HAIL MARY FULL OF FACE
A Dreadful Tale about a Dead Anglo Mother, A Dreadful, Avenging Aunt,
A Stolen Baby Sister, and a Hateful, An Unfaithful, Defaulting Father.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With people, people who hardly know
Your vices, your intrigue, your lies, and so,
You’ve ruined lives and now I will show

How demonized you are, with just your thinking
About your “slemly” self, just linking [Nice in Arabic]
That self to your own, and not us--no one else
You belong in no company, your old-time thinking.
Adopting my sister, without any inkling
Of what takes to challenge the motherless
And seeing we ended up, also, being fatherless.

Travesties galore made this woman happy
You won hearts, but you seemed quite daffy.
Childhood, telling us we’d never be as good
As your Syrian daughters - such a strange brood!
This kind of “teaching” by a Syrian mom was kinda lewd.

She verily became our ISIS
She thought who could ever, ever be like us
She raved for hours so very against us
To that red-headed family so she could easily best us!
Humiliating us at every stop
We really, really got a lot
From her, the decadent Queen of ISIS
No, she’d never, ever be like us!

Twenty years to a guileless young person
Is a forever eternity…
A lesson, an identity…
Carried on secretly, destroying our Syrian identity.
She stole that connection, filling it with confusion
She with cruel humor would kill our loving illusion
Stopped it in its growth,
Forever unseating that family oath.
To care - without any rejection.
It was She that was a great defection.

Mary, Mary how does your hatred grow
Picked on those who had no Syrian power
But you didn’t see yourself becoming lower
To the ends of the earth, heartless black flower

In her mind she’d be our Mother
But as this poet, I did not know it
Things would be better if we like sheep
Worshipped Mary, into the deep
Like the rest of her Keep
Then mayhap we’d enjoy their fully undeserved sleep.

Taught my dear little sister like her to hate
Would I had the power to shut up her pate
Her mouth was evil to the core
I never, never could stand more.
Her hatred entered me, made me sore.

Screaming at us to keep us out
Daddy joined her in this falling out
She, successful -as any lout.

Hell, Mary, full of Face
Recognizing only your Syrian race
Did anyone else matter? Just your primitive face?
Everyone one was hurt, except you and your nace
There’ll be no one, ever, that can take your place
Laughing to destroy our wanted Arab destiny
Which you did, and did, successfully, with your fantasy.

Leaving us suddenly knowing only this hateful group
There’s nothing to which she wouldn’t stoop
Her sick obsession to hurt the powerless
Speaks of a very worst yes, cruel foulness.

We lived at a convent school very protected
Visiting weekends this inspiring lark,
Two sisters know she made a strong mark
She was not our blood, we couldn’t take part
Of this constant coldness on her part.

And another Aunt with two daughters, good
They were always with us, always stood
The opposite of this wicked would-be aunt
This family, Americanized and very sane
Never did play the ancient Ottoman-like game
These Aunts were our world - our windowpane.

Two aunts - endowing us with a Syrian heritage,
One, the bad one, with much leverage
The good one to teach us a good Syrian beverage
With balance, love, the length of days
Not like the other, the one who dismays.

We represented that bad woman’s target
What it came from. Could it be her precious Margaret?
No, not at all her peaceful daughter
But the other, joined in on the slaughter
Making serious and even much more, fodder.

We had no tools to breach this hate
I guess that it would have to be our fate.
To live our lives just disenchanted.
Our hearts broke, as if forever lancets.

Taking my sweet sis turning her against us
She did truly give strong heed to fence us.
What ever could we find for our defenses?

Dad, real Dad, drunken dad
Fell in with them: became the faulted father
Sought their pity--liking us to foreign daughters
He was in love with them, weakly turning
Back to his Syrian fold back, not farther
Unwittingly, unrepentedly, uncaringly, joining the laughter
Discarding his American daughters to a mental slaughter.

At his picnic - family there - he called us foreigners
Foreigners we were, surely, when with them
They couldn’t ever believe in us,
Dad influenced them against us.
Made us feel like little fools.
No, we never had the tools
To fight this ignorance - Change these mules?

