Banish words, burn books,
Shut down the electric currents keeping us all at bay

Let’s go out by the multitude
Or solitary
Beyond confines

to remember the smell of earth again
texture of the universe
against  feel of skin
beauty that wrings herself
tirelessly
regardless of the blind

Banish all words
fragments of dead knowledge
taking us away
so far away
from reality

deadening instincts
rendering the need
to experience, meaningless

wisdom has been put on mute

senses become less
common
atrophying

while distractions and disorders rules the day

Banish them all I say
let’s become explorers
adventurers
remember and celebrate 

let’s birth this universe anew

Let’s observe the world
like we’ve never seen before
through the eyes of a
child

a new born soul

lest we stifle all that is joyous
genuine
and gorgeous 
into blind crusts of jaded bitterness

Come on, let’s go,
the last frontier of innocence
is in our hands, we can’t afford
any more blood

Banish all barriers
that keep us in prisons
without bars

let’s go out
let’s go out by
the multitude

let’s go out solitary

to simply gaze at the stars….

(the irony of using this medium/words to express these reflections does not escape me. Indulge me, please.)

You free me, somewhere between five and eternity, I lost the sharp edges defining me. There is madness in this letting go. I step out of my mask, costumes, and charades. I unravel the twists and turns of my veils. Leaving my shadows behind, I can step into this sacred space we’ve created and safety engulfs me.

You see me, and in your gaze I unearth layers of warmth and kindness sometimes ignited by molten passion. Your eyes elevate me, wrapped in memories of another existence, keeping me in touch with the infinite.

Somewhere between  the blush of twilight and five, you embraced and unfurled me, turning me inside out. I gathered up pieces of my broken poetry, half utterances and vague yearnings and found my heart’s songs. Intertwined within the rough ridges of your palms and the surprising softness of your touch.

You called my name and somehow I knew I had found home. Even when I questioned and fought your presence, I still came back seeking solace from my own storms. You still me and in that quietude I am able to piece together meaning and dissolve horizons in flight.

Somewhere between five and pitch blackness of night, we traced three continents, unknotting stifling roots to nurture new beginnings. With you, I have learnt to appreciate this clay that binds us, to kiss the earth that keeps me grounded.

I love the small ways your thoughtfulness turns motion to poetry; or how your incessant humor teases laughter out of my depths. This fluid dance that keeps us flirting between lightness of friendship and unbearable weight of love.

The way we wrap around each other’s crevices and faults like healing balms, or the way your solidity and pragmatism nurtures my creative soul.

In small moments of darkened silence, I give voice to my fear of losing you and the terrible sadness of knowing the nature of this fleeting world. I love you in the innumerable ways you have illuminated the Divine. 

I got lost somewhere within the five thousand sunrises illuminated by your smile; and rose in awe to a brand new world.

- Dedicated to my soulmate in celebration of our fifth anniversary. I love you baby.

Your gaze trips me up,
It twists my tongue
oozing the Indian ocean
 out of my pores

I open my mouth to speak
sharpening my American-ness
but all I hear
is a crisp accent
shattering
on glassy floors

mirages dissipate

A raised eyebrow
is just as bad as the manner
in which you nod
enthusiastically
furtively hiding the skeptic gleam
that glosses your eye

A decade of polishing
melts
and the little insecure girl
is exposed

clutching an ill fitting
head scarf
too garish
either over dressed
or under
stood
bewildered by this
alien s/kin
that she is so suddenly
conscious of

your gaze freezes me

I unfurl my tongue
to say one thing
but thousands of words
crowd my throat

You have to understand
there is no simple statement
or assertion
that can bear the weight
of standing alone

I need cliff notes
to couch my
utterances
so you don’t fall over
the edge

“Oh” the perfect vowel
of recognition
a breath meant to convey
comprehension
yet somehow managing
to more erect walls

Your gaze anchors
me in that place
where disillusions
dissipate
the naive in me

the lines have long
been drawn

you stand on your side
and I, on my mine

Parallel points meeting
only in the sight of incomprehension.

