"Most things I do with people bore me" Ahmed Balkhi on His Debut Poetry Collection, Spiritual Writing, And How Writing Personally Has Affected His Personal Relationships

Author of "Live on Free" in a fictional conversation/interview with Oprah Winfrey

Official Cover

Oprah: Was there something specific that you were aiming for when writing Live on Free?

Ahmed: I really wanted something reminiscent of a diary or journal – just laying things out to then be able to freely weave in other things as I move forwards. It was also really important to me for a good portion of the poems to feel what I dub as something “emotionally easy”  while not diluting the elusiveness that makes me like writing poetry in the first place, there’s this thing about writing poetry that if it’s easy then it’s not necessarily a good poem and so it was trying to ride this fine line I made up where the overall themes and messaging of the poem could easily be spot on someone’s first read but then there’s always something else to find if someone was to want to read in-between the lines. Of course, not everyone would spot the overall themes of the poems on their first read but I tried!

Oprah: Regarding the cover, where was it taken, and was it you who shot it?

Ahmed: I shot that photo along with a couple of other ones on the beach in Taba, Egypt of this, I’m guessing, European couple sunbathing and just talking. It was random and I simply wanted a landscape shot of the beach and they just happened to be there, the guy just laying down with his hands behind his head as, I’m also guessing, his wife looking for their sunscreen in the bag just spoke to me and visually was exactly what I felt was feeling as I was writing Live on Free. At first, the picture was going to be black and white but as I finished the book and was editing it I immediately thought of this old concept I had for another book and how the cover for that book was shot on black&white film, so I didn’t necessarily have the option of wanting it colored or not and I didn’t want two books of mine to have a black&white cover back to back which is why ultimately I decided to go with the colored version as the colored version with the pink title rings very true to the sun-drenched book that Live on Free is.

Oprah: What are some of your favorite poems on Live on Free?

Ahmed: My poem Why I Need To Leave You is not only my favorite poem in the book but also very dear to my heart in general, it’s about two completely things that I have similar sentiments towards – “I need to leave you” you being something that makes me feel very safe and secure to either find myself or finally press harder on the gas pedal that is life. It started off as part of my “For M” series that I have going on but as I was editing it and adding some lines this other meaning fell into place for me and it became a thing of its own.

Excerpt from “Why I Need To Leave You”

as long as I’m able to watch myself in your brown irises
I’ll know that I’m safe 
because behind those muddy eyes is something fertile
steady and firm  
and I need to watch myself in eyes that are
as clouded as the life I want for myself— in blue

I also love the poems Kundalini, From Pier To Paradise, Wanderlust, Under This Parasol - I Can’t Keep Watching You Tan Alone, and of course, the title poem Live on Free. I like the sentiment of King of The Ritz and where it puts me mentally as well as the haiku Tanning for The Colorists. It’s about my concern with this raise in savior complexes by people, it’s questioning whether anything we fight for is actually worth it.

I also love Back By The Ocean - Burn Away My Fat Linings which I made a spoken word video for

Click The Image To Watch The Video

Oprah: From Pier To Paradise sounds like a familiar title. It’s the name of your first chapbook that is currently impossible to find is that correct? it never had a title poem from what I recall so why did you decide to put the poem on Live on Free this time around?

Ahmed: well, the poem From Pier To Paradise was only written a couple of weeks ago, even though I had a chapbook named after it I never wrote a poem titled after it, it was a phrase that I really liked and sometimes you just catch something like a line or a phrase that you really like that you know is just good but you can’t serve it what it deserves with the skills that you have at the time but now I felt like I did possess the skills and I just went for it.  

Excerpt From “From Pier To Paradise”

swaying along that Bay La Sun shoreline
label-less
you see me running
aimless
clouded vision 
barely thinking 
but doubtless
I love the life I’m given 
eyes sinking 
all accepting
jumping off to heaven 
shirtless
like finding it was simply a hop 
from pier to paradise

Just like Live on Free, I’ve had that title/phrase since early 2020 and I’ve been using it in various poems in different variations since then but I’ve never felt like there was the right time or poem to use it in or it was more like I resisted ever using it because of how much I liked it, it felt like if I was to ever finally have a poem titled Live on Free I then would’ve finalized the phrase and solidified it to never be used again but I’ve fought over my fears of immortality and promised myself that if I ever felt the need to write another poem titled Live on Free or yet even another entire poetry collection with the same title then I simply would do so and I wouldn’t put in effort to differentiate the two, it would simply be yet another Live on Free not Live on Free #2 or anything of the sorts.

Oprah: Do you have a spiritual belief when it comes to writing in general?

Ahmed: I’m not sure if I do, though I do believe in the sacredness of written words in general, Kind of in an Albuni way, and poetry to me feels like this heightened way of that sacredness – it could be a tool for repeated mantras or to simply get the ball rolling. Numerology is also important to me, there’s a reason the title poem is poem number three in the book and its relation to the release date.