Punishing, punishing us as wedded women
Accused of all that they gossiped about
What did they say? And this truant dad a lout
Speaking of us in downing tones
I’d feel better had they broken my bones.

Closing his relationships to his
Two lesser liked non-Arab sisters
Would there would be a better mister
He considered us two a mere sinful blister.

We ran away from this horrible drunk
And then we suffered the worst of any they would dunk
Uncomfortable at their Arab-speaking homes
We stopped visiting long before their moans
We were “no good” said our Syrian family
Would that we knew that we’d be anti-Family

They had something to hate and did they do it
We had no idea we were just a joke
Their words, their disgust, far more than a poke.
Their anti-American provincial views
Made no sense - their perverted mews
All we loved, we would really lose.
There was never any right to choose.

That family didn’t speak, avoided us
At sister’s Syrian wedding. It was mined
That scene returns to me all of them lined
Winding its way into my unbidden mind,
They were so, so truly unkind
We always would be to them the “Other”
Yes, us, us, us, without a mother!

We lost three mothers, our real one gone
Also our good step mother quickly on
Perhaps Dad guilty of their two deaths
I shant continue - you’d lose your breaths.

But Hail that Lady, she would change our world
Sending us suddenly into a whirl.
How to change the young with screaming?
She’d not change but destroy our dreaming
Waking horribly from our Syrian dream
We just didn’t fit their crappy crème de la crème.

Everyone was fooled by this greedy witch
She and her daughters I’d deem as bitch
What was in them, caused their making?
Taking away, taking taking
Good cousins now, have been awakened
My work of writing revealed that faking.

Hail Mary full of Face
Only using her charms to grace
The sisters that she wished not to embrace
With threads of lies an unrevealing face
Syrians’ acceptance of her goddam place
No one ever will she replace
In every way she used her mace
A clever poison to keep her place
Successfully, she’d snidely hid her dreams
Wearing a mask to hide her themes.

She’d always hated us through and through
We didn’t know it till she did what she’d do
Her masque did work, from dusk to dawn.
Hatred of us was what she would spawn
She would definitely kill our spirits
Would that I could reveal some of her lyrics.

Our Syrian sissa’s wedding made our new place
That even there we could have little space.
No other family events could we be included.
Engagement parties, baptisms, we would be excluded
Their intentions now were completely nuded.

You stole our little baby entering the world
Through our Mom’s Death
You stole my Dad’s affection
He also her straw man, worshiping her: a fiction
Her stand could only be that of affliction.

Hail Mary full of Face
Face that faced nothing exçept winning the Ace
Did no one ever tell you - you were a case?
Using your screams to stuff our mind
And even more shrieking to clog our mind
No other Syrian family we knew could be so unkind.

Always filling us with her delicious food
Only to turn against us, trussing our good mood.
I’d like to regurgitate all that food
Anything about her became totally lewd.
She bragged of her daughters - were they really that good?
When we were children, told us we’d never be like them
We never wanted to be like those hurting us.
Took our Dad’s affection, he also deserting us
We never but finally saw that they were alerting us.

She has attacked us screaming, screaming on end
Never an explanation, never to end
She stole money, stole sister too, not a lend.
With this cruel treatment, we were not able to fend.
I’ve never heard such venom in any human voice
It seared through both my ears, such a hateful noise
Those first twenty years were so very splendid
But later with her actions - all was ended
With her allotted time this is how she would spend it.

Sister, affections stolen, obeying by fear
Couldn’t counter with a mere
Stand up to this freak of a Mother Dear
Our baby sis had became her clay
She would remake her through many a day.
She owes us much, this lying thief
No family tree would know, not even a leaf
She stole and changed our beautiful blood
Returned nothing except a bad bad flood
Of making our names into family mud.

She then gave out inimical messages
The taunting that came from her mealy mouth
From Damascus, that lousy mouse.
Couldn’t discuss, but only scream
What ever did she mean?
We never knew what they said
We never knew what they thought
This Family into which father bought.
Their apathetic “reasoning” I was never taught.