“It gets better after a while, you forget by and by.”

I have stopped aching for you, weeping at a sight, smell or sound that transports me back, far beyond concrete horizons, across the deserts and seas into the rough embrace of all that is familiar and flawed; all that I am that can be found in the crevices of your broken existence.

I dammed up the tears in my heart, until they evaporated and the waves of the Indian Ocean turned Sahara before chilling my bones with winter’s ice. I am through with you, surviving only on the soft edges of my memories where you once completely occupied and are slowly being displaced.

I remember you in hindsight, a warm glow the only vestige left of the fire that raged at our separation. I miss you more in that distant way that happens when reason sets up a barricade against my soul. My letting go of you was a necessary part of my growth and survival. Maintaining a shattered heart was simply too taxing for my being.

I still slip into the innocence of bygone years spent tracing your hidden alleys; my tongue trips into forgotten childhood songs propelled from shadows by twinkling sounds of a child’s laughter. I hold only fragments of the real you, softened by an exile’s lenses and glossed over by this vague yearning, remnants of the blues I used to live.

I miss you even while I recognize you are not mine anymore, and the whispers of my name are dying on your shores. I still pretend to call you home, even while I watch my roots taking hold of this land and years staking new memories along sand tracks that keep pushing me further away.

How long did it take before my heart stopped anticipating a familiar face among the throngs of strangers surrounding me? At what point did I lose my grasp on the solidity of my identity? When exactly did I become one with the nameless, faceless, anonymity that enshrouds me now?

I have stifled my mourning over you, compacting my sorrows into an indistinguishable mute space, because living requires breathing and I can’t exhale when you are crowding my throat and streaming my eyes with remembrances of your warmth, the (sometimes constricting) circles of your bonds and the way you demanded the fullness of my humanity.

I have embraced the freedom of being a shadow; let me be while I cultivate beautiful memories for my children to dream by and nurture their imagination in. Let me be, while I learn to love anew, laugh a-fresh, and recreate meaning in spaces where strangers flee to, their heads weary from constantly looking backwards.

I can’t keep carrying pretenses and memories of another existence; I can’t keep holding on to the illusion of calling you my only home. When at long last I came running to your embrace, I felt a chilly distance had crept in, a vague unease at my conspicuous foreignness. When I opened my mouth to speak, your subtle disdain reminded me that I don’t really belong…not anymore, not even anywhere.

I have stopped calling for you, my dreams have embraced this alien-ness that defines me. I have stopped weeping for you; memories have loosened their grip on my soul; and I am transforming this indistinct yearning for you into something more…slowly awakening to the realization of the persistence of your illusion.

The gentle hands of time have buried the remnants of you alongside my childhood reminisces; coaxing me out of the shadows; imperceptibly turning my gaze upwards to recall the heavy clutch of this clay will be left behind wrapped with all its nostalgia by and by someday.

Words that defy boundaries; capturing the expression underneath the form
Ones that hesitate between each other, alluding to deeper meaning
tugging in between the lines to lead me elsewhere

to that sacred place where they banish themselves
fathomless unencumbered space
beyond empty clutter and noise
beyond the stifling embrace of
letters strung together like
crack
sending me on another illusory
high

I am detoxing for silence
gasping for the enduring beat
pulsating just underneath the surface
caressing the breath just before
“Be” is pronounced
and the unfolding begins

like a crazed pilgrim in a never
ending cycle of tawaf
I am trapped in the noises
of my utterances

Circling the same footpaths
rehashing well trodden rhetoric
hoping to uncover some
meaning

What’s worth hearing
has been said
a thousand times over
where are the listeners?

