Khalid Mukhtar

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

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.

Ecphrasis of A Silent Tree

· ·

Picture courtesy my niece Zahraa. Thanks JM for what inspired the verse.
O wintery night, how cold is your touch,
My branches remember their leaves,
I miss their green laughter, I miss it so much
Till all of me shivers and grieves.

O wintery night, your stars lend to me
That with them my branches may play
The song of sweet silence, how it will be
The silentest rustle I say.

Thursday Riddle (Feb 13, 2014)

· ·

Do not, oh please don’t turn your back on me,
And trust me with your limbs for just another
Wee step, descend before you heed my plea:
No rungs, just up the one and down the other;
How pure the air of morning time can be.

You cannot forbid my arrival,
And though you may make me depart,
Returning am I when clouds gather high
Eclipsing the sun from your heart;

Or when you are lost in a tempest
Of heedless and dizzying mirth,
I come to remind you as subtly I blind you
To time in its glorious worth.

Thursday Riddle (Feb 6, 2014)

· ·

Although I resent this intruder
I host him without a complaint
And host him despite my complaint,
Lest he may assume me the cruder,
I deck him in apparel quaint

Of silky bright robes, many layers,
And let him remain here with me;
It grieves me, though, when one declares
Him grander than I’ll ever be.

Updated, thanks to some healthy critiquing :-).