Kamand Kojouri

“If today is not your day, then be happy for this day shall never return. And if today is your day, then be happy now for this day shall never return.”

“My hours are filled with fantasy and indifference. In day and night dreams, I think of my heaven with you. All the time in between, I carelessly spend in hell without you.”

“Come back to me.Where have you gone?And why so long?I miss the star below your lip,the constellation on your chest.I miss your ways,how you net butter-flying words and release themfor others to enjoy.I miss your tenderness,the sweetness of your breathand the song of your voice.I miss howyou worship me.Come back to me once more.Why did you go?And whatever for?The heavens plotted against us.The clouds came andpissed on our lives.The smell of charged particlesstill lingers in the air.What will become of you and I?Come back to us.”

“I think whenever there’s potential for beauty, beauty can be found. And everything has potential for beauty.”

“Do you know what you get when you try to escape? When you drive for miles in a deserted city or swim for hours in a shoreless sea? You get yourself.”

“You know how it goes:at some point in your life, you fell in love with someone and had a glimpse of God.Then you abandoned life and loverand started celebratingyour love for God.”

“Prejudice is an act of violence.”

“You think I'm giving up. I'm not. I'm giving in.”

“Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light. Try not to take it personally.”

“They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!”

“One sip of this wine and you will go mad with drunkenness. You will drop your masks and tear your clothes — destroying everything that separates you from the Lover. Once you taste the fruit of this vine, you will be kicked out of the city of yourself. You will forget the world. You will forget yourself. I tell you: you will become a madman who wanders the streets looking for the Lover once you drink this Wine of Love.”

“Let borders become sunlight so we traverse this Earth as one nation and drive the darkness out.”

“You are my favourite part of life.”

“Maybe stories choose how they are told and who tells them.”

“Is it odd, my love, that I envy others who have not met you for the intoxication they have yet to experience? Is it odd that I wish to witness you with new eyes so I may have the pleasure of falling for you all over again? I am grateful, so grateful, for knowing the meaning of your various sighs. For being the cause of your ecstatic cries. But, if only for a moment, I wish to let you fall out of my hands so that I may catch you again. You, my love, are the oddity. You are my exception.”

“I was mistaken when I said you live in my heart. How absurd I was when you live in my fingertips so that everything I touch is you. How foolish I was when you live in my toes so that everywhere I go there's you. How senseless of me to say you live in my heart when you breathe in my lungs, walk on my mind, and drink in my mouth. I came to pen another poem for you, but even every unwritten poem is you.”

“Two things are needed to raise awareness: education and love. And these go hand in hand because we can be taught to love.”

“It is a dangerous thing to substitute reading or writing for living. Live first, then write.”

“Because in truth, my love, if you have thought of me once then I have thought of you a thousand times. You have captured my heart. It is yours. I am at your mercy now”

“Lisbon, to me, is the Lisbon of Pessoa. Just like London is Woolf’s, or rather, Mrs. Dalloway’s. Barcelona is Gaudí's and Rome is da Vinci’s. You see them in every crevice and hear their echoes in every cathedral. I’d like to be the child, or rather, the mother of a city but I neither have a home nor a resting place. My race is humankind. My religion is kindness. My work is love and, well, my city is the walls of your heart.”