Khalid Mukhtar

Word, like wind, cuts through you / Withers all but true you

Poetry

Beacon

· ·

You’re lost, but only lost until you find
Your place before the One who’s ever found,
So cling to hope, and leave despair behind
And be for paradise forever bound.
 
As does the sailor high upon the sea
See through the blast of consternating waves
And fix his eye on beacon distantly
Though what it stands upon be what he craves,
So does the slave that seeks by night or day
See through the blast of consternating life
And fix his eye on him who shows the way
No matter the intensity of strife.
You have to take the means to reach the end,
So seek with sweet remembrance, weary friend.

Grandlove

· ·

I fuss over children whose grandfather once
Did dote on my mother, and uncles and aunts;
It maybe that one day my grandson will see
The face of his cousin remembering me,
A cousin whose parents and uncles and aunts 
Will have been who I will have doted on once.

Thursday Riddle (March 20, 2014)

· ·

Can never be lost, not easy to share,
It fills empty spaces (and I don’t mean air),
Preceding the first, succeeding the last,
Delaying your death, returning your past;
By darkness or light, in silence it lies
Where, hidden from sight of all-seeing eyes,
Just anything might compel its demise.

Song of the Despondent Slave

· ·

Wherever you might be: shun the darkness of despair, and walk in the light of hope.


I wish I could smoke it away,
This hurt that I feel everyday,
No substance may burn the demons that turn
My grief into idols of clay.


Don’t judge me, you don’t know my pain,
I’ve lost what I love once again,
Forgotten to smile, the tears run wild,
And drain every cell in my brain.


I know the despair in my voice
Invites the accursed to rejoice
For he did attest that he wouldn’t rest
Till grief be my singular choice;


O Allah, I need to embrace
The reason I am in this place,
You gave me this pain, again and again
That I may now turn to Your face.


My hope lies in sabrun jameel,
There’s nothing else I need to feel,
For Jannah is where my heart will repair
And all of my injury heal.


So bless my each moment, command
My heart to a peace that is grand,
You know that my lips are longing for sips
To quench all my thirst at the hand


Of blessed Rasul al-Kareem,
O Allah, make everything seem
So easy for me, oh please let me see
The Truth, for this life is a dream.


Make easy for me that I may now see
The Truth, for this life is a dream.

O Allah! Enable me to see the Truth as Truth and give me the ability to follow it. And enable me to see falsehood as false and give me the ability to refrain from it.

Thursday Riddle (March 13, 2014)

· ·

There is no escape from the lair,
This slave cannot flee anywhere,
Submitting and peaceful when held in his cage,
But out, Is his spear good reason for fear,
The harder the combat, the greater his rage;
The maddening slaughter he craves, it comes faster,
The lair becomes hotter when slave becomes master.

Between Heaven and Me

· ·

This began as a response to my daughter asking me to write a quatrain describing a beautiful beach.

Gull. Wind.
Wave. Shore.
Flap and blow,
Roll and roar.
All between heaven and me,
Broken on this shore.

Heart. Blood.
Breath. Door.
Beat and flow,
Draw, before
All between heaven and me
Sees me through the door.

Thursday Riddle (March 6, 2014)

· ·

Just like a despicable spice
That’s tossed on a platter of rice
Of which is each grain a morsel of pain,
I’m condiment not very nice,
So serve me to who you disdain,
To watch all their happiness wane;
The sultan is nigh, but tea before I
May help an illustrious brain.

Thursday Riddle (Feb 26, 2014)

· ·

You bow in silence with a humble grace
Affording us this service you repeat:
To drive away the darkness with your face
While springtime flowers kiss your toeless feet.

My First Cinquains

· ·

Take root
In constant love
That like a forest grows
All while the raging storm above
It blows.

A thing,
Familiar now,
But only so because
I distinctly remember how
It was.

There are
Stupid questions,
And stupid people who
Declare they don’t exist; you know
They do.

Thursday Riddle – Feb 20, 2013

· ·

These hairy hunchbacks huddle to keep
Warm all together as one;
The mantle they share in perpetual sleep
Is forged from a drop of the sun;
The huddle is broken with one of them woken,
And thusly their end is begun.