“I Ran” and Other Poems by Y. Khoshsirat

Yazdan Khoshsirat is a 24-year-old teacher hailing from Tehran, Iran. With a profound passion for artistic expression, Yazdan’s poetry has been published on the pages of Al Zahra University’s official English magazine on three occasions and once in the English publication “Poetry for mental health” and also forthcoming publications in the Indian “Wingless dreamer” and American “Muse-Pie Press”. Driven by a commitment to human rights and women’s rights, Yazdan believes that poetry holds the transformative power to amplify essential voices and advocate for change

I ran

I can’t write
any good poems
Or my poems
any good
when I’m happy.
I’m sad now.
Was in traffic for an hour
Then sat down
Behind my fake brown desk
working on a fake frowned
day of Tehran
Is a toxic reak
Let me break it
Down.

First when you
Get born into
This city of goo
It matters if
You’re a Man
Or a woe man.
Life here get’s
Drastically harder
If you want to let your hair
to see the sun
Foresee the sons
Most want their mothers
Sisters
Lovers
To live and dress
The only way they should
And that is
The way they want.

Seconds passed here
Feel shorter yet longer
I’m writing this
To my younger and older selves
Stretch my hand
Get to the shelves
Of the dusted memories
Of the ones who left.
Migrated to be exact
Cause of so many reasons
They had and Hadn’t.
Quite a paradox.

Last but not least
I paid my weekly wage
To appoint a therapist
So the oppressed rage
I can express.
Fine an shawl
Problems
Hunt Tehran
And its people.

So run.
As fast as you can.
He ran
She ran
We ran
I ran
Iran.

Coerced

As I write
Let me
Try to hide.
eye don’t want myself
to see me.
A boredom hide
Wears me.
A peak of silence
Bears me.

My core is rushing
Neon hairs blushing
I am not
Meant to be here.

Putting in numbers and pulling out
Numbers of problems of
The violet blue edges of
My workplace’s workplace of
Adding capital of
Deducting agency.

The core
A child
So wild, trying
To burst out of me.
To Draw the sketches
Dance around the edges
Act the life
Music the muse
Art the art.

I don’t want a 9 to 5
But my landlord needs it.
Although I have to live with my parents,
The future seeks it.
I don’t want a 9 to 5
But I need to express
I like to buy stuff to tool, escapism
Video games, a new polar express
Set a new friend, an app with an orange sweater
to kindly and dearly show me
how’s the weather.

I don’t want it
But I’m stuck.
My spirit and love of being
Is draining my existence
It’s locked.

What a funny place to be at
being a forest’s only bird.
My veins unveil
Fitting in in into the body
Of a suicidal money-making hobby.

Sour spring

.right to left from write I Words
Words of all my stolen rights.

Cause my world’s now upside down.
Light.
From
Escape
Here
Days
even

under the world that beings be
I write my words in Pomegranate blood as the red floods in to my veins used to be the tree sticks flourished with fruits and flowers
now next to the river Styx I sit and write of all the nothingness I bare foot on the lost souls lost life lost.

Oh mother Oh friends
I miss your joyous laughs
No mother No friends
this unbeing I can’t last alas as much as I scrimmage the past I’m stuck here to be the queen of no one and nothing.
Living is what I’m good at not being queen.
oh mother
I feel you wonder and how you wander around Every step you take a pomegranate falls down from below.
I miss the tenderness of your sweet touch
Oh mother Oh gods
save me from Hades’ clutch.

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