Word, like wind, cuts through you / Withers all but true you
I’ll take your palms, your knees and toes,
My touch is soft, so calm your woes;
Exhale your anger, drain your mind,
Inhale the languor that you find
When I am spread, and spread I’m best
To kiss your head at every rest,
And hear the conversation sweet,
A conversation to repeat.
I’ve thought of this before
And I’ll think of it again:
What’s the purpose of creation,
And of angels, jinn and men?
What’s the purpose of the earth
As around and round it spins
Bearing all its many children
And their many, many sins?
What’s the purpose of the sky,
Of the stars and of the sun?
Each is born and wont to die
When the time of time is done.
As we turn and spin about
Through the dawn and afternoon,
Just before and after dusk
And through the passing of the moon,
There are jinn and there are men
Spanning every longitude,
There are angels flocking by
At each and every altitude
Such that every breath of time
Sends a prayer floating, one
That outlives the life of rhyme
And outshines the shine of sun.
When this planet stops to turn,
And the breath of time is spent,
All that’s left is is left to burn,
And what isn’t can’t repent.
So the form and the function
Help us out here once again
With the purpose of creation,
And of angels, jinn and men.
Inspired by this moving Friday sermon by Shaykh Amin…
There’s a crisis in our homes,
In our neighborhoods and schools,
As we labor hard to tell
Intellectuals from fools;
Tweets and faces tell a story
Floating in a sea of doubt,
What was true is now a rumor,
But the word’s already out;
All the passion that we swallow
And the knowledge we receive
Come from places that are hollow
Upon tongues that don’t believe,
Ignorance once had a father
And its words are rich and red
Like the wine that taints the blood
Of all the offspring that it bred;
Yes, the captain burned the village
And the village burned all night,
But the hearts of all the children
Went on carrying the light.
As the blood upon the sands
Becomes tears in your eyes,
Let your tears become blood for
Each believing heart that dies.
It’s the crisis in our homes
In our neighborhoods and schools,
Beat a path to the fountain
Down where certain knowledge rules.
Listen to the weeping warner
Shout out to the hearing few:
If you do forget the Lord,
The Lord will make you forget you.
A lunchtime sonnet to parents out there getting anxious about their babies’ walking/talking abilities :-).
Why all this haste to see a baby walk!
Are you somehow disgusted by its crawl?
Why all this haste to hear a baby talk!
You tired of its babbling and all?
Slow down and look around, my frantic friends:
The flower blossoms first before the fruit,
The quality of which so much depends
Upon the bond that flower makes with shoot;
And every fruit bursts forth from fertile flower
Like every speech springs sweet from subtle sounds,
Each bursting and each springing takes its hour,
So kiss the hues with which the bloom abounds
And kiss the infant stumbling on its feet;
There will not be a dearth of fruit to eat.
I’m running for cover in the shelter of sky,
When the sprinkler comes on, not a moment is dry,
Playing tag with my sisters and my cousin on the lawn,
Everyone’s getting wet on the sixth of Ramadan:
Getting wet in the kitchen, getting wet on the chair
Getting wet wherever the Quran is in the air,
Mercy rains in the mosque, silent lips sing a song
In the praise of Allah on the sixth of Ramadan.
Looking out over the prairie, just awoken baby in my arms.
Hi there, sky fair,
Cloud is floating by where
Thursday-morning-broken
Bird ascending high there.
Lo here, oh dear,
Trees and grasses grow near
Where Salaam is spoken
Word descending low here.
So much passing us by…
#39
It only speaks with lolling tongue