Si vis pacem, para bellum

Replace your cowering shivering fear,
With weary, dignified submission.
Your love inspired you to risk the world's treasures,
Stretched your every ligament beyond its capacity;
Just so your prostration could lift you to the Heavens

She said He looked at her like she was the answer to Life Itself or Children of the Shadows

We live and laugh as if we will not live for long

Although we live forever in the nightmares of

Our innocent mothers, as mistakes, as abominations

And regrets. They love us wholeheartedly even without another half

They hide us and shush the gossip, and we wish we could

Talk from the cradle like Jesus and plead our mother’s cases.

But we know that we are voiceless in our shame, we live with

The guilt of a man who brags of his love yet supports not

The product of such. Men who love too much, men who

Cannot control their love, men who sing on stars and expensive suits

With expensive flowers and gold trinkets until.

Until we wreck it all.

Abortion would have been more beautiful than a life without a Name

Where we are condemned to cower to society’s comfort, in Shadows.

Heroes never parting...

Whispered words, uttered with ferocity

Incantations of hope and despair, remorsefully

Searching, beckoning that universal Force:

Help him, save him, simply with the certainty

That its Wisdom may do either, may do neither

Memories rush by like colliding trains

Of when we worked in the tuckshop and he gave me candy

Of how I raced gleefully, when I learnt three times three

Memories are one of our greatest blessings; be careful who

You choose to share them with. He chose to share them

With those who would cherish them the most, even a decade

And a half later, at an age where heroes reign and live forever.

Every Poem is a Novel waiting to bloom

The most beautiful love story ever told I will tell one day

That began thousands of years ago in a stereotypical land, far away

This was before lands were grown or rivalries sown,

When souls roamed the world free, remembering all they’ve ever known

So that you may be grateful

Without realising it

I woke up to the surprise

That your prints had grooved,

Ebbed, wallowed into my perception;

And I shall never walk alone.

"And they ask you about the Soul"... (Quran 17:85)

The time when Body met Soul,
Shivers of fear and despair attacked its spine
As it realised the immensity of Serving God
Through a creation so magnificent, beautiful and eternal

Every moment then is a struggle for Body to accept
That only through Soul, it too becomes
Magnificent, beautiful and eternal as well

The time when Mind Met Soul, it
Clammed within itself, constricted by
Awe and appalled by apprehension in
Serving God through comprehending
Magnificence, Beauty and Eternity

Expanding your Soul is Impossible
It is the most expansive entity in the Universe
Inspire Body and Mind to aspire to such...

Ishara

She has
The wisdom of one with the fourth generation
Sprouting from her womb

Generosity of a babe's first smile
And the adventure of their crawling forays

The subtlety of a man witnessing his first daughter's marriage,
The patience of a child whose mother has begun to give birth again

The Love of your second decade with the loyalty of your first
The connection of gestating twins

And the Creativity of The Earth

Ramadhan 2011

Wading through air, suddenly caught unawares,
We plunged into depths of blue rapids
Salt stinging our eyes muscles, skin, physical agony
Behind us poisonous jellyfish, below us sneaky urchins
What a voluminous shock, what burning pain
Until our eyes adjusted to the misty cloudy spray
And our hearts became our eyes, ears, taste and touch
Experiencing indescribable amazement, wonder, awe
At appointed moments tasty sustenance would approach us
And we accepted with gratitude, lived with gratitude, died in gratitude
We cannot speak about our experiences, but those of us who were there
Sometimes share knowing mourning glances, remembering the day the
Moonbeams penetrated our security and beckoned us back, and we
Forgot most of what we loved. We hope ramadhan invites us, some day, again...

Every teardrop wasted

There’s a little girl
With long brown hair, in the
Corner of my soul
Sitting with her head on her knees
Weeping with heart-wrecking sobs
For the tyrannical wars, and the starvation, the
Abandoned babies and the unloved teenagers
The wasted food and the heartbroken parents
And I keep hoping that
One day she’ll stop weeping
And do something

Blurred

I want to paint the human soul

From the bungee leap into a raging rapid

And tasting flower nectar

To the violent death of your first tooth

Dancing on crevices, an eye-locking obsession

This artwork spanning mountains and valleys

Backward cartwheels and a gold watch in your pocket

I want my soul to paint the universe

Satiety

There was succulent ripe freshly picked grapes

And hot smoking wholesome bread

Pots of tender well-spiced meat

Vegetables to melt in your mouth

Laid decoratively on a gilded table

Tasteful high-backed chairs and sterling plates

But they stood awkwardly with no appetite

For all I could provide. I smiled and showed them out

Closed the doors, and returned to bed

Run

Interpret the waking

in terms of

the dream

Iroquois

Hey there's a bunny...

