Musings from Spotted Minds

Pictures of my father!

In Days Gone By by Hamdi Erestreams

Painful that late Saturday
Heading north by train some years ago in May
Their eyes met in such an accidental way
On that late Saturday
Years and years of longings went by
She looked the same
though her eyes seemed beaten by time
faint memories awoke
Heavily, yet they never spoke
Of olden moments somewhere
Of olden joys at the town square
He left his seat…
walked away…
to flee the beat..
He hates memories that hurt and eat

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Hamdi Erestreams is an EFL teacher from Tunisia. He has a BA in English language and literature and in 1991 he received his Proficiency Certificate from Brighton University. He is interested in translation, test construction, media and literary studies,and poetry. Read another poem of his on the Teaching Village blog.

I am excited that Hamdi has decided to be a guest poet. Hamdi Erestreams is a passionate educator who has been teaching students English in Tunisia for over 12 years. He speaks three languages fluently, Arabic, French, and English. Hamdi visits an Internet cafe weekly to connect with other educators and access resources. I met Hamdi on Facebook.

I will be reading this poem at the So Going Places event this Saturday in Leipzig, Germany. I have included an audio recording if you want to listen to the poem.

A Brown Cinderella

He says, “Your skin is like honey against my pale, freckled body.”
She says, “I'm brown.”
He frowns, tilts her chin,
“Your eyes are chocolate delights.”
She says, “Like my skin, they're brown.”
He can't understand why she is reluctant to receive his loving praises
After all he’s Prince Charming, John Smith, her white knight in shiny armor
And she’s a brown Cinderella, Pocahontas, his dark-skinned amor  
He believes these are the insecurities of being a girl
Because he is a foreigner to her world

As he holds her tiny hands
She wonders what metaphors he equates with the other parts of her body
What he calls the calluses on her fingers           
Where she held the broom she swept with daily
In the rooms of the people of his society
Or if he thinks the cracked skin of her knees where she scrubbed their floors is sexy 
Or perhaps he adores her coarse feet
She received when she could only afford cheap over quality

Is her Prince Charming blinded by a fantasy?
Another opportunity to be the white knight rescuing the dark-skinned beauty
Because for her this will never be a fairy tale
The clock will always strike 12
And she will always be reminded she is brown, when he sees honey
And the clock strikes 12
When his mother says she’s after his money
And the clock strikes 12
When his friends equate brown with poor and ugly
And the clock strikes 12
When his father asks why her people are so dirty
And the clock strikes 12
When his grandparents wonder why her parents are so tacky
And the clock strikes 12
When the land she calls home says swim back to your own country
But by 12 he sleeps and dreams of honey skin
He believes he can kiss away society’s sins
And turn this dark-skinned temptress into his princess

© 2010 by Shelly Sanchez

Here's the image that was recently published in the so social club e mini mag!

I will be reading this poem at the So Going Places event this Saturday in Leipzig, Germany. I have included an audio recording if you want to listen to the poem.

The Woman in the Mirror

I’m facing my naked tragedy in his full-length mirror
Recalling his whisper, “You’re beautiful, so beautiful.”
Recalling his hands cupping my face, his eyes searching my eyes as he asks, “Don’t you realize how beautiful you are?”
I think not really
Give myself pretend plastic surgery
Stretch my cheeks back
Suck in my stomach
Grab the excess fat
Pinch the flab off my thighs
I deny his translation of me, I think ugly
Place my hands on the glass to get pass this image
But the glass holds me back, reminds me that the woman in the mirror is not me but a distortion from society
The misconception that little girls have to grow up to look like Barbie
An image reiterated by the women in magazines, movies, and tv
The perception that the ugly duckling needs plastic surgery
The deception that physical perfection is self-actualization
We go to extremes to be beautiful
And it doesn’t make any sense
When I watched my best friend starve herself till she weighed 88 pounds
Heard another friend throw up in the bathroom till she nearly killed herself
And found too many empty laxative bottles in my sister’s car
“Don’t we realize how beautiful we are?”
I already know the reply from searching my own eyes
As I place my hands to walk through the mirror,
But my cheek feels the glass
And I wonder if I will get pass society’s distortion of me

An interesting note about the movie title is that it comes from a line in the poem, "Eloisa to Abelard," by Alexander Pope. The poem is based on these two lovers' real life tragedy, which was documented in letters. 

According to Wikipedia, the poem is based on the:

"12th-century story of Héloïse's illicit love for, and secret marriage to, her teacher Pierre Abélard, perhaps the most popular teacher and philosopher in Paris, and the brutal vengeance her family exacts when they castrate him, even though the lovers had married. After the assault, and even though they have a child, Abélard enters a monastery and bids Eloisa do the same. She is tortured by the separation, and by her unwilling vow of silence — arguably a symbolic castration — a vow she takes with her eyes fixed on Abélard instead of on the Christian cross (line 116). Years later, she reads Abélard's Historia Calamitatum (History of my Misfortunes), originally a letter of consolation sent to a friend, and her passion for him reawakens. This leads to the exchange of four letters between them, in which they explore the nature of human and divine love in an effort to make sense of their personal tragedy, their incompatible male and female perspectives making the dialogue painful for both."

You can read the poem here and the letters between the two lovers here.