Sonnet

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.

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

The silence of the night is loudest when
The sounds of sleep and timber creak are one;
To rise as rebels, wont to fall again
As if their song of rise and fall were done,
For silence is a failure of the mind
To hear what it refuses to let in:
A creature that by nature is defined
In terms of what is absent though met in
The captivating charms of solitude
That free the soul unto the forest lush
With sapling thoughts that spring from soil imbued
With nourishment endowed in waters’ gush.
The silence of the night is soft and mild
When chanced upon the breath of sleeping child.

I often wonder how to reconcile
This paradox in knowledge that I see:
To slog through books in earnest, all the while
Admiring the unlettered Nabi.
And then I heard this wisdom: all the toil
The seeker puts into sincere seeking,
The sleepless hours burned by midnight oil
To brave a climb that’s marked by endless peaking,
Produces such sophisticated minds
Well honed upon the stone of scholarship,
But even what the mill of learning grinds
Despite its many tries to take a sip
Can’t reach the fountain flowing beyond sins
To where prophetic intellect begins.

Is this the brand of greatness we desire
Will all this madness make us great again
Dividing hearts and setting lives afire
And separating kids from parents when
It’s hard to find a job and wages slide
While markets are more fragile than before
It doesn’t matter what we claim beside
The daily plight of citizens galore
We’ve fractured every friendship we held dear
And stepped on wounds by elevating tyrants
We’ve seen this all before but now it’s clear
The dream autocracy has broken silence
It doesn’t matter much how great we’ll be
Once we have slaughtered our humanity

This came about while watching my son as we waited at the airport a couple days ago.

My life is like this chocolate milk delight
So complicated just to open up
The seal won’t break: the cap is screwed on tight
I wish they served it in a paper cup
I ask my dad to help but he says no
So here I am determined and committed
To part this bottle from its cap and so
I carefully examine how it’s fitted
I slide a nail into where seal may give
It does and I repeat this little move
Till seal descends into a plastic cliff
My digits work a counterclockwise groove
Till cap comes loose at last – now gentle sips
That eulogize this cocoa off my lips

The circle of humility is small
And only those who cannot see it, enter,
For such an entry makes the humble fall
Into a spot where circle is as center.
You cannot then become it overnight,
Or over weeks, or even over months
Like mirror that reflects a mirror sight
And on, till all reflections come at once.
To mock and shun the virtue is a vice;
To give it up an even greater flaw;
Embrace it till you make it your device
And practice like you want to make it law.
We’ll be upon this journey till we see
There is no circle of humility.

Awakening to sounds of foremost light
I feel the stories tear into my soul
Of someplace where the sun fell on the night
To vaporize a family once whole.
I see their faces turned up to the sky
And wonder if they ever wore a smile,
Or had they even watched another die
Yet never thinking they would. All the while
The images of death and grieving drain
The little melatonin left in me
Until these deals of Prime Day turn my brain
Away from where my heart would rather be.
If only there were great discounts for peace,
We’d know the real meaning of increase.

It’s hard to be a Muslim in these times
When random border checks have gotten cold
With camps and waterboarding on our minds
And neo-nazi haters walking bold
Like foreigners in lands we hold our own
We’re dust on maps dividing us apart
Unfounded fears turning hearts to stone
Impelling policy bereft of heart
We hear the names of prophets tossed in vain
By voices on the left and on the right
But can’t submit our intellect to gain
Admission to a Garden wrought from Light
It’s hard to be a Muslim till we see
That Muslim is just all we need to be

The words are formed and primed to do their dance
Upon the bones of honor in disgrace
You’ve strung your bow of tongue, awaiting chance
To send that verbal arrow nocked in place.
But then, just as you are about to fire
There falls a slowing hand upon your bow
Eliding tension for a reason higher
Than all the reasons you could ever know.
The arrow is dismantled word by word,
Replaced by disposition quite reversed:
An arsenal of patience undeterred
By thoughts seducing you to be your worst.
It is an act of courage to withhold
A poisoned arrow, be it cast in gold.