I am seeking to plunge
my soul into a wordless
interval

unlearning the need to express
hoping to sip from the golden
fount of wisdom
souls much greater than I
have quenched their thirst from

O Source of Freedom
disenchant my soul
from the mesmerizing
diversion
of her own sounds
Unfurl her wings
that she may soar above
the din of barren
discourse.

This helpless body of mine, ravaged and exhausted, from giving and seeping life, bearing sons who will become men who will then fail to realize the next woman they are commanded to rape and shock and awe out of this existence, bears an uncanny resemblance to the one that bore them into this borrowed life.

This helpless body of mine, painted the wrong color, draped in garish clothes, belonging to no geography, faces turn away in disdain, I bear too many curves, too heavy a bosom, my hips are too wide carrying a face I don’t even recognize;

This helpless body of mine, born in shackles, poster girl of wars fought over my brazen torso, furtively wrapping myself to remain incognito, turning around to realize that covered or naked I am no more than an object imprisoned in a sexual prism with no escape valve,

This helpless body of mine, squeezed of all nourishment, little hands seeking more, pulling my skirts, my shirts, demanding with incessant voices I can’t bear to ignore to give and give some more beyond that signal that screams EMPTY; large hands moving in darkness clamoring to create love out of sweat and dust residue summoning what was theirs to begin with;

This helpless body of mine, twisting and turning, tripping on foreign tongues to dig new pathways for her daughters who will one day become women who will then turn around and scream “it’s all your fault”; because no matter what, we are doomed to imperfections, flaws in the choices we make, taking wrong turns to keep facing the demons we have been trying to flee;

This helpless body of mine, subject to scrutiny, criticisms, comparisons since the beginning of time when the great theologian bent down to inspect and wonder “Does it have a soul?” and the scientist probed and poked “Is it intelligent enough?” And the scholar gently hushed my protests while the world holds me down and uses these useless holes to pour their vulgarity in, these fleshy lumps to step upon, and these paralyzed limbs to dance to the tune of the puppeteer;

This helpless body of mine, always too thin, too fat, too short, too tall, too deformed, too ugly, no matter how many times I cut and paste myself into an acceptable posture, no hunger strikes, no bingeing, no starvation, nor exorcized blood can beat the ever critical gaze of this self created monster; hounding my steps, hissing at my faults, calling me in the dark to accept with never-ending remorse that I will never be enough;

This helpless body of mine, clutching a white flag in a world burst aflame, spreading my thin arms to protect my men, my sons, my daughters, shielding their eyes from the madness around, offering a placating smile wringing out apologies “I am sorry for still being alive, I am so sorry…I am sorry I can’t help the fertility of this womb…” dragging breaths of purity into the muddy bloody trails of this earth…

This helpless body of mine, speaking a thousand tongues, harbinger of ancient prophecies, keeper of secrets; disembodied voices seeking to let their stories out, borrowing my tongue for keeps to tell and retell of forgotten struggles, of other dismembered bodies turning and churning in their graves because we always choose to forget….

This helpless body of mine, keeps reenacting generational dramas, playing roles so many and diverse, we end up confused on who is who, or rather who am I supposed to be right at this moment; because in the next I have to flip this role and move on to another pretence; learning the rules and syntax of smoothing out the stubborn creases, pleasing, diplomacy, of peace making, side stepping land mines behind demure masks, never once faltering in this perpetual juggle we are stuck in for we were raised to understand that one faulty step can be deadly;

This helpless body of mine, tormented, exorcized, pitted against, beaten, abused, wanted, yearned for, desired, pinned to a pedestal, pruned, stabbed, raped, taken, confined, harassed…and guaranteed never to be left alone.

This helpless body of mine, will one day rest her weary bones, and will arise with the fiery rays of tomorrow’s forever sunrise to bear witness to our collective failure, to the untold horrors of this dream turned nightmare, to the helplessness of these frail arms, this broken body, this twisted tongue to do more, be more, to try at least try some more….

This helpless body of mine sculpted into an eternal posture of prostration, is clawing my jagged fingers into these dead grounds begging just begging for some respite.

