There are those that want God
and don’t need Him.
There are those that need God
and don’t want Him.
Category: Poetry
Does Immortality come bundled with Love?
for all your talk of
strength and person
you know that you would
unbuckle at your knees
fall heart-first out of your mouth
at just the thought of him no more
Hura
Hura
after January 25th
When will it be
that a generation
has its baksheesh
not as some grudging gineh
tossed into a palm
but as a sweet freedom
dripping off of kunafa.
A huriya lingering and sticky,
smothering old bitterness,
of bread queues,
and wanting,
and wanting,
and needing,
and needing.
Bukra Insha-Allah.
No.
His Will is Today.
—
hura – Free
baksheesh – gift/ euphemism for a tip
gineh – the Egyptian Pound
kunafa – a type of sweet
huriya – Freedom
Bukra Insha-Allah – Tomorrow, God Willing.
Maybe the clouds are brooding
Maybe the clouds are brooding
For the most part,
children are
adult-improvers.
Ducts
Ducts
It is better for
my mother to cry over
the poems I’m driven to write
than
that which
drives me to write poems.
I wonder what sort of child we’ll make
I wonder what sort of child we’ll make.
Will he be clumsy and good for good’s sake?
Will she be clever and write on the walls?
Will he hate mushrooms and long telephone calls?
Will she greet every stranger she meets?
Who’ll be the one to quicken his heart beats?
Will she pick up her clothes from the floor?
Will he have respect for the law?
I wonder what sort of child we’ll get,
our little bundle of karma and kismet.
Base, slap, tone
My fingers aren’t made
for strings to strum,
And for all the trite reasons
to slap on a drum;
A hand on the hide makes
it easier to find,
a beat for me to
leave this march behind.
The Medinah
salty *dhikr
floods my face
hands now too heavy for sin
shape them into broken bowls
forgive me for all I’ve been
—
*remembrance of the Divine
Always grateful for you
at the intersection of
Fate and
Free Will
we took a turn
for the best.