Her daughters conscripted to the Mary core
Following her words, her iron ore
Inflated us with much heavy criticism
To fill our sissa with a lack of witticism

Lying, lying she always always hated us
For twenty years, she consistently slated us
For slaughter, just like little lambs
Motherless, she took our little lamb
She won, didn’t she in her sham?
Her & dad really fated us God! their flim flam!

She’d tackle anyone, anything in her path
And she did, with her dreadful wrath.
What powered this extremely devilish mind?
She had never, ever been really kind.

Our drunken father turned to her
She was Goddess, he deemed Something
While we were nothing, nothing, NOTHING!
It didn’t happen till twenty years after
From kindliness to hypocrisy, one would never believe.
Our real selves never to retrieve.

A sweet child, sissa, full of love
Knew they were cold and she let us know
After those years, sadly though
Turned into another hateful bitch
Forced to be like them, or else be ditched.

Dad, dad, the precious Syrian lad
Embraced the family gatherings that they had
Youngest of the Ikmuks - he was mad
Allowed them the desertion of our pad
They could say anything, made it their fad.

He wóuldn’t speak to them of their travesty
Wanted to be Them, lest he be
On the Outs as he married out of the Tribe
Hardly now, when this happened, anyone alive.
Didn’t tell them we should be there.
Never defended us, never, never
Always took their part like a mismatched lever.

Gatherings went on, by the family Mare.
All our lives had been spent with them.
Change, girl, change, you’re just an Anglo fem.
Sudden hate - my thoughts were dashed.
I changed - they took all I had and smashed.

They brought us into their sickly Ottoman lives
They all acted as if we had the hives
They, centuries‘ habit, it was the mid-1950’s why so old?
They were too much, too much to behold
We were stricken, treated as in days of old
We would never be part of their mold [Mould?]

Regular at Church. What kind of God could she worship?
You know who should have been told? The Arab Bishop!
The She-Devil not even relishing the Church script
Eternally, she would always, rip, rip and then rip!
But looking to those there who would serve her!
She took all with a total fervor.
No Communion, no worship, but her only feats
To seek and add to the gossiping in the streets
Afterward. When-Where everyone meets.

Se enjoyed the Devil of Power over those she knew
Few new.
Only the rejected two.

Mary, Mary full of Mace
You never did achieve much grace
Wish you could have finally
Fallen on your greatly posed Face
There’s really not going to be any space
To explain your deadly race.

But your race is good
I speak from my part of that ”Other”
You are and were a terrible, horrible mother
You’re a crude example of this bountiful, Syrian race.
Very few of them did see through your face.

In that family I hardly gleaned this toxicity
But, never, ever did I witness much felicity.
But laughed and laughed about any Other
Played well their acts as if they cared
They knew Syrian-like we would not fare
We, Dad and I- all fell for her snare.

What think you, God, of these poor children
How illy they thoroughly tilled them
Two non-Arab daughters’ given bad repute
Their shocking beliefs really made us mute
All that came from her demented mind
All that encountered Mary’s “kind”
She destroyed our conception of self
The hypocrisy will last, leaving what is left.

She infiltrated us, her daughters, and my Sister
That we were not as good as her - but no mister
Had Uncle [our blood] lived, this would never have occurred.
But Auntie [not our blood] surely had demurred.
Her hooked-nose criticizing, and uneducated daughters.
Psychologically--to us-- they joined in on these slaughters.
Kindness for two decades to rent
The motherless, but hiding that bad intent
Taught her daughters: “Don’t be involved with them”
We really do know some of what she did, or said,
Her masque nearly hiding her evil bent.
Too bad she didn’t return to her Syrian tent.

Mary, Mary quite contrary
How does your world work?
You won, you won, you dirty, ignorant, piece of work
You demanded respect from all of us, treacherous
She got it, didn’t know it, then she brought down the two of us

Sneaky, low-life, hypocrite witch
We always thought we had a niche
But lost kids like us did never snitch
We wouldn’t, didn’t open up about that bitch.

