Farhad has been detained for almost 6 years in Australia’s detention prisons on Manus Island. He is a talented musician, instrument maker, an artist and a poet – coming to poetry whilst incarcerated in our black site on Manus.
THESE LONG DAYS
Distressing, depressing moods move and
Wash like waves
Inside me now
Though I go above
To survey the sea
To gaze at waves
In a wind that makes
Tree limbs dance
And leaves to tremble.
How romantic this should be!
But never now for me
Glaring at Mother Nature from my cursed grey cage
Speaking from my heart
In nothing but the language of complaint.
Then I’m in a jail of grief-dreams
When night surrounds me
With its own particular darkness
Yet still I wait
Even now
For the light
Of Freedom.
– Farhhad Bandash 2015
Edit by Melita Luck
MY SOUL NOTIFIES YOU
My soul once provided
Only tranquility
And it would not make my body impatient.
Now my soul’s tenderness for my body
Has been forgotten.
My body is in tatters.
My soul follows
To notify you:
“I am talking about Freedom!
You throw me into the corners of your dark shadows.
You put me into the very depths of exile.
The delicacy of my soul and body is no more
In this endless shadow.
If this continues any longer
I will not see anymore light
And my soul will be forever
Black.”
– Farhad Bandesh,
Manus Island, 2015
FREEDOM SO SWEET
Freedom so sweet
Yet for me
Merely a mirage.
– Farhad Bandesh,
Manus Island, 2015
MY FEAR
Being without you is not my fear.
Nor is it from the grief of being alone in a prison’s embrace.
How long must I look at the calendar of life
Through the burning red of my eyes?
Where shall I sit in tis prison you made for me
Out of hard metal?
What price should be returned to me for the price of myself;
For the loss of my youth? For my banished life?
Oh Freedom! How I longed to sit in the corner of your heart!
How I laugh at you whilst you cry at my condition.
I am entirely spent yet have so much more to say.
Oh my god! How could life have become so sorrowful
That I almost drowned in the pool at the bottom of my endless tears?
Yet to sit now, in mourning, in my cage, is sweet
Yearning for that precious lost time.
My fear is not coming from my loss of you now
Nor from the grief of being all alone
Within the possibility of being destroyed.
Because breathing simply the scent of the freedom to weep is good.
It’s tick-rock is pleasing; gives colour to my life
Separating me from your yearning,
Suspended in the sky.
It is is restful on this full-bodied Freedom Mountain!
– Farhad Bandesh,
Manus Island, 2015
THESE LONG DAYS
Distressing, depressing moods move and
wash like waves
inside me now
though I go above
to survey the sea
to gaze at waves
in a wind that makes
tree limbs dance
and leaves to tremble.
How romantic this should be!
But never now for me.
Glaring at Mother Nature from my cursed grey cage
Speaking from my heart
in nothing but the language of complaint.
Then I’m in a jail of grief-dreams
when night surrounds me
with its own particular darkness.
Yet still I wait
even now
for the light
of Freedom.
– Farhad Bandash,
Manus Island, 2015
A MOTHER
A mother calls from an extreme distance
And her shout shakes the earth
Even the sky becomes impatient and dark
While she cries “Why are you captive? Why?”
When your camp-worker son returns to you
You search for answers, saying,
“Why John , can’t you bring these seekers of asylum
Home to me where I can give them a life?
Next time. Promise me.
Next time you come!”
But when John says “I can’t do it.
They live in a cage.
Immigration forbids it.”
Tears will fall down your face
You will collapse with a lump in your throat
Unable to find words
Choking with tears.
Everyday with your heart filled with love
You pray for our freedom
And it is for you I write this poem
Our dear mother.
I write and I say
“Wait! Our day of freedom is near and
All of us love you,
Our Mother.”
– Farhad Bandesh,
Manus Island, 2015
Wars Of Tyrants
In the depths of hearts
Shouts explode
Terrified screams
Are decisively silenced
Into macabre ashes.
What injustice!
A never-ending tale told so patiently
By storytellers who know this destruction
Historical tragedy
A violent shift in human evolution
Needing now the start of mercy
No more war.
