Two Poems by Moudi Sbeity

A New Mythology

I want to live in a world that trains poets instead
of soldiers, that invents words for experiences too
complex to define, the kind that fracture your bones
and bloom in a thousand petaled symphony to cup
the ache in your chest. A world that drills us on how
to march towards each other bearing wild flowers,
standing silent at the break of dawn. Want a world in
where explosion is understood as a metaphor for awe
pouncing at the edge of exhale, and war a state of
self-denial, and occupation meaning that thing which
grips your attention in ever widening circles of prayer.

I want to live in a world in where the vocabulary of
ownership is a relic we visit in museums, and a stranger
is someone you feed, and dirt the reason for devotion.
A world that targets food deserts with a rainfall of
seeds, which routes rivers to parched villages, then
brigades an army of palms to harvest light ripening
on lush vines, that invade your dreams with instructions
on how to implode ripe berries between the skin of
your teeth, how to armor yourself with bare thin leaves.
Want a world that authors a new mythology for being,
one in where the only deity worth worshiping is the
ground you stand on, and to become a hero you must
not leave on a journey, but surrender yourself a witness
to the pulse within.

*

The Space Between Us

I don’t know how to save the world.
I’ve bent my tongue in half trying.
What I do know is how to tend to the space
between us. How to feel into that one eternal
pulse that keeps us together. Lean into the one
echoing breath that threads yours into mine.
Touch on this one expression of love, to that
one primordial seed from which we sprout.
When I say I Love You, what I mean is
I Am You, is your liberation is my joy is
my peace dwelling. The question isn’t how
do we remind each other of our indelible
belonging. The soul already knows.
The question is how do we remove the
obstacles towards it. How do we rip off
the tarp preventing the seed from sprouting,
the sprout from growing, the tree from licking
the light, the light from unfurling across your
chest, bellowing up your throat, settling into
your eyes like God looking at God, like love
is between I and you, between you and
everything else.

*

Moudi Sbeity is a Lebanese-American author, poet, and transpersonal psychotherapist. Born in Texas and raised in Lebanon, he moved to the United States at the age of eighteen as an evacuee following the 2006 July war. In Utah, Moudi founded and operated Laziz Kitchen, a Lebanese restaurant celebrated by the New York Times as “the future of queer dining.” Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah and the 10th circuit states in 2014. A lifelong stutterer, Moudi is passionate about writing and poetry as practices in fluency and self-expression. Their first poetry collection, Want A World, and their memoir, Habibi Means Beloved, are set to be published in 2026. They now call the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado home.