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.

Lost Notes to Self

I wonder if we are all just lost in translation
between the mirror and the soul,
trying to reflect our true selves
and fine tune this blurry image staring back at us
Annoying in its translucence,
like the combination of fog and falling raindrops
collecting on the window of the bus as you attempt to people watch
...I just want to know if shes going to make her bus like I did...
I just want to look out this window and watch life like a movie sometimes
but the lights are too bright in here, and the sky is too grey out there
so as I stare, all I seem to see is myself
The raindrops running down the window on the reflection of my cheeks
have the familiarity of tears
And I realize that I cannot get past myself
because I havent gotten to myself in years.

Educated out of learning

The videos below show some insights into how the contemporary school system is affecting us and why it may be time for educational reform...

Video 1: "Shaykh Hamza talks about school life in the USA"

This is an interesting panel discussion I came across concerning the documentary "Race to Nowhere," which is a film critiqing the rigid and formulaic sturcture of western school systems.




Video 2: "School Kills Creativity"

Sir Ken Robinson discusses the school system's negligence towards fostering creativity and the displinary hierarchy that exists within the system, pressuring children towards careers deemed to be more "prestigious" and honourable.



I hope you found the above videos as enlightening and insightful as I have. It’s important to reflect on the effects of the institutional structures that have indoctrinated us to perceive learning in a certain way and challenge our own perceptions. Are we really in school because we feel that academia is the best environment to nurture our personal talents? Or are we simply going through the motions, following the script, and standing in line?

Your dreams run faster than you think

Upcoming shows! (March)

Food Justice: Our Food, Our Bodies
Date & Time: Saturday, March 19th 8:00pm
Location: The Little Bean Coffee Bar (open mic session)

METAverse Poetry Slam
Date & Time: Sunday, March 20th 7:00pm
Location: The Silver Spoon (217 King St W Kitchener)

Opening for Carlos Andrés Gómez Show!
Date & Time: Monday, March 21st 8:00pm
Location: Hawk's Nest, Laurier University

EARTH DAY show
Date & Time: Saturday, March 26th 9:00pm
Location: SLC great Hall, University of Waterloo

Free the Children Coffeehouse
Date & Time: Monday, March 28th 7-11pm
Location: MC comfy lounge, University of Waterloo

6 minutes

I attended a workshop today called Workshop Facilitation 101: a workshop about conducting effective workshops. The facilitator conducted a spoken word workshop within this workshop to exemplify how to conduct workshops and asked us to write a spoken word piece in 6 minutes as one of the activities. This is what I came up with...

The earth has been split before
Shaken into awareness
given new life
taught to see through new eyes
This earth you call your mother
but treat as your child
now she crys
shaking, quivering
and you feel it as if she resides inside you
I feel it like she clings to my womb,
kicking for new life
And I know I must, we must, perpare ourselves
for her rebirth
in the aftermath of yesterday,
Our world painted blood-red from the moment,
the colour of history,
the colour of injustice,
the colour of tears,
I haven't been in labour like this before
but for you I will,
even though I know your will is to bury me one day
you have carried me for too many (of those days)
to turn away now
So the next time you decide to split I won't
because the earth has been split before
and I am shaking into awareness.


Re: Japan 03/11/2011

The Death of Apathy

We speak of revolution
Of resistance to the persistence of illusions
The removal of the conscience from contemplation
As the mind is incubated in delusions
We speak of revolution s that we fail to start with ourselves.
Cannot delve into righteous internal protests
Yet want to profess our commitment
To power to the people and progress
We know less than we think and think less than we know when...
We speak of revolution

Met with indifference when asked critical questions
Treating tragedy like a trend as we trend-set
With only the widely televised capturing our attention
The devastation is in rotation on your local station
Watched like spectacles for our entertainment
And never did we entertain the chain of events
That led to the debasement of entire nations,
Ethnically cleansed and faceless, so we can’t face this negligence
realities concealed by officials and presidents
When we speak of revolution do we see the relevance?

Do we see the precedence we’ve set?
spiritually in debt when blood is shed and we can’t shed tears
So how much blood do you have?
Nations have searched for it to quench their thirst
While hearts circulate its stories
But how much is stored and how much is pouring?
How much is shed internally without you knowing?
How much of it does take to be awake?
How much must drain for you to give back what they take?

