Val has been with me since I decided to officially launch; before we had any writers. I remember asking Val to be the Resident Artist for CCIQ Press; I was thrilled to have connected with a like minded individual and fellow Piscean woman. Val is a one of a kind human being that approaches life with a sense of advocacy; to always fight for injustice and commits her imagination to paper brilliantly. Val, houses an extremely authentic essence that constantly mesmerises me with her work.
Val, I LOVE you, I wish you nothing but a life of ultimate MIRTH!
Happy Birthday,
Rania
p.s. All of the Art & Poetry below is courtesy of Val!
There\’s a strange transfer with an aggressive rhythm
\”I know her.\”
An intimate speech that is stretched
In the subtle angle of hips
Where I lather myself with accusations
While I pivot about the polite apologies and
Offer to comfort the miscalculated courage
I consume the entire ceiling
So that I remain crowded while naked
I like to choke the quiet on my own
I will only leave, to visit that stillness
Did not accompany me there.
No one knows
That I hate the foreign tinge left behind
Or how I measure it against
The aging length as it trails off
I mumble about it in verse
Until I can look up again
And pretend it was all straight lines
While stuffing the ill composure in my pockets
I\’ll place it at the stillness, next visit.
\”They don\’t know me.\”
The intimate speech becomes a ritual
With fashionable tension
That is everything except insinuating
I can\’t relax inside of whispers
Can you hear me wishing?
I could mention the color
But I\’ve swallowed the season\’s parallel
It\’s the simple way of change
That victimizes my hiding in its tendency to reveal
Do not watch me in my prayer.
I don\’t know where to sit
I don\’t refuse the floor, only the pace
My plain speech is lukewarm
And will not answer to the watery parts of my home
I am barefaced and coiled in secret
I navigate the balance and separate at the threshold
–va.lī.sa.
Time practices with an amnesic ear and ages loudly
I remember when Winter started in whispers
Then lead to repeat a unique cultivation
Into the rare grace of Spring
I have no urgency to listen
To the tall tales of my attic
I remember how it feels to watch
The bellowing frolic of a glassed body
It moved to disguise the slant and oddities
That were shared only
To host the archaic definitions of my name
I refuse to write
If only to supplement a circling theme of question
Or to make speeches on the back of turning season
Or for the monotonous crowd that pretends to be thunder
Or for a list of refusals
Or……for you.
I\’ve seen the inner workings of a jaded midnight
And how it is mistaken for language of green acuteness
The consistency adjusts to a chasing tone
That is too loud to be absolute
It is split by damp hands and reduced to
Imitating the sequel of a budding sun
I cannot come here
To recite the cure of lines
Nor worship the crucified verse
I cannot be lured away by the rumor of outside
I find it strange there are poets
That hurry an honest night and the gasp of love
For the awful dream of being nailed to ancient walls
The cycle of waking keeps them just warm enough
And I am unsurprised by absence of a willing wait
I am longing for it all to break
When it is no longer poetry to shut myself away
When I no longer deliver postscripts
Into the lap of sarcasm
When this is not a pathetic effort
To hide the odd gesture of my stride
When I don\’t have to explain the footstep of answer
Or that is one of them.
I met myself once
At a water killed wall
The left side of the weather exposed me
And the profanity of my bare fall
Refused to be a disciplined scene
Proving my stone thin
Time has become dramatic history
I wish knew the call of a patient day
I wish I was a disciple of commonplace
I wish the flood of my hair was less revealing
I wish the lanes were more discovery than escape
I wish…
The stretch of my vanity was a quiet audience
But it is tide-held without secret
As I watch my hands trace
The myth of ripened canvas
…..and I cry
In frantic search of my veins in the mirror
I move counterclockwise and it wounds
Like the years had been hinged before they died
And I repeat that the absence is enough
I wrap inside vulnerable shade until it breaks
Because tomorrow is treading as if it has a choice
And the cruelty of it is not certainty
It is the fade-resistant night that is hosting a strange occasion
I can no longer nurse the narrative of skin
Nor tip toe along thresholds
That arouse the contempt of reflection
The silence grows in trying stride
And tests the grip of my voice
The story coils my outline tightly
I shift my eyes to re-write it
And prepare for a milder encounter
Sewing bedtime into the relief of my back
Releasing myself
Gently.
–va.lī.sa.
CCIQ Press 