Khalid Mukhtar

That you wake up when it matters
Before the alarm goes off
Makes time a matter of mind
If what matters, matters enough

I wrote this in honor of a friend of a friend who has entered the last stages of a 10-year long battle with Benson’s syndrome, a visual variant of Alzheimer’s Disease. This is dedicated to all those enduring the many forms of dementia out there. Peace and love.

---

It doesn’t matter what it is
It doesn’t matter why it’s there
What it’s for or where it goes
Or how it got upon that chair

All that matters is your heart
Playing softly in your chest
Celebrating all you’ve got
You’re so different from the rest

Sweet and sinless is your breath
Drawing circles in my hands
Home is past the stream of death
Where the sun is in the sands

Let the moments come and go
Each a lifetime on it’s own
They don’t matter now, you know
All that matters has been known

Smell the flowers, grab the sky
Hear the laughter, even cry
God is greater than it all
You will get to ask Him why

As will I

Hope like a drop
Of dew clinging fast
Resolved to outlast
Deceptions of vapor
Well into and past
Just words upon paper

A cloud is like the truth
Hangs around for you to see
Ignore it till it drenches you
As rain eventually

Step lightly as you walk upon
The hallowed floors of knowledge
Knowledge doesn’t give itself up
To heavy soles

Life and all within it roll
On like the waves in the sea
Up and down forever bound
For the shores of infinity

Though the day chases night
Never brightens it quite
In the way that the night
Quenches day
Every worry and stress
Every pain becomes less
When you hear what the night
Has to say

You’re angry at them all, and now
It feels like something deep within has died,
How could they do this to you
After all you do for them and all you’ve tried.

“Forgive, so God forgives you,” is
The chant repeated, and you’ve tried a lot,
But then you look at people
And reduce them to the gadgets that you’ve got:

It’s easy when a smartphone just
Goes dumb, you can exchange it for another,
But you can’t find replacements for
A parent, child, a sister or a brother.

You feel the world against you
Like a hammer coming down upon a nail
And then they say they’re sorry, but
You’re tired of the way they always fail.

Now all your love has withered in
The desert of your anger, you decide
There’s nothing left to give up but
The hardest thing to give up is your pride.

So hear the Friday caller’s call
To heed the words that drift upon his breath
And turn your eye upon yourself
And beg forgiveness now before your death.

Till there begins to swell a wave
Of Mercy from the fountain whence it springs
A wave that rolls toward the shores
Of faith with all the mercy Mercy brings.

It fills you with abilities
You thought were well beyond you all this time:
It’s easy to forgive when you
Have been forgiven any fault or crime.

Good deeds and sweet forgiveness wipe
Bad deeds and their effects away for good,
It’s what the angels do when they
Set out to carry orders as they should.

The Lord forgives, and so does his
Beloved Messenger forgive, and so
It is with his companions
And those who followed them: Forgive. Let go

That hearts adrift may join once more
And journey all together to the end
Where everything begins again,
Where mercies and forgivenesses descend.