It’s fascinating how a stone may lie
Deep down beneath a hundred miles of earth,
And stay there as a billion years go by
To grow in hardness lending it it’s worth.
It’s fascinating how a child may live
Deep down beneath a thousand miles of pain,
And stay there, although everything may give
Till beating heart and fighting soul remain.
This is the tale of diamonds in the rough,
Unknown and unacknowledged through their time,
And as if all that pressure’s not enough,
They’re covered with the thickest coats of grime.
To shine is not up to the stone or child
But to the hand that finds it in the wild.
On Riverside Walks
I’ve strolled this river often thinking why
I find myself attracted to its shore,
And after some such strolling, can’t deny
The reasons why it makes my spirit soar.
Down icy slopes it rushes, breaks and winds
And falls and crashes past its many bends,
Yet through its madding gush, direction finds
To get to where its epic journey ends.
As every bend and crash may wealth exchange,
It knows to never turn away from streams,
No matter what their source, however strange,
It joins them all to reach the sea of dreams.
And though I turn around, it onward rolls
Indifferent to my thoughts on pensive strolls.
Heart And Sole
They stand me up and sit me down,
I’m safe when they are on the ground,
Past fields, through woods, up canyons grand,
Oh, how I love the touch of land.
I know my feet have served me well,
Though there were times I know I fell.
And bikes and trams and trains and cars,
And ships and planes and flights to Mars
Are one side of the great divide
Between a ride and happy stride.
We drive and float and fly, yet greet
A chance to be upon our feet,
A bond that’s shared by earth and heart
Grows stronger as they drift apart,
A bond that’s shared by earth and heart
Grows stronger as they drift apart,
And if you dare survive, you must
Let feet and face both kiss the dust;
From dust we come, in dust demise
Till all that settles comes to rise.
From dust we come, in dust demise
Till all that settles comes to rise.
The Kingdom Trap
I tried to capture into the confines of a sonnet the gist of Shaykh Amin’s insights into the conclusory verses of Surah Al-Qasas (the chapter of The Story). The entire exegesis (available here as Session 13) is a valuable commentary on the singular gravest crisis of our times.
When waters whelmed the tyrant and his men
And drained that wealthy kingdom of its power,
It seemed the consequence of all that then
Would be for slaves to rise up to the hour
And take it back. But came the high command
That turned them east and set them desert-bound
That they may become of the Promised Land
Of Paradise where lasting peace is found.
And thus the most beloved of the Lord
Returned, a conqueor with head bowed low
With reason for the conquest: to afford
The Abrahamic pilgrimage. So know:
Seek kingdom and authority on earth
To be deprived of it where has it worth.
Falling Snow
Forging a new form. I find this one works well to combine a visual scene with an abstract thought that it inspires. The form comprises five stanzas:
- A sestet detailing a scene (two lines of trimeter and one tetrameter, repeating as aac bbc)
- A couplet summarizing the scene (trimeter, i.e. keep it short)
- A sestet re-inforcing the preceding stanzas and/or gradually introducing the abstraction (same meter as first sestet)
- A couplet followed by
- A tercet – i.e. five lines that clarify the abstraction.
I’m going to try and repeat this form in a future post to see if it holds up :-). Share your thoughts in a comment here, or email me.
Powdered sugar driveways;
Slipping on the highways;
Crystal wonder flakes in motion;
Fallen in an hour
In a gentle shower,
Look around you: it’s an ocean.
Snow, snow, snow, everywhere,
Float and blow through the air,
Let the whiners blather
On that they would rather
Brave the summertime commotion.
Feel the mercy falling,
I can hear you calling
Through the layers of this notion.
Snow and love fall the same
From above in the name
Of the ever living,
And forever giving
Center of a heart’s devotion.