My muse has been quiet
whispering just below the surface
murmuring unintelligible verses
Soothing at times
Depressed at others
Gnawing and restless
shifting right yonder
beyond this shimmering veil
intent on separating us

I coax her to come out
in the same sweet voice I use
for my darling baby
when he is in one of his independent
and stubborn moods

I say “o the light of my shadows, talk to me”
A soft whisper drifts
like a light kiss
barely caressing my cheek
but I can’t quite catch the
meaning of it

“O sweet voice of mine, lead
me to that meadow
perchance I may run freely
chasing the winds
arms unfolding into wings
flying
falling
breathing new essence
into this hopeless
broken world
of mundane things”

she whispers and whispers
trying to impart the urgency
of her message
I can’t quite fathom
her words

“a bit closer…come on”
I plead, biting back
the fear that she has
abandoned me
forever
to languish in the
emptiness
of non being

but she still keeps
me at bay
sometimes turning
completely away
as if to shun
my desperation
as something beneath
her

“I am not one to indulge”
she told me frankly one day

but how do i cope with this void
her absence exacerbates?
How am I supposed to live
through the inanity of this
life without holding on to
illusion of those precious
moments we share together?

As the depth of the night
gently masks my tears
laying my old wounds to rest

I hear her lament straddling
the sinewy limb of a moon beam
“Without silence on your part
how am I supposed to exist?”

You take your Islam with you, the one filled with oppression and guile, sugar coated “naseehas” drenched in bile;

You keep your Islam of closing minds and hearts; of ridicule and rancor; of squeezed spaces allowing only the narrow and self-righteous to stand upright, accepted and applauded;

I have no use for it.

Please let me be with me with my confusion, my struggle, my faltering…let me be with my yearning for substance; I know only how to approach my God from the position of the abased, please don’t let your “proud to be Muslim” slogans crystallize contempt into my heart.

 You keep your version of Islam intact; your black and white imposition on every grey space; your condemnations, your verdicts, your need to tyrannize the soul out of life;

leave me please with my lust for beauty, my passion for the creative; and my desire to plant it, nurture it, and let it bloom, wildflowers amidst deserts of gloom.

 I have no use for recycled debates, exorcizing the splendor of the moon into eclipses of the soul; I have no use for frivolous assertions on how halal my hormone-injected meat remains;

one more discussion on hijab, just one more (wo)man telling me the manner in which I should be covering my face, eyes,  and hair and the Fitna of my existence when three quarters of the world population is living below subsistence;

just one more inane, trivial, pontification on who is the better Imam, and whose fatwa remains the best on ageless topics we keep recycling simply as logs to feed into the fires of our own in-fighting, racism, our self inflicted injustices that we refuse to take responsibility for

but what else can we pile on the “let’s blame the west game” because this selective blindness is exactly what keeps feeding our apathy, cowardice and laziness.

 You keep your Islam of praying solicitously; concentrating so much on all the omissions I have in mine; of fasting without half a mind spared to the millions of orphans weeping and dying of hunger every night; of self glorified charities going to build larger and prettier mosques where regular Muslims can be evaluated, judged and ranked based on all those things we claim Islam is not,

I have no use for it

I know only of my own failures; the obstacles within me; my struggle to become; painful, excruciating and slow.

 I know only of how my soul moves when the leaves carry on their gorgeous dances, falling and flying; their whispering songs of death and living; I know only of the space between the gasp and the silence of awe amidst the glory of mountainous heights that allows me to taste my own insignificance;

Please keep your cookie cutter version mouthfuls of “Quran and Sunnah” ricocheting dangerously from hollows within; your crystal clear glasses of how it all is supposed to be;
Your simplistic solutions wrapped in colorful jargons of dead words and barren hearts; I have no use for them.

