#Omar Sakr

[iphigeniacomplex]

[Transcript:

This Is Not Meant for You

I tore this page from somebody else's book. It was written in Arabic so I found a man to lend me his tongue. Left the page splotched with his thickness & the following words: this was never meant for you. Your grandfather made that choice & you live with the ashes of it black on your teeth. The Uber driver asked me where the local mosque was real casual like he didn't already know I had it folded up in a square & carried it everywhere. It was one of those nondescript places with a plaque, the kind you need to get close to read the inscription: this is not meant for you. I tried once to swallow a prayerful palace but got gum stuck on minarets—these stones can't be hidden in a body. Everyone knows where they are. The driver releases me onto Sydney Road, a replica of home, all the Leb bread, smoke, & men. I try not to see my father in them but he is there no matter where I look, laughing with the ease of a man never pierced by a minaret. In each gaping mouth I witness an old disaster, a rank tooth, a cavity holding captive my name. I kneel by the circle of my almost-fathers not in worship but to listen to what they have folded in their pockets: a language a sea a boy never kissed a son never loved a country that wasn't meant for them but which they carry everywhere.

]

Omar Sakr, The Lost Arabs

[firstfullmoon]

Omar Sakr, “Every Day”

[apoemaday]

Every Day

by Omar Sakr

Every day I say a prayer for Palestine And every day a dog runs away with it Vanishing down an alley, tail wagging To benefit who knows which wretch. I tell myself it doesn’t matter who receives The gift of my kindness. Such lovely lies We bestow upon ourselves. Sometimes I am the dog fleeing with a bastard’s Love clenched in my slavering jaw. Sometimes I am the one curled at the end Of an alley, blessed by the unexpected Warmth of a snuffling mouth telling Me I am not forgotten. Every day I say a prayer for Palestine.

[houseofpurplestars]

Refusal in the genocide by Omar Sakr

He walked to the gate

Accelerant in hand.

I can’t make this beautiful

I hope you understand.

His voice was clear.

He tried to light

The spark of his life

Several times.

I’m stuck on his fingers

On the catch

On the flash

On the free

On Falastin

Screaming

I don’t need a poem

I need a fire extinguisher

But oh god

Nothing can quench this light.

[geryone]

“A Song of Love” by Omar Sakr from We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage

[goreprofonde]

My father was for the longest time a plastic smile locked under the bed. Before that, he was whatever came out of my mother’s mouth. He was I’ll tell you when you’re older. He was winding smoke, a secret name. That fucking Turk. He was foreign word, distant country. I gave myself up to her hands which also fathered; they shaped me into flinch. Into hesitant crouch, expectant bruise. Into locked door, CIA black site- my body unknown and denied to any but the basest men. I said beat my father into me please, but he couldn’t be found. And when he was, I wished he remained lost. He blamed himself for the men I want.

- Omar Sakr, to be a son.

[llovelymoonn]

omar sakr son of sin

kofi

[scatteredprayerbeads]

Posted by Omar Sakr on Dec 11, 2023

[artemisiatridentata]

Tweet by poet Omar Sakr, in response to a tweet about the WHO describing Al-Shifa Hospital as a “death zone”, as 25 heroic healthcare workers were trying to keep nearly 300 patients, including 32 babies, alive under horrific conditions.

Tweet reads: “I would once again like to invite you all to stop invoking history's judgement. We are alive and capable of condemning it now. We must do so with a clarity and conviction sufficient enough to bore into time—that's what *makes* history. Us. Now.”

[confusedbyinterface]

Guys good news if you have piss poor reading comprehension you can always get a job working for the Murdoch press!

[gustaving]

[beguines]

Omar Sakr, Non-Essential Work

[firstfullmoon]

Omar Sakr, “On Finding the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in Dante’s Inferno,” in Non-Essential Work

[thoughtportal]

[edwordsmyth]

Omar Sakr

[a-queer-seminarian]

Poems of solidarity & love for Palestine

Palestine has been under siege for months now — and before that, it’s been subjected  to Israeli violence funded by Western nations for decades.

As the suffering continues, it can be tempting to shut down, to look away — but it is key to our own humanity, key to our solidarity with these fellow human beings, that we not look away; that we do not give up hope or stop speaking out.

Poetry can nourish us when we fear we might burn out. So in the coming days I’ll be sharing some poems centered around solidarity — poems to keep us going until Palestine is free.

Let’s start with a piece by Arab Australian poet Omar Sakr, who is not Palestinian but who has been using his platform and his art to stand with Palestine. Follow him on Twitter for the incredible poems he’s been posting there. This poem he posted in January challenges the idea of solidarity when it is watered down into a distant idea, rather than passionate, vulnerable love.

“Looking away in the genocide” by Omar Sakr

I have, too many times to count. There’s no anaesthetic left. Do you understand? Nothing To blunt the pain. I’m no hero, This isn’t brave, it’s a blank page My pen and blood. In my heart I have a stadium of dead children I swear it’s full every day yet Another is added. It isn’t the dead I look away from, it’s the debt Owed to the living, dragging down My eyelids, turning stay into flee Turning love into solidarity Something bearable, distant, a politic. I’m trying to see and not scream. Therein lies the problem.