The idea of time
Is like
Catching raindroplets
In a Sieve

And admiring how
They get caught

Glistening, In between

The holes, until gravity

Claims them

Block

(Photo by Fatima Cassim)

Silence is the language of God,

all else is poor translation

Rumi

Soraya's beauty

The most beautiful face I have ever seen
is that of a woman staring calmly,
Ever so patiently and gently,
At her mad abuser's violence,
refusing to cower

Sandpaper syllables

scrape scrape, every
syllable just needling a
surface for you to polish
out my curves and flatten
my wonks, just rub hard enough and
you'll imprint, your reflection, on my heart

You alone do we worship

As the warmth shaded the sand, he hid in a shadow,
certain that she had discarded his presence
as she lay, in that sand, her skin
peeling from such exposed passivity
her arteries slowly clotting and burning
her eyes crusting and cracking

Watch out! A vulture's trajectory made him dizzy
as he waited in dismal, slow dejection
rejected and spent, wretched and bent

At some point he had to betray courage, approach and
try to save some semblance of...her and
the excruciating saltiness of her skin
diminished his hope, and bravado

He waited yet, what else could one do, what else,
leave her half-buried in sand, half-baking
in despair, no caressing love could she reach
and any contact would breach his fragility
Wait, wait, and, wait........

Until, a ray,
rounded the horizon,
and the birds
sweetened the clouds into submission,
andthe first soft raindrops precipitated moonlight
and his unease melted into a glimmer of stirring
her skin absorbing the moisture, her
eyelids fluttering in calling, he transcended her
innermost driving, the moonshine guiding them to the
tidal rhythm and they float endlessly with the echo
of nothing but the rhythm and the tide,

nothing but the rhythm and the tide

the rhythm and the tide

and the tide

the

tide

infinitely,

to forever

Our causes and passions and families and loves

I'd wager we all
Horcrux our souls

Searching for an immortal mould
That elusive pot of gold

Like narcissus we adore precious hues,
That sometimes obstruct our View

Hoofbeat

As a historian and one no less commissioned by one of the most respected notaries in a somewhat multi-kingdom radius, it has always sat better with me to reflect more on the less spirited side of what has occurred in the time since my endeavours began. As the rhythm of the cosmos would have it, however, one cannot disregard what is also an integral part of the complete narrative. So in the past few curvatures of our northern moon visibility there has much to record of jubilation. And I must admit despite my pessimistic enjoyment of the signs we cannot deny, these are signs our hearts embrace lightly and with as much gratitude as a mother hearing her child's first cry after nine months of much trepidation. It began with the long-forsaken eastern armies making a very unexpected entrance into a lazy noon, a little haggard and sparser, yet saturated with tales that carried the strong tea pouring well beyond the twilight cricket song. They had encountered some difficulty finding an enemy that had been corroborated on assumputous information and in their zest had ventured beyond unkown borders and unseasonable terrain into a kingdom long left to our neighbours' vantage. This had blessed them with four foreign brides, one already with child and a more precious military and yet not as envious in terms of beauty, armament technique. These demonstrations and the women's welcome lasted well beyond the sun's welcome and for the next week or so frantic relations were once again reconnected and much new knowledge was gained over what we had once dismissed as a land too alien to understand. Once again I must admit my pessimism over the initial forecasts and yet again I was to realise that openness is the sign of a heralding revolution and yet that is for someone other than me to document, Iam sure of it. Despite my sterling reputation regarding certain literary achievements my heart feels it is perhaps the victory of another space to express and I will respect such instincts from where they arise.

Arrows

Having a baby is the most selfish thing, and
Yet raising one, the most selfless

Gratuitious Insults

His flightful fancy at flirtation was as elegant as a duck tapdancing

You wanted to know why

Its like strolling across a minefield that you actualy believe is a grassy meadow with calves and mares and hay and all that. And it all explodes into a bloody and painful mess and you cover your face and your fingers are blown off and part of your face is damaged. And you walk around like that until one day some insensitive sod asks what happened to your hands. And you wish you could make a proper fist to break his nose. Its not his fault. But its not your fault. So you blame people for having eyes to notice. And you blame him for asking. Because there's no answer that makes sense to you.