On The Not So Many Things I Cannot Stand
There aren’t so many things I cannot stand,
But of the ones I cannot stand at all
Are: handshakes feeling like they’ll break my hand,
Explosive laughter on a conference call,
Responses to thank you that thank you back,
Gum plastered on the underside of benches,
Recurrent breaks in chatter for a snack,
And toilets left unflushed, emitting stenches.
All these I find disturbing, it is true,
But one thing I can’t stand with loathing deep
Is being woken from a slumber through
The asking of the question, You asleep?
My tolerance for whiners, though, is high;
They do not bother me. I wonder why.
This sonnet was borne by the silence of an early afternoon Metra ride out of Chicago. I think it was inspired by some “explosive laughter” on a conference call from earlier in the day.
On Healy’s Insightful Observation
I read of the time they wanted to wave
The swastika over a shtetl,
I’m oddly impressed the ACLU gave
All it could to that storm in a kettle.
The union had taken a stand that was strong
In seventy-eight, and some called it wrong,
Yet well it reflected the grit of the land
Of the free and the home of the brave. Understand
That the plan didn’t fly, but supposing it had,
And further supposing had something gone bad,
Can you force an incident, however sad,
That MAY just have driven the union mad,
To say: “I am Hitler”?
I can’t.
I get it, the foe of a foe can be friend.
How close is a friendship like that in the end?
You want the stain gone, break out the bleach,
But seek out a pair of good gloves within reach.
And do put them on.
Just for the record, I am not bleach.
I WIll Grieve, I Will Laugh, But I Am Not Charlie, by Josh Healy
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/13/i-will-grieve-i-will-laugh-i-am-not-charlie
ACLU History: Taking a Stand for Free Speech in Skokie
https://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-speech-skokie
In an Unequal World, Mocking All Serves the Powerful, by Saladin Ahmed
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/01/10/when-satire-cuts-both-ways/in-unequal-an-world-mocking-all-serves-the-powerful
Rise!
Here’s a motivational piece I wrote last night. If you find yourself performing it, do drop me a recording :-).
There’s a fire in your eyes. It’s your day to rise,
Time to light the skies with the burning cries
Of a fighter with no fear cuz the fear all dies
This day you rise with a fire in your eyes.
Set the field ablaze for a thousand days,
Let them feel the heat of the toil that pays
For a body that wields from a mind that plays
The resolve of a heart in so many ways
That the longer it burns, the stronger you feel
Cuz that’s the effect of heat on steel,
So burn till you earn what you yearn to seal,
And when the victory rains, let the rain reveal
Who you really are – one body, one mind,
One soul, one machine that’s been designed
To light the skies with the burning cries
Of a fighter with no fear cuz the fear all dies
This day you rise with a fire in your eyes.
It’s your day to rise, your day to rise.
RISE!
December
There’s a wind that bites on the coldest nights
In the frozen lap of December,
And it leaves its marks of depressing truth
Everywhere that it blows. Remember
All the lonesome old, and the suffering youth
And the desperate cries of a mother
As she scrapes what once had graced her womb
From the street in the wake of another
Downpour of fire; every home’s a tomb
With its epitaph on the faces
Of the drenched who dried everything they had
In the rain, of all the places.
As a village dines on a morsel, glad
For the fact that their meal was bigger,
Don’t forget blood spilled, all of it unwilled
By that tot enticed by a trigger.
But we all rejoice for the time we killed
In our hot pursuit of pleasure,
Just don’t be ashamed of the tears you shed
They might be our only treasure.
(Take it down just a notch for the dead.)
There’s a wind that bites on the coldest nights
In the frozen lap of December,
And it leaves its marks of depressing truth
Everywhere that it blows. Remember.
Happy New Year!
Mall Blues
I stole this candid shot of my son at the mall.
I don’t know why I’m here at the mall,
It’s so painful, but I’m biding my time
While my sisters, and my mother of all
Are deliberating some fashion crime.
Dad reminds me I’ll get used to the wait,
But I know I need a miracle prayer
That, until I learn to welcome my fate,
Can dissolve all of this time in the air.