Hiatus p II

Some nights

I write poetry

Some nights

poetry writes me

A feeling 

an idea unbirthed

a haunting melody

from a song I made into a home

or radio waves

accidentally picked up 

without reception

a stranger at my door

Scents carried by a passing breeze

my mothers' smile in a picture frame

a forgotten promise 

an undying wish

a blank piece of paper

A memory

of the moon

waning, glistening

like an apology

wet 

ready to be kissed

beneath a canopy of pine needles
as bodies of shadow merge with luminescence

when people die
we don't cry for the dead
we cry for the living
we cry because we feel separated
we cry because we miss them
we cry because of the gulf we perceive between the living and deceased
we cry because death reminds us of all the ways we are not alive

if the living weep 
then perhaps the dead rejoice
if the living mourn 
then perhaps the deceased are dancing
somewhere where there is no room for distance or separation

Nyctophilia

I am the fear of unrealized potential
I am the quiet despair of a refusal to confess affliction

I am the one hiding from myself
I am the broken connection between mind and soul
The silent desperation of dormant aptitude

I am a prison of dead appetites
I am a jail guard of the unknown
I am the lack of hunger and thirst
I am a lock
I am withdrawal
I am an embryonic promise of infertility

I am Judas
I am Cain
I kill that within me which has not yet been born
I am the aborted fetus of untapped capacities
Within a jar of alcohol left to collect dust on a shelf

I am the bystanding victim of terrorism
I am a terrorist to my own soul
I am the mouth of the castaway
Who has forgotten the taste of home

I am an abandoned warehouse
A derelict street in a ghost town
I am the premature manifestation of planned obsolescence
I am the paralysis of choice
I am the shortness of breath
The venom of fear
Running feet, darting eyes
I am unbounded restlessness

I am running away from me
I am running from afternoon to dawn
I am running hard
My lungs are pulling deep on every toke
Panting for breath
But I can't be sober
I can't rest from this quiet flood
So I run to deny the torrent inside my chest
And I run and I run and I run
I run until I become a shadow of myself
If I could, I would run until I become a shadow of my shadow
I run because a shadow can't exist in the light
I run to unsee that which I have seen
But I can't
So I run and I pant and I cough and I wheeze
And I cough and I cough
And I roll up another one
Because my appetite for running knows no bounds
And before the smoke has settled
I am off to the next stop
I can't stop being in transit
I'm already late
I'm always late
Because I am running
I'm running away from me
And I'm late

Notebook

What happened to you?
You used to give me your undivided attention
What happened to us?
We used to be the best of friends
Remember how many nights we spent awake together?
You used to fill my empty pages with everything you had

You didn't have to vow
No other tongue had ever tasted the salt of those tears
You kept hidden from the world
You didn't have to to swear
No other soul had ever heard such hushed tones from your lips
I knew it from the way your breath quivered
When longing and sorrow molded your entire body into a flute
And you translated the winds of separation
Into a song of blood and fire

Remember how we'd maintain those sacred flames
With tear stained page after tear stained page?
We burnt down the temple and built a cage from its ashes
But we were free in our fortress of solitude

There were silences between us that came alive by night
And words which never saw the light of day
But they were ours because they didn't owe a damn thing to anyone

I remember every word you etched on my body
Every space you left unwritten
Each line you crossed out
Each corner you folded
Every exclamation and question mark
Every curse and prayer

Because god damn it
I am the conscience of that first notebook
You picked up and wrote it
Not for the sake of the score or the stage
But for the sake of yourself

Tell me, what freedom were you seeking?
Tell me, what did love ask of you
When you first mixed your tears
With the ink of your pen?

What sacred flame compelled you to write
When there was no mic, no audience
And no judge besides the truth in your own heart?

Remember that
Give it your undivided attention again
Because if you're still preoccupied
With what others might think about your words
How in the hell are you going to tell the world
That which you were born to say?

Alchemy

From madness and insanity we come to life
From bullets, to sanctions, to instability and strife
Even in the depths of darkness we rejoice at light

We carry dances within our steps:
The dance of the atoms and the dance of the stars
(I saw) the moon drip into the night
A shot of cream frozen in a cup of coffee
(I saw) dawn in the open eyes and mouths
Each child, woman and man a beam of light

song birds

When I hear music
That heavenly memory of the kingdom of souls
From which we arose and fell through to the good Earth
I feel like there is a small group of little birds inside me
With names like Unbounded Joy and Bubbling Delight
Laughing Glance and Dancing Wing
And tireless Grateful Song with his eagle wingspan and sharp vision for details

These birds become me
When I settle into the notes
Of music that reminds me of home

