To think before you speak is to
Account for all effects that you
May have upon the world with words
In ways not even actions do
The silence of the wise can be
More active than what eyes may see
Poetry
Making It Count
All those tears are no good
If you don't do what you should
All those prayers are in vain
If you don't try when you could
All your lofty plans are empty
If they're written in the sands
For the waves will come to wash them
And the will out of your hands
Think about the time you spent
All the thoughts that came and went
Why the rush into repentance
If you don't mean to repent
Don't just drain the cup of water
Even water has a taste
Savor every drop that quenches you
So nothing goes to waste
Now, turn to Him with every haste.
Body
The ummah is as one body.
We wonder where the hate we see begins;
We blame the haters and their mentoring,
But seldom see the damage that our sins
May wreak upon the hearts they’re entering.
We hate our children when we fail their cause;
We hate our spouses as we burden them;
We even hate our siblings, all because
We give our selves a love we cannot stem.
So hear the words the minbar sends our way:
“Allah! He does not change a people who
Refuse to change their selves.” Should we not say,
Your family should matter more than you?
A thorn on Cherry Street by any means
Can cause a vein to hemorrhage on Deans.
Lost
Stop your dying, let it go
The money, science and art you know
Just leave it all behind you for a minute
And turn your heart toward that place
Let go, abandon time and space
Forget forgetting it and get lost in it
Tasbīh
These words that rise up from your heart
In sweet remembrances to be
Upon your patient lips departing
For your Garden growing free
Interview
Highland Park Poetry’s Jennifer Dotson interviewed me last week about my book, In The Warmth of The Shade. We talked about how it all began, @FonsVitae, publishing, 9/11, @shaykhamin, @DarulQasim and even about my good friend @ushakur :-).
And I read a few poems from the collection.
Response
It’s true that sticks and stones may break my bones
But words are such a different projectile
For even do the deadliest of drones
Annihilate the living in a while
But, words: they lodge themselves within a heart
In some dark corner that the jinn know well
And there they linger as a poison dart
Secreting the intoxicants of hell
Remember now when he with tongue so mild
Had turned, a brokenhearted man, to Ṭāʾif
To be rejected, driven and reviled
In what was then his weakest time in life
Yet when the wrath of angel sprang above
He held it back with words of patient love
But words are such a different projectile
For even do the deadliest of drones
Annihilate the living in a while
But, words: they lodge themselves within a heart
In some dark corner that the jinn know well
And there they linger as a poison dart
Secreting the intoxicants of hell
Remember now when he with tongue so mild
Had turned, a brokenhearted man, to Ṭāʾif
To be rejected, driven and reviled
In what was then his weakest time in life
Yet when the wrath of angel sprang above
He held it back with words of patient love
‘Arsh
There, ‘now’ and ‘instantaneous’
And all things thought spontaneous
Fall short of what His Mighty Qadr brings
For there, no time holds sway upon
The One who lets the dusk and dawn
Be signs for praise a slave of Allah sings
Inspired by Shaykh Amin‘s exegesis on the ‘Arsh
Oxygen
The waters of mirth can stifle the soul
Glide up to the sun, catch a breath
Return to its shores to lie on the gold
And breathe the remembrance of death
Doing
Beware of the times you do good
It comes with a peace as it would
And it fills you with feelings
Delivers you reeling
With joy that you did what you could
But that glee burns a chink in the armor
And the devil does strike where it stings
Then you sweetly impute
All the good that you did
To whatever your intellect brings
Now the meaning I try to convey
Isn’t meant to inhibit the doing
Just know all you do
Is a trial to you
For the Doer is watchfully viewing