To see him as the seal of prophethood Is all the nūr you’ll need to brave the end
Brothers
Salaam upon Yunus For the noble frustration he felt At the obstinate rejection of his message That frustration would be enough For us beggars to fly into paradise But the mission of Yunus lay In not fleeing Not until the Word came And so a physical darkness Was sent from high to surround him In the fiery pit of of a beast under water That he may reflect upon The greater darkness He had left his flock in With the fire awaiting them Such is rahmah That led him to cry out The ayah karimah An ayah nestled in a chapter Of The Book A chapter titled The Prophets It brings us full circle To that heavy day outside Taif Where a man sat bleeding As he fled an angry mob Not because he had given up on them But because he hadn't He was an ayah karimah It is opportune then That another man came to him A slave hailing from the land of Nineveh The land of Yunus Bearing refreshment for the Hashimi With bloodied sandals It was in the legacy of Yunus To bring relief to his noble brother The last of the brethren Still on his mission
Gone
Every joy a passing moment Every grief a passing moment Every moment gone Like water Lost in the whorls of a dream
Passage
The farther we go down the road of time The wider the field of our vision That when we look back to things from the past To measure what is and what isn’t We take in so much, much more than we had The moment the moments came down It colors the grays calamity cast With tinctures of azure and brown But some things can only be read Once time and its cloaks have been shed
Release
Have you set free your fears into the endless blue before the Will Eternal will have you
Unyielding
Khalid, come a mendicant With nothing to your name But unabating love for him Whom angelkind proclaim Then leave a mendicant no more With heart and will so steeled To bear all brand of wound and scar To despair never yield
Convergence
You’re in his flock Now heed his call Or find yourself astray The ticking clock Will brings us all Up on the longest Day
Reclamation
Come together drafty soul In away from wind and tide Think of times when you were whole With no shrapnel in your side Warm and childlike innocence Feet and seashells on the shores When you breathed a love intense And a name would soothe your sores Let the arrogances die Die away while you repair Salawaat in every sigh Scent of tasbeeh in the air
Bulbul
Morning dew heaven’s play Washes earth as if to say Here’s another chance to get you right Basmala in the air Devastating dark despair Hope in bulbul’s song and heron’s flight
The Budilovsky Literary Award
Some great news. Two of my poems were published in the Fall issue of the Prairie Light Review.
Morning Chai won me the Budilovsky Literary Award. They asked me to recite the winning poem at the PLR release event on December 15.
