Making Connections

Compassion is a peculiar teacher
Its lessons disguised in failure and trying
Yet advocating triumph
We see ourselves in the best possible light
Until our power cuts out
When we are powerless is when we learn to fight for others
If we decide to heed the message of struggle
It is to be above your own soul by silencing its desires
And only tending to its needs
Enabling it to see through its egocentric nature and find the core
The tears of humanity can fill oceans in their abundance
Where some drown and others sail, all once gazing upon an eternal horizon
We can start a revolution or better the one that has already begun
Everything is revolving just like everything is one
Circular and spherical is our life force
As we breathe corruption into it
As we inhale so-called progress, we exhale our own demise
I am sick of this phantom respiration
When will we show our form?
Compassion...
I had to dance with my ego to cripple it.

Her own brand of Freedom

Ink was pierced into her as she tattooed poetry on her veins
They told stories of blood loss
Mind envied heart for its freedom
As the intellect could never grow past reason

They told her her reasons were below theirs
And so she spilt ink of the floor and walked barefoot on it
So they could see the footsteps of her thinking
From mind to body the ink spilt
And all watched on as passion painted the floor a red liquid

Mind envied heart for its freedom
As the intellect could never grow past reason
Foot envied tongue for its speaking
And tongue envied eyes for its seeing

She being young could always tell
That cynicism was more a crutch than an excuse
Beauty came and went like change
Growing deeper and leaving evidence of life
Like wrinkles in space and time
But thoughts resisted aging to the body’s rhythm
They follow either mind or heart

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.

When the day presents a pause

Bismillah...

Autumn leaves gently glide above me,
Missioning to kiss pavement and soil,
As if to demonstrate the grace in change
when it welcomes new beginings

This tree will never be the same again,
but it will always remember...

It continues to hold firm to the earth
Rooted in it like thoughts to a mind
giving back to her what it takes
from weeping willow to pine

And so they exist in a tranquil marriage of truths:
that their creation was one of love from the One that created love
and their existence is one of transience from the Everlasting

(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

For hearts and the stories they let circulate

In the name of the Creator....

There is so much to be said about the human heart
and the many ways it breaks
its naivities and intricacies
the many beats it takes from infancy

rthymically in the know; like time's apparatus
simultaneously exploring young and old
and the weaknesses inbetween
I long to know my own
and build immunity to heartache

but penetration is enevitable,
love is just that sharp
It's precision in the heart is narrated by incisions leaving scars,
markings of its presence connecting stories like loss, romance and hope.
like tears of the soul they symbolically linger in our being devoid mortal witness...

until we testify its truths
and believe in its authenticity

And so my story goes unnoticed
until ink breaths life to it (sometimes not even then)
it is between these breaths I regain my sanity
and during them that I live.

States

bismillah...

That which plauges our present is the future and its fears.
Its impending uncertainty...the nameless...mortally unnamed.
the unknown fortress; worldly portrait of forgetufullness
with humanity locked in it's frames.
This is what it inspires
but is it a death of aspirations,
or fabrication of the significance of this earthly station?
Does the clock not continue its rotation in tandem with the world?
How calculated we've become--
the globe pressed tightly under our thumbs
until the earth presses tightly under what's to come
Ribs fold, hearts drain, and in the mind is disturbance or peace
A dimension of anarchy
meets layers of dimensions built to explode the human intellect
in its mere infinite reality--
where ours is distorted and (soon to be) altered
but the spirit falters in flight
as the soul evolves past confinment,
or shrinks with it.
As the world revolves in alignment
just to communicate the secrets beneath its core..

Timaj (c)

Goodness

Via Shereeza Boodhs' facebook:

What makes a good Person*?

Based on a khutba (sermon) by Imam SlimiIt...

1. Exhibit Good Manners
2. Establish Justice
3. Encourage Good, Forbid Evil/Bad things
4. Restore Dignity to People
5. Work Towards Unity

*These qualities were presented in an islamic context and initally titled "what makes a good Muslim?" but are, of course, not only islamically relevant (also applicable to and inclusive of all people), thus, I decided to give it a more universal title for the purposes of this blog.

Special thanks to my good friend Shereeza for the piece of enlightenment!