Poetry

We poets play with words and beats
Like children do with building blocks
Arranging them upon their feet
To soar in anapestic flocks

The clever turn of verse like rain
How sweet the rhyme and meter fall
The music in the short refrain
Enjambment breaks to dazzle all

And when it’s done we walk away
The poet and the audience
Returning to our dreary day
To mine more words and cobble sense

Contrast this to the Word Divine
That came upon a heart karīm
The flex in every alif spine
Each lofty lām, majestic mīm

Repose, release, revive, unyoke
From darknesses, ‘arab ‘ajm
Remember when the prophet spoke
The final verse of Al-Najm

The Makkans gathered all around
They hailed from each Qurayshi clan
Depressed their faces to the ground
Except for one rebellious man

Who rubbed some dirt upon his head
For that he could not be without
“This is enough for me,” he said
How poets bathe in swamps of doubt

Attend khalid to what Amīn
Is saying at the Sunday scene

---

Inspired by Shaykh Amin’s tafsīr of Surah Al-Ḥāqqah

We say we know love
and marvel at the capacity
of our hearts for it

But our love is springtime showers
flowinto a shallow puddle
that forms just outside our doorstep
reserved for us and ours

There is another love
that of a man who sat many a time
in a corner of the mosque
his mosque
silent

you would hear no sniffle
see no shudder upon his form
but if you came around
you would see
tears
warm
rivers on his blessed cheeks

falling into clear pools of grace
one pool for each of us
praying we find our ways home
and not to the other place

All those pools form the ocean of
Rahmatan lil ‘aalameen
which is more than a notion of
love, a brand we’ve never seen

We don’t know
love like that

You’re tired and it’s all too much
so much you’re ready to give up
but giving up is easy so
she didn’t

She put him down upon the ground
and went to run between the mounts
Her feet were calloused but her plan
was simple

She scanned
                   t h e   d e s o l a t e   h o r I z o n 
not a soul nor caravan
yet she endured and on she ran
our mother

A woman strong, believing slave
how could she know a nation would
spring from the dry heels of her
crying babe

Relief will come, slow down a bit
and may it be that you will find
yourself saying zam zam or
drinking it

What did he just say there
this man sitting before us
like a brother we wish we had by our side every day
nudging us toward a little more good
shoving us away from the seductive edge we keep romancing

What did he just say there
With humor sparkling in his eyes 
In a manner to implore us
to think! 

Al-Qist

A brand of justice that is
just more

He asks us to consider two tales bearing out this qist:
A tale of the damned and a tale of the redeemed
truer than this moment we are in

Of the damned: we think of the tyrant
treading water in a sea that won’t give him floor
coming to terms with his crimes
finding himself a victim of his own tyranny that tore
him away from his true master

Then he casts his desperate eyes
heavenward and the storm of Divine truth
makes landfall upon his sorry senses
“I believe! I believe!”
He yells into a wave
that gives him no respite but for a cold and watery grave

Why no mercy

Because al-Qist

Think of Ammar and his mother Sumaiyyah
Think of Bilal under the whip of Umayyah
Think of Hanzalah and his widow
Think of Mus’ab with not enough to shroud his remains
Think of Yahya, pursued Yahya
Think of the magicians who traded their faith for crucifixion
And that’s a fact
Think of all that. 

None of them could see or feel or taste
a morself of the ghayb - the unseen
Can this tyrant then play his pathetic
seeing-is-believing card
Would Al-Muqsit mock his believing servants
for a tyrant who amounted to waste

Of the redeemed: we think of Yunus
who missed checking one box from his sky-high list
of a nabi’s checkboxes
He leaves behind a people marked for destruction, without warning

Onto ferry, into whale
La ilaah illa anta subhanaka innee kuntu min al-dzalimeen
The Lord stalls his command on the rebellious nation

“Why, Lord?” ask the angels

Because al-Qist

Was that little checkbox a mere formality
Or did it hold in its execution a tidal wave of rahmah:
pure Divine love

Back goes Yunus ‘alayhisSalaam
Warning served
Well-deserved
They heed his call and become a noble people

Al-Qist:
Its platinous scales shine differently than the golden of al-Adl
The Baseer sees all
magnifying the smallest atom of virtue
and dissolving the largest mountain of vice
if His adl will embrace it
and His qist will allow it

Ya Muqsit!

---

Inspired by this post-tarawih talk by Shaykh Amin Kholwadia.

I’m told that my wont to begin each line
of my verse with a capital letter is distracting.

I confess I do this
‘Bout every time
I build me a poem
Of meter and rhyme.

But my free verse flows free like a river,
flooding the plains with my thoughts, free 
of distracting banks.

There is no sash on my pane, nor is there an apron
beneath the stool of my window. There's only glass with
nothing to hide.

Back to my formal verse, I try
To keep the sash and the apron
A nod to form and tradition so I
May honor the cup that I drink from.

As for distractions, I remember
my first job when a colleague informed me that
he would like to call me Jay because my real name was
just too hard to pronounce.
Some prefer to wag the dog and they will always have
my sympathies.

you’ve seen
how the light shows
every blade of grass grows
differently and to different lengths
of green

Heed advice that tempers you khalid
So you see things for what they are
Just like that sweet prophetic prayer
That steels the heart and stills the air

if you
cannot act then
speak and if you can’t speak
at least condemn it strongly in
your heart