Astonished mothers cry out at their children
Gearing up for another battle
And curse those evil hearts who urge them
To follow their bloodthirsty strategies,
Killing the delicate innocence of their young ones
In neighbouring war infested lands.
We need look no further for nightmares
Here, there and everywhere
Mothers see their children sobbing.
8/12/2015
SILENCE OF NATURE
Listen to birds in evergreen trees
Where only good news is in their world
And where nature keeps perfectly quiet.
There arise now sighs and groans from throats
Of seekers of asylum who found no refuge here.
Yet a cry for freedom stays stifled behind their lips
In a silence louder than a scream
Which no one will hear.
The birds and creatures, even grass and trees
Stare innocently at faces made of woven oppression.
This land, understanding their pain,
Does not even murmur to the sunrise
And the wind arriving gustily from the beach
Can see that the trees will not dance with it.
So long it is that news has not come with the wind;
Does even the wind understand us?
It takes the waves of the sea to break the calm
Of this noiselessness.
And that silence is a scream,
A shout louder than nature’s quiet.
A roar from the bottom of those hearts of men,
Of utterly worn refugees.
And the silence breaks its silence
Setting free it’s songs from the depths
The shouts of sleepers
Releasing the voices of the voiceless
Screaming”Freedom! Freedom!”
– Farhad Bandesh,
Manus Island 2016
Cesspool
Like birds in the sky
Broken wing
Remembering with wishes
Stone peace and war
Visualisation
Moon full
Vivid moon
The sun becomes dark
Cry from heart
Full of grief
Dumbstruck
At the bottom
Inside
Night dark
Black colour
Cover on goodness
Tears over face
Pitiless dictators
Like conjurors in the stories
Brutal facts
Chastise kids in the class
Absurd laugh with closing lips
Ridiculous concepts
Elusive murderer
Slain
Scream of fire in rain
Unaware of humanity
Here in this world
Of living
Terrorise
For power
Annihilate
Each other
On this earth
Contemplate
Sky is full of light
In, over islands
Blood and wine mixed
In the pool
Fabulist dauntless
Barbarity from side of leaders
Endeavour without goal
Look at dead men
Tears, flood
Hungry wolves
Wandering sheep
A world without hatred
Regret from loss
Confiscation of self
Craving to release
Release from cesspool
- Farhad Bandesh 2016
ed. Jenell Quinsee
I am dying
It is about three years I am in prison’s fire
Front of my little cage bars
Cold wind sparge my body’s ashes on prison’s bars
My eyes are red because of insomnia
Of injustice
Dropping blood
Let me to be in my mood
Don’t call me from a distance
My heart has become stone
What is your expectation?
Nothing but emptiness
You called me
But my ears are tired to hear
You said you are my hero
But I am not
I am dying
How can I be your hero?
With?
I am nothing
I am no one
A human, humiliated and worthless
In the corner of the cage
The braven hate my moaning and rocking
Tired of the bars of my silence
Lips dry from screaming high
But in side of my chest
Coming.. fire’s screams
Yells burn my chest
Fire’s smile choked my throat
Dumbstruck at night
With no speaking of the grief
With tears of blood
With apparent silence
With an untimely shout
Don’t call me
I am no one any more
This story is over
I will die in my cage
No grave and shroud
With open hands
Open eyes
Gaze at the side of bars
No one believes me
I am dying
I am losing the world
One day you will forget me
Not remember me any more
Because
I am dying
Death
Immersion in water
No yelling there
The only hope
A piece of wood
Cling to life
‘Stay strong’, she said to herself
Feeling of suffocation
Asking help from God
Hidden beneath
Rough waves
Salvation in the arms of death
No one could help her
Not even her God
Unbearable
Her child was missing
Mother’s tears
Drench the ocean
A witness of death
Justice
A piece of stone
Thrown
Into the path
Of injustice
It will come
You want me to write something
You want me to say
Some thing
But I can’t
I can not
I don’t know what to write
Or to say
I can only write some
I can only say some things
I don’t know where I start
I don’t know where it is exactly
That my writing goes
It’ll be like….