Transfusion of the soul—is there enough in you to circulate
Through the networks that connect us?
I’m talking vessels of truth that flood veins just to reach hearts
And not in vain just to recharge
It’s abstract like just a brief part of the story
I'm talking days of glory we’ve forgotten
I'm talking million man marches and saying “never again” to picking cotton
Yes, I'm talking Malcolms and Martins
Ches and Rosa Parks and rays to outshine the darkness
Ways to implant light where the heart is
And wisdom where your thoughts live

So when we speak of revolution,
Let minds feel and hearts think
Converse in one another’s tongues so they may exist as one
Understand one another...
so they may brand one another as the freedom fighters of your body
With every cell of your composition in the army
Fighting for the return of your blood,
this flowing liquid that allows your heart to beat so it can love,
Allows your lungs to breath so you can speak truth
Yet we blood-let, ingest messages of self-indulgence,
Addictions to freeze you conscience, spiritually impoverished,
Selling our souls and their bodies for economic progress,
Neoliberal individualistic culture forgetting the collective problem,
And we would rather not think of the causes, with lives full of voids we avoid

And that’s why to speak of revolution Apathy must die,
Assassinated to avenge the injustice it breeds throughout its life
Apathy has built a life breathing death to the mind,
Arresting empathy where it finds so that in indifference we find satisfaction
Indifference is a war waged against your body to stop it from seeking action
Relaxing in its comatose state it lives for yesterday
because it can’t carry its weight as far as tomorrow
infatuated by the lies of its powerlessness
it lavishes in the cowardice bliss of ignorance
and we’re devouring this like its a privilege not to know
that our tax dollars fund treachery across the globe
that our weaknesses are profitable and keep corporate pockets full

Where are the people in this progress?
Living in dual times of up rise and conflict
Times to make like Tunisia and Egypt and revolt against politicians who should be convicts
Like neurons we live in a nervous system because nervous is the system to resistance...
But before we seek revolution we must destroy the inferiority complex of marginalized communities, of minds monopolized by insecurity
At the hands of the hegemony that’s educated us out of our identities

So take back your legacy!
Take back your freedom!
The revolution will be internalized so that when we speak of it, we believe it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Performed February 13th @ Showcase Your Roots

Malcolm X and The Black Panther Party

A powerful montage shown in my discourses of dissent course.

The Revolutionary Spirit

The revolutionary spirit is comprised of a selfless relentlessness to create positive change. Many of us never develop this. Where we lack is not in the rigor with which we chase this pursuit, but in our perception of the starting point of this journey. The problem is that we want revolutions we fail to start within ourselves. It's not a lack of wanting something enough, but of being and living what it is we want. When we want more than we are willing to work for, dreams become nothing but notions living vicariously in the mind.

I have learned through observation, experience, and conversation that many people want to contribute something positive to the world, many have a yearning for revolution; but many of those who have the capability never realize this potential. The reason for this outcome is one of the great obstacles of the human experience: "realism". We fear what is uncertain, those intangible and tangible things that live outside our proximity. Realism acts as a blanket of comfort convincing us only that which has already occured is possible, ultimately destroying the imagination.

When we lose our capacity to imagine, our lives become redundant as we are found lost in the imaginings of others, trying hard to convince ourselves that the dreams we've stolen have always belonged to us. We want so much to believe that our borrowed ideas are original beacuse without them we are left with a graveyard of dreams, unvisited. We assasinate our own dreams, our own selves, and bury the evidence by cloaking ourselves in the ambitions of others to create the illusion that we are living the lives we've imagine--that we are free.

Wiping our hands clean of our true selves, we walk through life deluded to believe that our choices are well-calculated and clever, that if we break this chain of conformity we will be unsuccessful. This message carries itself proudly in our institutions, media, and pop culture with a plot to infiltrate the mind and control the masses. This because, in the critical thinking of rebels to this status quo, those who dare to question, lives the audacity to ingite revolutions. Revolutions that threaten this culture of conformity.

What about those who have the courage to dissent? Does this courage alone dictate the revolutionary spirit? Courage is only part of the battle. Many toil over the fruition of their ideas, innovations intended to change the world, and through it all a revolutionary spirit may or may not exist within them. The absence of the spirit behind the act renders the act insincere, though it may produce positive effects. This occurs when altruistic acts are reduced to a therapeutic means of coping with one's life or filling a void. "Because it makes me feel good," has always struck me as a disconcerting and incomplete answer to the question of why activism is necessary. There is no urgency, no sincerity, or evidence of consciousness in a self-involved motive to do good for others. We have to do better than acting merely to buffer the guilt of not acting.

It is better to act for the sake of those in need of your actions, to help give a voice to the voiceless, liberation to the oppressed, and dignity to the denigrated. However, I believe the purest reason for activism is for the sake of God--to see the spiritual connection of each member of the human family through the singular source from which we all came into existence. Through this divine lineage of every human soul, we have not only a worldly but a spiritual duty to protect/perserve our brothers and sisters in humanity. This is the essence of activisim; an understanding and acceptance of this responsibility is the essence of the revolutionary spirit.

Tahrir square, Eygpt

Rememberance is at the core of the revolutionary spirit.

Essay series 1.0

Spiritual endurance.

Humanitarianism.

Philanthrophy.

Dissent.

Revolution.

Change.

What does it take to be better than who you were yesterday?

God Willing, I will write an essay series attempting to answer this question. Every other Friday starting next week, I will try to publish these essays on this blog to share them with you. The essays will be mostly (if not all) opinion-based so feel free to dissuss, ponder, and/or challenge the posts of this series.