This Could Be You Or Me

4:30 p.m. From Tehran: I cannot connect to anyone using my laptop. The only way I can check emails is through my mobile and only via WIFI. The GPRS is also not working. BBC Persian programs are completely cut. SMS service is very limited. (By 2 p.m., slow internet service available again.)


Last night there were guards everywhere. I couldn't go out. I wrote this poem instead.
To Roger Waters


Luners on TV

The lights are out
Windows shut
And there is a short crazy bearded man
who wants our throats cut

Phones are controlled
The Internet is blocked
There is a communication breakdown
And a crackdown and a showdown

No nobility in faith anymore or faith in nobility
No border for shame, no shame at all
Only a disgusting portrait of a nation
That was once great and now gone
Only a disfigured statue of a faith
That was once pure and now gone

The Lunatics on TV
Chanting death to us
Madmen in the 'House of the People'
Schizophrenic
Systematically sadistic
In jailing, maiming and shooting to kill
My faith, my brothers and sisters my home

We will not go down to a place where we can hide
It's time to change the tide
We will not let them shut us out or up
And no matter how many wily Turks or Chinamen
Sign contracts while we die in the streets
Satisfy and make the lunatics pleased
We will make our voices heard
We will persevere

This is our home not theirs.

One would dream of violence, of cutting the heads off
the lunes
One would dream of doing, what they have done to us,
those goons

One would then think
wait a minute
hold on a second

Maybe that is what the luners really want.



Tehran, Wednesday, February 16, 2011
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/02/clashes-at-demonstrators-tehran-funeral.html