Category: 2019 Poetry

Wake me up when the skies are silenced,
so that I may watch the sun rise
through a clear horizon.
I wish to see the lavender and clementine rays
weaved to adorn the heavens over Arabia.
And when you see my head rise,
half a skull – but synapses intact,
do not disturb me
from my weeping.

I remember how these skies resemble
the delicate face of my younger brother.
He is neither white nor black;
he is purple and orange.

Wake me up when the shrapnel has shushed
so that I am awoken by lullabies,
and not serenaded by the songs of war.
The songs that have eloped with the refugees
who carry the shards
of my motherland
in their tongues and hearts.
For these drones invaded
the second stanza of
my mother’s song.
And I need to hear the last line.
I need to hear the line that came before
the roof collapsed like an arthritic fracture.
Before it pierced my soul.

I can hear the last line now.
Just as clear as I hear the front line,
as it echoes and drills
against my gravestone.
And some day I will rise,
and my spine will arch
around the dome of
the Temple of Aleppo.
And I will testify to all creation,
the color of these skies.

The Land of the Free

This is the land of the free.
Where dreams are conceived,
fornicated with and aborted
all at the same time.
Where we are defined by face value
so value only runs as deep as my veins,
never penetrating the soul.
They define me through my face
and my lion through his mane,
as he graces his way through predatorial terrain,
now made fashionable editorial fame,
this is my Muslim game.

This is the land of the free,
that teaches me that this temporary life
is about glory in the dollar
and disgrace in preserving.
Telling us that we are not deserving
until we have served ourselves on platters;
Too weak to eat, but we let them feed
from these spines
that carried the slave
from incarceration to liberation.
Let them read from this spine
the vowels in this Holy Book of mine.

This is the land of the free,
That teaches me it could not have been Adam
that ate from the tree,
it must have been Eve.
That tells me that women from middle-eastern plains
are on reins, in the chains of patriarchy,
Forgetting that these veils
are only curtains that must be drawn
for a short while,
for what lies behind
cannot be anticipated
by just any eye.
Behold!
I am more than just flesh,
I am soul.
And I cannot be sold
if no one on this earth owns me.

This forehead will prostrate to the only One
with the capacity to create.
Al-Khaaliq Al-Azeez,
Ar-Rahmaan Ar-Raheem.

This is the land of the free,
that became easy on the eyes
and rough on the souls,
yet man wonders why his heart
can no longer hear the divine call.

This is the land of the free,
Where black lives matter less
than they did before civil rights called.
This is the black dead child knocking on your door:
“For what reason was I killed?”
It is this reason that my children’s children
will be still the next time they are stopped and frisked.
They will not flinch,
because government approved lynching
is seen on every media outlet, this news
told through politically corrected views.

This is the land of the free
The glorious land of the free.
The land of milk and honey,
The land of self-tyranny.
Where women will be recognized anatomically
And men categorized melaninically,
Children’s futures decidedly socioeconomically.
‘Success’ derived anti-religiously.
Where arrogance is placed,
and defined pyramidically.
Where wars are decided
according to strategic gain –hierarchically:
Where you leave the reins of your freedom
in hands that will never possess you.

This land of possession.
This land built on native preservation.
This is the land from which we eat
the fruits of the forbidden tree.
This is the Land of the Free.