On absence

Bismillah…

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. I apologize for my sudden, frantic abandonment of this blog and for blocking it from public viewing. It was a decision born of desperation. I felt the urge to re-define my purpose for occupying this space, which I feel I had begun to lose sight of. I first created this blog as a place to share my thoughts, experiences, likes and dislikes. The objective was to inspire those like me who search for inspiration in the most obscure of places.

So if this blog made you think, question, feel, love, heal… than I can move on from it knowing it served its purpose. I feel its time and place in my life has expired so I must leave you here with a final post expressing gratitude and love for anyone who took the time to read what I had to say and all those whom I know continue to support me in spreading my message. It has not gone unnoticed and I appreciate you immensely for it, so thank you.

I will leave this blog open as a documentation of my journey so that people may continue to benefit in whatever way these captures of my soul are beneficial. This is not the end. Bi’ithnillah I will create another site that I feel best represents who I am today and the direction my art is taking me in.

All praise is due to God for any benefit served here. Only the mistakes are my own.

Peace, Blessings, & love

That's what they call the rise and fall ...

Freedom has spoken.

What's in your hand?

Re: Somalia (a haiku)

Your ancient anguish:

like a ship lost in seasons (sea-sons),

anchored in the heart

They can't jail the heart ...

The Forms of Fasting

A friend brought my attention to the following quote regarding fasting during the month of Ramadan:

There are as many forms of fasting as there are organs of perception and sensation, and each of these has many different levels. So we ask to fast from all that Allah does not love for us, and to feast on what the Beloved loves for us. Let us certainly fast from the limited mind, and all that it conjures up. Let us fast from fear, apart from fear and awe of Allah's majesty. Let us fast from thinking that we know, when Allah alone is the Knower. Let us fast from thinking negatively of anyone. Let us fast from our manipulations and strategies. Let us fast from all complaint about the life experiences that Allah gives us. Let us fast from our bad habits and our reactions. Let us fast from desiring what we do not have. Let us fast from obsession. Let us fast from despair. Let us fast from not loving our self, and from denying our heart. Let us fast from selfishness and self-centered behavior. Let us fast from thinking that only what serves us is important. Let us fast from seeing reality only from our own point of view. Let us fast from seeing any reality other than Allah, and from relying on anything other than Allah. Let us fast from desiring anything other than Allah and Allah's Prophets and friends, and our own true self. Essentially, let us fast from thinking that we have any existence separate from Allah.

Ameen.

Your House is Not our Home

Airways like barricades, your notes are dead to me
A deaf ear to the nonsense bred to restrict the conscious
...just to dilute our progress.
This is a twisted war, with censored signs of conflict
In the land of the free made by slaves, no reparation paid
No education to disclose the tactics
Censorship is your tool, where ignorance is your practice
And you build dream houses, with glass ceilings
Look up and the sky’s the limit so you can only imagine,
Look around and your held captive in your oppressor’s mansion
In a space that dictates your freedom of motion
Until you realize dreams cannot be confined
And freedom cannot be measured in liberties denied
Because it (freedom) exists as a state of mind
So until we frame ourselves with love crimes of the revolutionary kind
How can we feel at home?

The Composition of Silence

Bismillah...

Prayer wells up inside me
Like un-cried tears; their emergence clinging to the back of my throat in the name of strength,
Like the passion of unfaltering hearts-pumping-loader-than-freedom-fighting-fists-in-the-air resistance,
Like dreams coagulating in my heart, in search of permanence

…As I move towards remembrance.

Yes, this is a physical place.
This wanderer in my ribcage sometimes visits it
And sometimes gets caught in emotional traffic on the way
Sometimes needs a place to store its baggage for the day.

As prayer wells up
As time runs in a race with no one
As bellies swell out of both hunger and gluttony
As the earth holds her tongue to our injustice,
Biting it until it bleeds the same crimson red that creates rivers of unholy sacrifice on her back:
Colonized by heartache, occupied by apathy.

I can feel her back seething with untold stories as I walk on it,
Knee-deep against her current as my feet knock on it.
(As if someone could answer and satisfy all my curiosity about her at once)
And sometimes when she trips me…I think she is reminding me of her presence.
Saying in her silent way: "remember...there are more souls under me than above me,
So walk with caution."

I imagine her seas are hard to sail, like my coagulated dreams…
From the things she’s seen, I imagine there is a nightmare under her skin for every dream.

I imagine the opening of those pores would unleash screams
Of fear and ecstasy
The sounds of buried prayer
These divine conversations unspoken
They were just infants learning the art of speech
And the mechanics of utterance…

So they could teach it to this wanderer in my ribcage
Over and over in the perpetual course of destiny
As prayers well up, over and overflowing.

This wanderer...
I hear she is fluent in love,
and every syallable of hate she understands was force-fed at the hands of her weaknesses
But still I want to speak with her...
I want to consult her so I can translate my experiences
Into submission
In either gratitude or repentance
but I struggle to read the stories inscribed in her valves
Stutter at every sentence.

These hieroglyphic curves of pictorial words…
Dancing to distortion, an inaccessible beat …
I tried to play my symphony over the confusion,
but I cannot mask ugliness with beauty and expect peace
There is no peace until these silences sound just as sweet as these compositions

Until these words are more than the poetry they compose.

I pray to translate and transcribe (them)
Before time brings death to life
So I drink from this beautiful well
Of scriptures and eternity –the milk of the earth

And quench my thirst…
for the fifth time today.
Assalaamu alaikum wa rahmatullah,
Assalaamu alaikum wa rahmatullah.