Offer me that which gives me life, colors beauty into my soul; walk with me on this path but don’t lay your claims upon it,

You keep your Islam of shutting eyes, sealing minds, blockading perceptions and compacting God into the narrowness of your existence I am through with it.

Allow me instead to walk past you; a thousand horizons over into the windswept deserts of aloneness where I might learn a little of thirst and yearning; of desperation and grief; to touch the limits of my endurance so perchance I may taste the gushing springs of His Mercy; overwhelming; embracing; humbling;

 Just leave me alone to remember and befriend the human in me.

There are some things I can’t begin to articulate. This solid darkness, I harbor within, clinging to my depths, whispering threats of doom and failure, worthlessness and sadness, despair and gloom.

Those  bleak spaces that sometimes take over my being, enveloping my feet in their density, so even as I hold on to the illusion that I am moving forward, I am making great strides, I look down and realize that I haven’t even crossed the threshold of this murky place I seem to reside.

On those days I am too harried to pay attention, night seeps into my dreams, taking my soul by the hand and with practiced stealth leads her into the grotesque shadows outlining the substance of my terrors, so that I wake up facing all those things I can not begin to hide.

There are very few sacred spaces where I can lay down the mask that I carry for the world. This smiling caricature of me, that holds on to laughter and lightness, like drifting snowflakes refusing to become undone.

Within this inviolable space that I share with my loved ones, I sometimes let my hair down, scrub my face clean, and let go just for a minute only to have negativity overwhelm me; bitterness and bile clamor to be heard and even as I lash out I realize this hurt in my soul is here to stay and I am only corroding what should be tranquil by my irrational insistence to be free;

So I lie down and weep because words always stammer and strangle my throat with their wretched failure to express that which is smoldering within my depths.

I have vowed to die a thousand deaths before I tread these paths again; yet all it takes is the texture of a voice, the taste of memory, or the blues of a certain dead tune for my resolve to dissipate and my mind to wander, for my poise to shatter and my soul to sink into this abyss which leaves me squandered.

That even in my forgetfulness I am distinctly aware of my aloneness and these ties that bind us today are just bidding their time to unravel, forcing me to hold back a little and tighten the seams wrapping up my existence.

So alone, I am left grappling with these layers underneath my smiles and spent, my tears gloss out the hint of shadows lingering behind my eyes.

Salamaat,

I am officially surrendering the new story for now. In my other stories, I start out with a vague idea and the characters and plots take on their forms with graceful effortlessness. Not that I didn’t struggle with them, but it was a healthy kind of labor, where the love I was exerting was rewarded by it’s own bitter-sweet kind of joy of exploring new terrain.

This new one, is like the middle child who decides to rebel (yes, I am that attached to this writing…and yes I was that middle child).  I wrote about 5 pages out for the second part; but my stubborn creation began dragging its feet right at the end of page 1.

I guess I just have to let her marinate for a minute (yes, I decided it’s a girl). If I completely ignore her; I know she will come back and offer me bits and pieces of fresh insight as a consolation gesture. I will ignore her some more, for the dramatic effect, and with grudging tenderness turn around to polish her paragraphs and worry over her words and sentences.

If you are worried about my sanity; please don’t. A little insanity is always good to free up the dull cage of rationality and allow the soul some room to dance.

These two poems I am pasting here seem to sing fragments of my soul’s blues right now.

Enjoy

Lost Illusions

OH, for the veils of my far away youth, 

Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth,  

Why did I stray from their shelter and grow 

Into the sadness that follows—to know!   

Impotent atom with desolate gaze        

Threading the tumult of hazardous ways—   

Oh, for the veils, for the veils of my youth 

 Veils that hung low o’er the blaze of the truth!   

-Georgia Douglas Johnson   

The Heart of a Woman

THE HEART of a woman goes forth with the dawn, 

As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,   

Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam 

 In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.  

  The heart of a woman falls back with the night,         

And enters some alien cage in its plight, 

And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars 

While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

-Georgia Douglas Johnson