Saturday, May 14, 2011

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
.