There is a Sun in Your Chest

Love hides in odd places

I know you're scared

I'm right there too

I know you're hurting

I'm right here with you 

I know you feel alone

I know the world seems a lost cause some days

I know some days are darker than the night

I know the sun doesn't shine in some places

I know you carry inside you

The potential for perpetual darkness

But even in the darkest depths of the ocean

Where no one has ever seen the sun 

Where they do not know the greeting of the dawn
Even in the heart of darkness
There is light
Bioluminescence 

And Love has an army 

Right around the corner

Love has an army

Waiting like a February dawn in an Arctic town of Polar Nights

Love has an army

7 billion sleeper agents
Waiting for Love to take them over like Agent Smith in the Matrix

Love lies waiting in the depths of the oceans inside your heart
Love lies waiting in the heights of the mountains inside your heart
Love lies waiting like bioluminescence
In the deep sea of even the blackest hearts

Song of the Beloved p. I

At your mention
My knees give away
One whisper of your name
My entire body becomes a prayer

Please keep me close to you
Whether you love me or hate me
Please keep me close to you
Whether your hurl insults at me
Or curl your way into my folds
Keep some of your attention on me

You are my moon
You are the wind in my sail
You are my midnight sun
I am lost without you
I am lost within you
I am lost
Find your way into me
Let me find my way into you

Your shadow is a supernovae
Swallowed by a black hole
Your lack of presence is death
And I am dying
Every day
With every hour
I draw closer to that moment
But dying is nothing new
Compared to a moment without you

Hiatus

Has it always been like this?

Necks laid bare to naked blade
Something for some
Nothing for others
Downtrodden children
Don't recognize their own parents
In this half-light, half-hunger, half-mad

Has it always been like this?

Wistfully wishing for something no longer there
I remember to forget to remember again
That voice
That crescent moon
An instant of locked glances

How do you time time?
How do you measure measuring?
By a life on the cusp of a moment?
By a kiss on the brink of creation?

It is impossible to unsee the unseeable
I've tried
I have no answers
She took even what I don't have from me
Stole my debts and left me madness
Now I think
I've never had less
And been richer

Until I forget to remember to forget again

It has always been like this

the passed

I took my favorite arrangement of your words
And tried to make of them a home
I made an engraving of something you said
To adorn the entrance of my heart's museum

You spoke in lakes, open fields and valleys
I spoke in cages and metal chinks of gates snapping shut
I saw in black and white residues
Like a photograph you live through on playback

I made footholds from your promises
So you could see me hanging
Off a ledge that was never ours

I forgot how to accept the passing of seasons
I tried to lock away the summer sun in your eyes
As if light could be contained
I embraced the night because I had betrayed the dawn

Death

Can you hear them?

The drums are calling

They say
The sun will shine
The rain will fall
And the night sky will revolve
As surely as the swing of the executioner's ax

Can you hear death calling?

Listen
She is whispering your name

She says
Do not look at me as the loveforsaken
What do you know of love's hand in my work?
I am the Great Destroyer and the Portal to life
I am the desert at the end of all roads and this expanse
You cannot cross with steps or feet

When times are good
Men forget her face
They find her ghastly
Some men spend their lives trying to forget her face
There are those who would contain her in computer monitors
Sterilize her in automated lethal injections
Disguise her with red buttons labelled 'armed'
And deemed humane, but she will not be contained
And when the drums are calling, she reveals her true form
To all who dare gaze upon the darkness of the unknown

Her mouth, the eater of time and moments
Lips, dark from sucking out all color
Eyes, the velvet depths of a black hole
Hers is the tongue that cuts the throats of words
And her attire, midnight blue breeze
With stars on her ears
The moon dangling off her neck
She smiles, and as her teeth grind planets and suns
Between bites, all matter becomes one
She smiles and as her teeth grind planets and suns
Between bites, yin and yang become one

The entire universe is on her dinner plate
But with each bite, she gives birth to life
So tell me, what is hers but a labor of love?
We can mask her presence in our midst
We can deny her, cover up her signs and look away
But when the drums are calling
We have to leave behind everything and go all in
Because love requires honesty
And death is the ultimate truth
We just pray that when she finally calls our name
There is enough love in our hearts
That we can greet the darkness with an even gaze