We had a comfort zone with her
However stolen, deserted at last by her flying fur
Stolen, deserted at last by Dad--that foul mister
Stolen, deserted lastly by our little sister

This left us changed by this She-Devil
Would that there’d be a way to counter her evil
We couldn’t - she was always far too strong
An ISIS for us - this would last too long.

After these years, I could not grow
Was I a real woman - I didn’t know!
Being a mother couldn’t show
That Family created a list of woe.

When Sissa had a mom to help
We did all alone and that we felt.
Her faulted hatred never did melt.
I didn’t know how to take a stance
Nor could I find out how to advance.

Their crazy attack at us motherless kids
Cemented, fragmented, affected our kids
Hurt generations even sissa’s kids.

After these actions, I took twice pills
Never mind, I lived, but my mind was ill
I couldn’t fathom this sudden treatment
What on earth had spawned this sort of entrapment?

Our husband found it hard to understand
That old woman and her frosty demand
Hubbie would talk to her and offered this
I said, no, don’t go, knowing her list
He’d get nowhere against her fist
Of serious beliefs that belie her “against-us”
Her plan to hurt really offenced us
Hatred that only came from Mary
A good word ever for us? Never! Nary.

Five wicked women in that Family house
One, now, without a spouse
They all suffered many deaths,
Multiple Dementias made them lame
God took a hand in changing their fame
Nothing else did they have to their claim to name
All, all, gathered closely together
Against us two sisters - we as powerful as a feather
To down us-why? Our non-importance?
Forced to take that ill-begotten stance.
Their actions were to be a painful lance.

Once, a welfare mother, taking turns
Sucking welfare dollars and from our Dad,
Each of them, devils that would turn to worms
His name? I can call you a cad, Dad,
There is no name for this woman gone mad.

This left us in a weary longstanding forest
An unbelief--living again--the early mommy losses
The motherless do not think like others
Would that there could be kinder mothers
Mothers only care for their own
We witnessed this “Mother’s” cruel foam
Coming from her negligent tongue
Always, mouthing, potent as a gun
Making fun of us - oh did she ever have fun!

Free of guile, not for us that wicked way
Treacherous, and it would continue all the way
That could, did happen, would happen in their day.
They spewed out the long-gone Ottoman way.
This really happened in our lives.
Impossible to award them the High Fives!

They were so obvious in their family glee
But they never were to make us free
Snakes they were, and Snakes they will be
For forbidding our presence on the Family Tree.

This motherless child saw twenty years blown away
What had I done? What/who made them this way?
This screaming hatred pounded into my soul
It would hurt me forever till I was old
Became something I verily could not process
There were much too much and many losses.
For this, there would never be a recess.
No process nor forgiveness for them at best.

Fifty years of being an outcast
Just like eons of Arab women in the past
These feelings pester, and would mainly last
Left me bare of any Syrian past
Just like the Ottoman thinking that represented them
Their old-time thinking would cause much mayhem
They came from afar, to destroy our Bethlehem.

I felt shame at what I thought they thought
Who was I now, something nobody had bought?
They bought my sissa, she took it in
I would never forget their cardinal sin
Of treating us so inhumanely, I couldn’t know
Where their thinking took them, it was so low.

This motherless child still feels the embers
Of those horrible, horrible family members
She cannot do but all she remembers
Is they cut her selfhood into little shreds
And will feel it, live it, until she’s dead.

You disgusting foreigner, coming here
To destroy, control, adding untold fear
Take my family, keep them near
Seeing your mask face, your nasty leer
We hope your soul would land in Hell
For you institute nothing --as a human being,

YOU REALLY FELL!

Carol Rae Bradford, M.Ed., author
Mayflower Arab: A Memoir and other Writings
Second book, a novel, on the way
Protest Writer voicing concerns toward the Palestinians
See my poem: The Parasite

Sun & Mon
April 11 to April 12 @ 10am,
April 14, 7:00-10:30 am, 2015.