Word, like wind, cuts through you / Withers all but true you
When you feel the pains
Of separation
From one you’ve never met,
When these pains of separation
Fill your eyes
With tears,
And when the tears overflow
Into your heart,
Softening it,
Rendering your limbs
Into agents of grace,
That is the sign of a love
That endures time and space;
A love that,
By its intensity,
Becomes the envy of madness itself.
I’ll live to tomorrow
If I die first tonight:
Just send me your love
On the tail of a swallow
Forgotten in flight.
For one look from my habib on the day it will matter the most. Ya Muqallib al-Qulub…
Chairs can help to remind you
The support you need is behind you.
The world may not know it’s got your back.
The shortest route
from here to there
Still needs me to
get off my chair.
If you’re on Chanillo, do check out my recently launched poetry series here:
http://channillo.com/series/sand-in-my-parfait/
It is set up for weekly updates. I added my second poem just this morning.
Let NOW be your canvas,
Your breath be your brush:
Let no words upon it
To slash, burn or crush.
Live your masterpiece.
This grocery rhyme in honor of our local grocer.
Yunus the grocer sold his samosas
At two-dollars-fifty a pound:
A savory treat of taters and meat
So very exquisitely ground,
And wrapped in a layer of dough,
All packaged and ready to go.
All the children we orphan,
All the children we kill:
We can deck every coffin,
But we can’t check our will.
All our tears are fire,
All our mourning is play,
When we look in the mirror
And we must turn away.
Thirty seconds of sorrow
To be ready to preach,
No, the fire burns deeper
Than the heat of our speech.
Take a moment to wonder:
If the tables were turned,
Would we run to hide under
All our family burned.
Time to strangle injustice
With sincerity’s rope;
Time to drown every challenge
In a puddle of hope.
But we’re lost to the darkness
If we’re led by the blind,
And the seeing, all silent,
Simply follow behind.
Fighting fire with fire
Maybe needed sometimes,
But the need of the hour
Is for wide open minds.
Wide. Open. Minds.
The lies we speak,
And the lies we spread:
One kills our souls,
The other keeps them dead.
The amity of land repels
A sea beset by rancor,
Yet there it is to come alive
Upon the stab of anchor.