What's in your hand?

Re: Somalia (a haiku)

Your ancient anguish:

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

anchored in 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

Reflection 3: Action

The human condition has spoken but the last say is revolution

Reflection 2: Ideas

An idea told me it was insecure because it wasn't as attractive as action

Reflection 1: Reasons

Bismillah,

Amidst all the anguish, the toil, the conscious dreaming, quests for truth, sweat of labor, delightfully bizarre ideas…there lies the reason. It is as simple and as complicated as a heartbeat.

The Fear of Failure

There are times when I don’t feel like writing. I have to understand these moments. I long to become who I’ve always wanted for myself—the best version of myself, but I feel a hindrance born from fear. Fear has become a crippling yet necessary emotion. It has taught me what I love and hate, but mostly what I love. We often fear the things we love (e.g. God, poetry, potential, the soul etc.). Therefore, I do not ever want to be fearless because the absence of fear mirrors the absence of passion and purpose. I fear poetry. Perhaps that’s why I am writing a letter/note instead. I fear poetry because it is my risk. Everyone has at least one chance at pursuing a potential risk that can change the course of their entire life and lead to immense happiness and self-fulfillment. Failure—a word I’ve been well acquainted with as of late—has become a great fear in my life, yet I have done everything to run into it. Perhaps my keeping in touch with failure has been therapeutic in ways in the sense that it has allowed me to purge and face my fear. The fear of failure has diminished more with each failure I have endured and survived. Falling doesn’t seem so scary any more...it is no longer a threat or obstacle, rather a prerequisite. I have to fall in order to get to know the ground and, thus, be able to stand firmly on it.

(premature) Love Notes

Whether we meet Love in a sandbox, institution, website, coffeeshop
or anywhere 'cupid' dwells
its is always a familiar face (to the soul) and one we deserve

So, Love, if ever we drift apart from what we are today
it is not because I've fallen out of you or you of me
rather because you or I deserve better and we both deserve different

let not your heart play dress up and change ten thousand times
before finding the right suit
you might just wear it out before its time

Sincerely,
Love