When you have to visit a public bathroom, you usually find a line of  women, so you smile politely and take your place.  
Once it's your turn, you check for feet under the stall doors. Every  stall is occupied. Finally, a door opens and you dash in, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall.  
You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter, the wait has been so long you are about to wet your pants! The dispenser for the modern "seat covers"

(invented by someone's Mom, no doubt)  
is handy, but empty.  
You would hang your purse on the door hook, if there was one, but there isn't - so you carefully, but quickly drape it around your neck,

(Mom  
would turn over in her grave if you put it on the FLOOR!), yank down your pants, and assume

"The Stance."  
In this position your aging, toneless thigh muscles begin to
shake. You'd love to sit down, but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold

"The Stance."  
To take your mind off your trembling thighs, you reach for what you discover to be the empty toilet paper dispenser. In your mind, you can  hear your mother's voice saying, "Honey, if you had tried to clean the  seat, you would have KNOWN there was no toilet paper!"

Your thighs shake more.  
You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on yesterday
- the one that's still in your purse.

(Oh yeah, the purse around your  neck, that now, you have to hold up trying not to strangle yourself at  
the same time).

That would have to do. You crumple it in the
puffiest way possible.  
It's still smaller than your thumbnail.  
Someone pushes your door open because the latch doesn't work. The  door hits your purse, which is hanging around your neck in front of your  chest, and you and your purse topple backward against the tank of
the toilet!!!! 
"Occupied!" you scream, as you reach for the door, dropping your precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle on the floor, lose your  footing altogether, and slide down directly onto the

TOILET SEAT.
It is  wet of course. You bolt up, knowing all too well that it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life form on the uncovered seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper  
- not that there was any, even if you had taken time to try. You know that your mother would be utterly appalled if she knew,because, you're certain her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly dear, "You just don't KNOW what kind of diseases you could
get."  
By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, propelling a stream of water like a fire hose against the inside of the bowl that sprays a fine mist of water that covers your butt and runs down your legs and into your shoes. The flush  somehow sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto
the empty toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged in too.

At this point you give up.  
You're soaked by the spewing water and the wet toilet seat. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a gum wrapper you found in your pocket  and then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks.  
You can't figure out how to operate the faucets with the
automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past the line of women, still waiting. You are no longer able to smile  
politely to them. A kind soul at the very end of the line points out a piece of toilet paper trailing from your shoe. (Where was that when youNEEDED it??)

You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it in the  woman's  hand and tell her warmly,

 "Here honey, you just might need this."  
As you exit, you spot your hubby, who has long since entered, used and left the men's restroom.  
Annoyed, he asks, "What took you so long, and why is your purse hanging around your neck?"  
This is dedicated to women everywhere who deal with a public restrooms  
(rest??? you've got to be kidding!!).

It finally explains to the men what  
really does take us so long. It also answers their other commonly asked  questions about why women go to the restroom in pairs. It's so the other gal can hold the door, hang onto your purse and hand you Kleenex  
under the door! 

I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine. Pablo Neruda

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah son, do you know, do you know
where you came from?

From a lake with white
and hungry gulls.

Next to the water of winter
she and I raised
a red bonfire
wearing out our lips
from kissing each other's souls,
casting all into the fire,
burning our lives.

That's how you came into the world.

But she, to see me
and to see you, one day
crossed the seas
and I, to clasp
her tiny waist,
walked all the earth,
with wars and mountains,
with sands and thorns.

That's how you came into the world.

You come from so many places,
from the water and the earth,
from the fire and the snow,
from so far away you journey
toward the two of us,
from the terrible love
that has enchained us,
that we want to know
what you're like, what you say to us,
because you know more
about the world we gave you.

Like a great storm
we shook
the tree of life
down to the hiddenmost
fibers of the roots
and you appear now
singing in the foliage,
in the highest branch
that with you we reach

"...."

 

By Pablo Neruda

Il ne se passe pas une journée sans que je ne pense à elle,

Il ne se passe pas une activité qui ne me fasse penser à elle.

Il ne se passe pas un évènement qui ne me la rappelle,

Car sans elle, je serais comme un ange sans ailes.

Elle est la racine de la terre à ma vie,

Elle est la mine d'où je puise mon infini.

Elle m'a donné tout ce que j'ai pu donner,

Et elle m'a montré comment pardonner.

Je lui dois la vie, bien sûr,

Mais infiniment plus que ça, je vous l'assure !

Elle a fait que je suis l'être que je suis,

Car elle a su dire les mots au moment précis !

Maman, je vous aime.

Mère, je vous embrasse.

Mom, c'est pour vous ce poème,

Il était temps que je le fasse.

Je vous aime de tout mon cœur,

Et vous faite partie intégrale de mon bonheur.

Ma vie, mon souffle, je vous le dois,

Et vous dis merci des milliards de fois !

Je vous souhaite une très belle journée,

Mais la fête de mères devrait durer toute l'année.

Je vous souhaite bonheur, paix et santé,

Et vous envoi des baisers par milliers.

Je vous aime, maman.

Et en fermant les yeux, un instant,

Je revois tous ces tendres moments,

Qui me font vous dire, maintenant,

Que je vous aimerai éternellement !

Bonne fête des mères,

A la plus merveilleuse des mères !

Dody

....

Beware the intimate Internet!
Beware the chatrooms with closed doors
Where naked names cruise midnight shores
And fall in love before they've met.

Beware, O wives and husbands real,
The lonely rivals virtual
Whose words, or chaste or sexual,
May from your beds affections steal.

 

Beware the fantasy that speaks,
The vague ideal that springs a soul.
No marriage can avoid the shoal
That lies beneath such sun-drenched peaks.

Beware the posh imagination,
More vivid far than earthly flesh.
Beware the way two dreams can mesh
In ecstasy beyond sensation.

by Nicholas Gordon

 

 

 

 

 

توقفي عن النمو في داخلي

أيتها المرأة

التي تتناسل تحت جلدي كغابة

......

ساعديني

على كسر العادات الصغيرة التي كونتها معك

و على اقتلاع رائحتك

من قماش الستائر

ورفوف الكتب

و بللور المزهريات

.....

 

 

 

....و البحر رمى نفسه في البحر

و مات

 

نزار قباني

 

 

أرجوك أن تحترم صمتي

ان أقوى أسلحتي هو الصمت.

هل شعرت ببلاغتي عندما أسكت؟

هل شعرت بروعة الأشياء التي أقولها؟

عندما لا أقول شيئا

......

 

وعدتك

ان ابقى محتفظة بوقاري

كلما ذكروا اسمك امامي

ارجوك ان تحررني من وعدي القديم

لأنني كلما سمعتهم

يتلفظون باسمك

ابذل جهد الأنبياء

حتى لا أصرخ

.....

 

لأنني أحبك

يحدث شيء غير عادي

في تقاليد السماء

يصبح الملائكة أحرارا في ممارسة الحب

و يتزوج الله

حبيبته

.......