Untitled 2

Scars that kiss you back

Like open, hungry mouths

***

Tonight I am an open scar

And each word and breath 

Peels apart the wound afresh

Tonight my tongue is a whip

It lashes off the roof of my mouth

And the back of my teeth

Tonight 

My veins pump napalm

I am the oncoming darkness

A face turned away from the sun

The searing cold of perpetual shadow

Tonight 

I am a cemetery of empty graves

Tabula Rasa tombstones

Waiting for a brush of your lips

So they may etch its memory into stone

So color me iridescent with incessant kisses

I want to make love to you with all my pain

I want to hold you the way dry land soaks in 

That first drop of rain after a drought

I won't ask you where you come from

I won't ask of past deeds or your beliefs 

Because even as water recedes to the lowest point

I know, you will be gone by the morning

Resurrected by the heat of the sun

Back up into the open arms of the sky

A passing cloud 

Reminding me of our next, reunion. 

confessions p 29

The poets in the old country say
"You are that which makes your heart tremble"

Beloved
Please grant this shaking leaf fastness

Any light in my life is due to the illumination of Love;
The darkness is due to me

Any good I do belongs to the grace of Love;
Any evil I commit belongs to me

Any truth I may speak is due to the mercy of Love;
Any falsehood I utter is due to me

Any generosity I display belongs to the generosity of Love;
Any greed I exhibit is mine

Confessions p 28

I know of no more beautiful a thing than a heart
That does not cling
But is still
In love

I remember you

Perched on two hills
Overlooking Loretta avenue south
Just off Beech street
I sit on the porch smoking
Watching the oak
The tree beckons
The wind brushes through what will soon be
The green locks and foliage of her curls
It passes instead without a whisper
Through skeletal arms reaching heavenward

It has been Spring for days
There is still snow here
And you can't tell the difference
Between 10:00 pm or 3:00 am

You are here with me, I know
No matter where you may be
No matter who you may be
No matter the great distances between us
Because when the soul recognizes itself in another form
The keeper's of those hearts become traveling homes
Carrying each other in one another everywhere they may go

If love should find me worthy

If love should find me worthy

Should you find me worthy of love

Love is my Mecca, my Ka'bah 

Love, may the flowerbed of my actions 

drink generously of your waters.

Truth, may the house of my soul

be unlocked by your key.

Beauty, may the light of your moon 

illuminate the darkness of the unknown.

Mystery, may I be more than a plaything to your mistress

May she find me worthy of her secret shores

May love lead me gently out this labyrinth of mirrors

and half-lies into the obliteration and annihilation of truth

 

What is poetry?

It is a twist in your gut
It is knowing by feeling
It can be heard in the varying tones
of a heartbeat, or a breath
It is laughter, and often tears

It is alchemy
It is the mother tongue of the heart
It is a secret passageway
Through the gated walls of reason and logic

It has countless lovers
But it does not always get along with words
It can be as loud as thunder
Or as quiet as the distances between galaxies

Hell, Gravity is poetry
Planets and stars suspended in a rippling reflection
Over the surface of the ocean is poetry

A poem can be as harsh as nature and the cosmos are unforgiving
A poem can be a storm of asteroids, poisonous gas giants
And countless black holes in an uninhabitable desert
The size of God's imagination
A poem can be a tiny blue planet hanging in the middle of all this

The unrelenting vibration of the smallest building blocks, poetry
Electrons that have forgotten how to stop dancing, poetry
The way you look at me, poetry

Confessions p 27

Back in the old country, the poets say

I learned manners from the ill-mannered
I learned honesty from the dishonest
I learned faith from the faithless

haha
What a fool I was each time I cursed the world
When the source of my frustration
Was my own inability of such alchemy

Holy blasphemy p 1

I heard a zealot exclaim

Imagine you could hear God reciting scripture 

A hundred thoughts went off in my head

Not all of them pleasant

Yet I drank in his words 

Past the constriction in my throat

The copper aftertaste of dogma 

And the knot in my gut

Maybe that is exactly what we are hearing

Right now

In the stillness of the night

In the birdsong of the dawn

Maybe it is God reciting scripture

On the street corner busking for a buck 

In the marketplace hustling for a bite

Dinner for two or three or more 

Maybe it is God whispering scripture

Through the lips of family members and lovers

When they betray themselves 

When they betray one another

Because even betrayal is sacred

Because every stepping stone to forgiveness

Is a sacred ascension to a higher plane 

A love confession p 6

No, do not take off your chains
Because the way you carry them
Is what makes you beautiful

But just remember
Outside the bubble of names
Free from the narrow confines of words