It’ll be a prisoner like me
In a horrible cage
Like my cage
You can help it
You can give it life!
You can share it
You, you!
I, I can remember…
I can remember a child said,
‘I need to come to your country’
I, I can remember…
I can remember the government said;
‘No, never ever
No welcome to my country
You have no place to live
Go back
Go back to your home
Or stay in the jail
There is no more home for you’.
I can remember
My feeling
I can remember
That child’s mother’s feeling.
And now I write
I write now that the game is almost over
And I say ‘Be strong mother.
Tell your child be strong’
A good day will come
It will come;
Freedom’s day’.
6/6/2016
GOD
God could be a galaxy
God could be a mountain
Or a sea, a tree, or a flower
God could be a piece of stone
God could be human or an angel
Could be me
Or you
God could be love or hate or everything
But we have no God here
Nothing to worship
Here God just says;
‘Take it easy
Don’t worry about the future
We have no hell
We have no heaven
Do only what is humane
See you are free
No more limits
No more prophets
No more bullshit’
You and me were going the wrong way
Let’s move in the right way
Don’t worship in front of nothing
Don’t debase yourself for nothing
God is life
Life is love
Worship in love
Take me along
Let me see your eyes
When I am in your imagination
I worship you, when it becomes night
I’ll come in your black eyes
I’ll fly at the darkness of your eyes
I am forbidden from all of the things in my heart because of everyone
“Sigh”
If you divorce me or take the time to get to know me
You will know me like yourself
I’ll reach every moment of by self from the red fire to the blue sky
Because of you
I’ve grieved, I’ve grieved in pain from the distance away from you
Tell me from Earth, Wind, Water, Fire that I’ve been in the world of mortals
Speak to me of love
From flowers and brunette and tell me, from butterflies, love the candles
Do you know how much I love you?
Take me along
I’ve become tired
The colour of sadness on my tired of heart
Press my hand in your hands
That become relaxed in my restless heart
You are my legend and my imagination
You see how I grow in the opinion of my sweet dream
I cannot remember to forget you
Your words are my words in spite of my poetry
You are the love word, in my prose
I love you, my love
My night mare
This is me that I wander about aimlessly
In dark and black night
My night is my dream
My body is victim of my soul
My dream is my wild nightmare
Terrified
Strange
Afraid of sun
This is me!
My soul is a wanderer of nightmares
Night is completely dark
A tree is trembling
It only sounds of whipping on a tree’s body
Tree’s body became bruised
It cannot yell
It’s left out, alone in the world
This tree is my body
That doesn’t have anyone to see its pains
A sound breaks silence of an untouched desert
My body trembles in this dream
Dream has to be my peace!!
Suddenly appear a monster
Die
I wanna die
I wanna die here
Let me alone
I wanna get dusty
Dirt, wind and night are rearing
My hot breath into a cold sigh!
Ominous sound of the forest
Survivor ash from a black soul
Narrow and dark roads
No, No
Don’t say ‘I am not with you any more’
Show your power
Just for a moment
Say ‘I love my life’
I cannot say that
I am sorry
Leave me alone
I wanna go
I am waiting for night
Night!
Night!
I can’t feel you any more
Go away
Leave me here
I wanna sleep
I wanna sleep for ever
6.6.2016
Die 2
I wanna die
I wanna be alone
I wanna go
I wanna be rusty
Dirt and wind
Bloody era
Dark night
Hear my hot breath
In a cold sigh
Ominous sound from the forest
Left ashes
From dark souls
Slander path
Narrow and dark roads
No passer
Happiness from grief
Dumb
Struck
Lifetime cry
Enjoyment is dead
Domain existence a mask of nightmare
Refreshing drops of rain
A bloodied asylum seeker
On a grey path!
Flood’s shame
The sound of church bells
In bad time
Lean on tree
Stormy sky
A wave of blame
Doom in cage
Hot bars on mouth
Silence of everyday a fearless judge
From false judgment
Judge death
Chance to live again
Not thinking about going back
Do you know what to do?
Freedom
Or my Death Now