somewhere. teeth softly pulsating over salty blood. broken skin of the palm when in grade school we could just run hard enough. the amount of dirt it took for us to slide. of course we sensed it.
someone afraid cried in the SWANA of my strife
we make eye contact breathing at high page altitudes
at our minimal wherebouts
in the end flipping pages tirelessly
in the end this hermetic text
in the end
and afterwards
more waiting
until the page is USLest
a regiment of all men. commemorating one single day that reminds another. i become acquainted with a trashcan while waiting for the bus. bite my solids off. verb all uses of "Stomach" in ur pocket notebook. no worries. no pressure for ur truths to resound. just sit calmly by the curve of every- thing. i'm... well... in it. small portions. lots of butter. then an excusable wrong turn finds a sour-candy shop. cant mistake the staircase that informs the wall. warm ur extremities then burn ur sugars off. new car. fully financed. no luggage. no yearning. this has not been metaphor. u are clairvoyant in the cult of the familiar surmise. [a beat]. then the hostile onset of white flowers.
Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi (They/Them) is a queer, Iranian born, Toronto-based Poet, Writer and Translator. They are the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Prize and the author of 9 chapbooks of poetry. Their fifth poetry book "Book of Interruptions" is forthcoming with Wolsak and Wynn Fall 2025.
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