Free from the whip of the egos in our soul
Outside judgment and superstitions

There is a place where "you" and "I"
Are just leaves blowing away with the wind

As we teeter totter
Over the edge of joy
And the brim of delight

Sharing one soul
In two different forms

confessions from planet Earth

Part I

I drank in the stars on those summer nights
I proposed to the Moon
Declared war against the Horizon
And tried to beat him to her every night
I ate and was given birth to with every bite
I was the one that had to experience everything for myself
I fell in love with the stories but had to make my own
I grew with the morning and made the night my lover
Because She tasted of something like astonishment
The old stories were true
Science was not born, Magic did not die
The beauty of the unknown remains our guide
I sang a lullaby to the sky from the mountains one time
And caught the world dreaming of something impossible
Something just like itself
I once tried to blind the Sun with its own reflection
I dipped into the recesses of my heart until I wrung light
Out of that tattered cloth passing itself off as me
I left pieces of myself everywhere I would go
Because I encountered pieces of myself everywhere I went
I preserved each love with the salt of tears
I broke fast with the hungry and the sated
I waltzed with the heavens, I stomped with thunder
Roared at the ocean and it swallowed me whole
I don't care what they say
I was a witness to an act of love so great
An entire Universe was born for its [story] telling

Stockholm syndrome

We stifle each other with
I care for yous
in a confessional booth

I adorn her neck with fingers interlocked
a chain of caresses choking out her sigh of pleasure
She handcuffs our hearts together
flushes the key down the toilet
and we smile

We seek comfort behind bars and locked doors

We are the miserable prisoner
dreaming of maximum security
and the watchful guard
threatening solitary confinement

We wear our shackles proud
We cannot stand to be alone

We drop anchor in the shallows
and long for the deep sea
We drop anchor in the shallows
and wonder why we flounder by the shore
We drop anchor in the shallows
and wish for the horizon to swallow us whole

thank you p 3

How does someone from almost a thousand years ago drive one to the brink of madness and joy...? I brought an 800 yr dead man a basket of tears and he left me with only love and joy.  
I am accustomed to seeing the world with my eyes. But you are revealing to me more and more beloved, that love truly does not die.

http://jamilahammad.com/rumiandshams/conversations.htm

a love confession p 5

They tell you
in so many subtle and discrete ways
that you are not worthy of love, of joy
And after a while, you begin to believe it
and you tell yourself
in so many subtle and discrete ways
that you are not worthy of being loved
of living each moment on the cusp of joy and brink of possibility

Let me remind you dearly beloved
that you are worth more than a sea of diamonds
you are worth so much more than any worldly treasure
Let me remind you dearly beloved
you are worthy of love, of joy, of being loved
copiously and unapologetically.
You are the flowerbed, love is the water
so drink beloved, drink and dance and sing
because we are here for this very purpose.

a love confession p 4

my mouth was broken at birth
i have nothing to offer
save this longing in my chest
for which i would raze my world
just to be with You

confessions p 25

I heard a love story
When I was a child
Or in the womb
Sharing my mother's dreams
And since then
I haven't stopped
Looking for my own.
As with so many stories
There was no beginning.
One day, like any other
I heard a whisper of the unnameable
Breathed in the fumes of its scent
Like water, and it was invisible
But it filled such lungs in me
That I knew nothing in an instant.
And just like that, I was in love
Though I knew not at the time
Because being in love
I couldn't fathom being out of it.
And I don't have the words
Not in a dozen lifetimes
To describe what happens in my chest
When I hear the faintest brush
Of my Beloved's skirts.

***

Soon She will send an army
To taste the color of my blood...
They will assume the shape of my fears
They will wear my face
Speak in my twisted tongue
Words from my own broken mouth.

***

I heard the sounds of Her army
as I was layering on warpaint
expecting a sea of swords
ruthless killers with my eyes
my own words morphing
into indescribable beasts, many-headed dragons
and everything else that dogma
had my mind imagining.
But just before the shadows of my fears
became solid reality
a crepuscular ray broke through the clouds
and what seemed at first a sliver of light
burst through the veil of the sky
It was like seeing the sun for the first time
like stepping out into color
from a cave of black and white shades.
And I saw Her army with eyes
no longer filmed over with veils
and instead of a sea of shields and swords
there were endless rows of roses
petals blossoming over and over
impossibly closer and closer
until they were opening up inside me
opening me up from the inside
opening and opening
and words failed me
there was just that burning longing
white flames licking at the home
I had carved from fear
and I wanted to weep it was so beautiful
but all I could hear were peals of children's laughter

***


(Love does not require bloodshed and empires
To test vows sworn in Her name
But She demands the whole of the heart that speaks them
and that is the greatest battle of all.)

a love confession p. 3

I want to tell you I love you
but I know how easy it is to love from afar
and I want to tell you I love you when the shit hits the fan
when there is nothing to win or lose, nothing left concealed
I want to tell you I love you when there is no distance between us
when proximity has demolished the museum display in my heart
and when those three words are no longer another step
in a ladder leading to some heaven of my imagination.