There was nothing to laugh about

Payam stopped dancing

Stopped making fun of his dad’s silly screaming

Started crying and imploring

Tara stopped acking

Stopped smiling and snacking, so unethical

Started teaching and absorbing pain

Maz stopped cracking jokes

            Stoodup standup

            Started marching

The day when there was nothing to study

Leila stopped teaching me Farsi poems

            Stopped reciting Dar Golestaneh

            Started translating death tolls and chants

            Bringing up new babies

For their own safety, many unnamed stopped teaching English

            Kept talking about helicopter massacres

            And the people who would never need English now

The tomb of Hafez passed along the master’s question

            Through a global Iran

            When did you become pregnant? I can see

            An entirely new world is about to born within you

The day when there was nothing else to do

Salman kept writing

            Started keeping one eye and one jugular open

Masih only screamed louder

            Started making us all cry with her

            Stopped nothing, even at gunpoint

All the girls stopped keeping quiet

            Kept sending her videos

            Unfurling hair and vengeance

Shervin stopped singing for a little while

            Everyone else kept it going

            I think he heard the sounds at night

The day when the TV failed to mention

They have done this before

West kept whispering eastward

            We need to keep you around

Two warm hands gave sacks of gold

            We need to keep you around

The day when Qasem’s torso looked for its fingers and toes

            Sorry about that

            We have to keep up appearances sometimes

            We even had to do Osama

The day when the days bled on and on

            Clubs and guns kept firing

            Children, grandmas were target practice

            How long can they really keep this up?

The day when they have done this before

            Don’t worry my dear old, outdated friends

            We bail out banks

            Priests

            Policemen, too

            Sweet sounding sanctions so

            Conveniently meaningless

            Sanction is such a sliding scale

The day when governors and even Dennis Rodman went to Pyongyang!

            Dunking on dictators and signing balls

            My dear archaic, out of touch friends

            We need to keep you around

            Else the whole world would be overthrown

            With calls of fake democracy

           Democracy is such a sliding scale

           How many horrible Khomeini, Khamenei harmonies has he hidden?

           The successors are already bleaching and growing out beards

           One day this could all be yours

           Cardinals waiting for death

The day when our people stopped asking why

           Started thanking God

           At least it’s not that bad here!

           And went to sleep dreaming

           They were somehow safely separate

           That it just goes to show why we need to buy a military

           Ten times the size of anyone else’s

The day when Iran stopped bleeding

           Started hemorrhaging

The day when Mahsa Gina stopped breathing

            Started a mutiny

Other Iranian revolution inspired poetry can be found in my previous blog post or my latest Instagram posts.