Excerpt from “Live on Free”

That Mennonite bait for bleeding hearts 
could only keep the weak from doing what they love

and Because I love what I do 
I’ll keep doing it till I don’t want to

I was also listening to Robert Creely talk about the this inherit femininity to the art of writing poetry, and though I can’t fathom poetry being that deep to me I found something in what he said to touch me in a way, you can easily read a poem or consume any form of art and take a guess if it was a woman or man who made it and you’d probably be right— it’s just hotter in tone and pinker in its hue and simply a lot more beautiful and in touch than masculinity’s iciness

I think as guys who do write poetry there just needs to be more effort put into melting that coolness to start steaming off some emotional tendencies and tenderness when for women it just feels like it’s just - there. it’s just not as inherently a part of our psyches – I believe.

It’s like me reading someone like James Joyce for the first time, couldn’t read more than 15 pages of Finnegans Wake without feeling like I was reading something emptied of soul, it was too analytical and thought out. Nabokov or Henry Miller, on the other hand, read very poetically to me, very real and beautiful, and though sometimes they may come off analytical the work still had soul, they are in touch with what makes words beautiful and powerful in the first place.

Alternative Cover

I do like to think I’ve put in the effort and found a comfortable way to melt off my iciness when writing, I don’t write in free verse but I don’t write with structure in mind - I don’t really like a strong rhyming scheme at least tail rhymes because that’s when prioritizing structure can get in the way of prioritizing what I simply want to say, I prefer half rhymes, rhymes in between or simply not rhymes but assonances or alliteration, unintentionally they come up as I go there’s just never a conscious thought that I’m doing all of those things until it’s already done and it gives more space for what I need to say - breaking a strong rhythmic system is my way of breaking a strong tendency for prioritizing what doesn’t really matter in art - formality

Oprah: There have been rumors going around of people saying that this poem you wrote is about them or that poem is about this person, would you confirm or deny that any poems are about specific people in your life?

Ahmed: I don’t want to really indulge in skepticism especially when it involves poetry that I would like to be open for interpretation, though I do find it interesting that someone who knows me could read a poem about me wanting to “leave” someone or something and “not stay” in a certain situation because it’s toxic or whatever the reason could be and then somehow apply those negatives onto them and our relationship - you know if the shoe fits then by my guest your exceptionally self-aware… but I have to say it does take a completely different and definitely interesting level of ego and delusion to think that you are of muse to anything I do. I write for myself and taking random snippets I post online of just a couple of lines that usually lack context and perspective of the broader picture and the full poem and think “Yeah… this is totally about me” is just point-blank someone with borderline symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder in my dramatic humble opinion.

As you can tell it annoys me, being so delusional is infuriating especially because anyone who knows me knows that I’m very confrontational in nature and I wouldn’t write something about someone I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying it to their face. Nothing in the book is about anyone but myself. Everything is about me and me only. Shared experiences involving other people could be something to note but at the end of the day it all has to do with me, you sharing that experience does not give you insight on whatever I’m going to write about nor what is going to inspire me. Most things I do with people bore me. Most of the people who think I write about them are even more boring. There’s nothing poetic about you.

Oprah: So, what’s next for Ahmed, can you tell us a little about your next project and what’s to come for your thousands of fans around the world?

Ahmed: Poetry wise, in my mind I have it laid out pretty rigidly already, I have a one-word title for a second book, and its writing has been extremely fast, I finished writing Live on Free in just two months but this might even take me a shorter time to write though no promises. Very excited for it, it was supposed to be out before Live on Free and I’ve had the title poem for it for ages, but I felt like I needed something else out before it, it was a bit too artsy and I know crypticness in poetry turns off a lot of people and I didn’t want that right off the bat - even though I try my best to ride that fine line of enough elusiveness but with still a decent enough amount of easy-to-grasp ideas and themes in that second book, it still comes out - at least to me, in it’s little own weird corner.

I’m also thinking of poems that are in between poems that are free verse and those that have a strong rhythm and meter in general. I feel like a lot of the poems in Live on Free are either or and not many are in that sweet spot of narrative-driven loosely written poetry with pockets of strong rhythm, rhyme schemes, and meter. As for simply books and other creative projects, a novel is in the back of my head though I still need time to outline it as well as just writing short stories that I can later turn into scripts for short films as writing isn’t the only creative venture my mind seems to love - visuals, photography, and filmmaking were my first love. My skills in them aren’t as lubricated and polished as my love of writing is but I hope one day they will be, and I aim for that to happen soon.

*The Oprah Winfrey Audience Cheers as AB nonchalantly leaves the studio seemingly mentally ready to get bombarded with paparazzi on his way back to his Big Sur seaside mansion.*