"I'm content"
"Something's gonna happen, i don't know what it is, i feel it"
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three weeks later i'm sitting, wallowing in self pity,
mourning over a love that has gone sour
making cuts after cuts in my skin,
hoping you'll somehow feel it and hear my cry for help.

i carved the word "perfect" into my skin on November 17-18, 2012
hoping that despite everything that happened that day
i'd still feel perfect
or hoping that seeing it every day,
i'd start believing i'm
Pretty even when drowning in tears with swollen
Eyes that are filled with stars, stars that i often fail to see and that
Regardless of these scars that are etched into my skin, i am
Full of life and
Energy that is immortelle and
Contagious even though i always feel as if i can't go on and
Things are too much.

i guess what i'm trying to say is, i should've carved my name into your heart,
Hoping you'll
Always remember that
Someone like myself is hard to find so therefore
I'm yours always and you are mine and i'll
Never leave nor would i hurt you intentionally, and
Although it feels like we're drifting, i still want you here.

but the ice which we stood on which was our love
has broken,
and is melting and you're on one piece
and i'm on another and if we reach for each other,
we'll drown in the ocean of our love.
and i  don't know what i'm saying anymore,
because my eyes are getting cloudy and so is my mind
and all i can think of is you and if you'd cross that ocean for me.
(h.s)

I say I'm a Muslim, but I can't tell anymore.
I can't tell from what goes in my mouth,
what comes out and hits you on the cheek
worse than a slap, harder than a mere insult.
I'm outraged, but what reason do I have?
On the outside I could be anyone,
and I usually am.
Sometimes I am Puerto Rican, Lebanese, or Black--
a child asked me once, and I just smiled back.

How sweet would it be to take every crayon from the box,
even now that the numbers have multiplied and
what was once simple 8, 12, 24, 36,
has exploded into a million colors with a million names,

to crush them into bitty pieces and swirl the mixture with water;
make it all into One.

so that if we hate another
(what other?)
we just hate ourselves.

I say I'm a Muslim, and I know I am
because when I give up all my frustrations and
my toddler tantrums, and I even give up yoga,
or rather it gives me up, thankfully so,
when I injure my back: I'm grateful for that.
What a knowing presence God is to take away that which harms
and restore that which fulfills.

But even to those who are still hurting
(and I often am)
there are these small remembrances that come
between this onset of tears and the next.
Whether the sun peers through the dusty blinds,
the ones you need to clean again--so soon,
and you see the light stream through, faintly at first,
until you are forced to open your eyes,
to remove yourself from the hate you've stewed in:
how simple is that?

I say I'm a Muslim, and it's a choice
I make every day or avoid until the next day,
even though that day may not be easily given.
And I forget that.
But when I see life slip away from young lives, old lives,

lives not yet born

then I have to remember
that I do not have the answers,
and every time I try to be dictator of my destiny
I fail miserably, miserably, miserably.

And now that I wrote this poem
and I felt myself think, no, truly feel for the first time in a week,
that my robotic expression has melted into a frown that stands
a chance at becoming a smile.

Now that I am human I am a Muslim.
Not perfectly so, but decidedly so.

(In memory Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha)

A heart  in turmoil, flies to a land distant, imagined from her words
comes back half - heartedly  as if cheated by the world once tempted
some times it carries the scent of salty seas and mountain flowers
then, one day  with a strange story of a girl that has turned tragic,
her sighs are loud, though love to hide, making me desolate, anguished.

Perhaps I was just,
Another notch on your belt,
Of the 84 women you've ever dated.

I like to think,
What we had was far deeper,
For it lasted four times longer,
Than any of your others.

But you moved right on,
As if we had been nothing,
But a gust of wind in the summer:
Beautiful, but fleeting

People may tell you to not cry...
I won't because I know the difference.
They think they know when in fact they lie...
I say bury yourself in the deepest of detriments.

They may say that a new day will come...
They only spout what they can't comprehend.
They forget that you are ailing from a broken heart and that you're not dumb.
There's only you in your space, alone you stand...

Textbook responses are all they can offer...
They know not that it'll only make things worse...
There can be no replies so nice and proper.
To rid you of your life, your plight, your curse.

They may even share personal events that they think familiar.
Thinking what worked for them may work for you.
But no two situations are the same, albeit looking quite similar.
At the end of the day, you only owe it to yourself to pull yourself through.

I say feed your pain, grieve hard if you must
Wallow... Dwell... Drown yourself everyday.
Let your blood sear your insides, beneath your crumbling crust.
Let the world around you descend into destruction and decay.

What made me the expert...
To say these horrid, putrid things.
Because I am you and we both lay in the dirt.
Driven mad by the persistent echoes of our own misgivings.

I'm no expert... I am just a broken man.
Telling you to let yourself be caught in your own sad and angry song.
Be weak... Be as weak as you possibly can...
So you could rise from the ashes and emerge hale and strong.

Every time we speak
I feel like things are looking up,
no matter what we speak of,
a residual glow is left behind, pineapple cake and birthday wishes; perhaps
we can move to new york after all.
Perhaps this will not be forever.
Drawing lessons and 1 am photos
are what is keeping me alive right now,
a protective world to shield me from the sandpaper reality
And I hope to god that when I call you at midnight
you feel the same.

In my eyes, an eye for another
Is fuel to the funeral pyre.
Yet my hands long to
Rip heart from chest;
The soul from the flesh,
And toss the rest on the fire.

Innocence, the least deserving
Victim. Cut, shot, burned alive.
Where is the real Heaven?
It sure as Hell hasn't pulled a
Trigger, or a blade
Across their lifelines, the
Little carriers of
The only actual holiness there is.

I have 132 child shaped
Holes in my heart.
How can I fill them with other than
Anger? Disbelief?

I don't care where you are from.
Your religion, philosophies.
There are no greater sins  
Than those against children.
No God, only demons and devils
Behind your hideous actions.
I want. To ****. You.
Does that make me 'no better'?

If so... I don't care.

The smallest coffins are
The heaviest.

May our shoulders hurt
For aeons.