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Nov 2023
You would not be,
You could not be,
Without drawing me
Into you 'mood,' on anything  yours,
******* me around  just for  the heck to
        see!

  And carry  me close--your 'loved' son
For whom you wanted to be the one
In charge and in your seat after you're
         gone;
And so I laid all else aside, faithful to your
         call,
So heard your word alone, and only at
         your nod had it done!

  Then you were nightly fed with evil
         misunderstanding,
As loving hearts too often are prone to
         slipping
On malicious dice cast by envious others,
         like 'echoes travelling
From the center like horses' wildly let
         loose--
Ah, and the brother who so wept to you
         over my  sorrowing!

  I was mistaken---
As one of them days I had to awaken
Just to learn that you were taken
In death, and left a denial of my little
        rightful due:
'A will' contradicting the Qur'an, with
       father's love  proven false and
            forsaken!

  How night and day I stood by you and
          more, a willing sacrifise
At your fingertips, no question devoted
          without lies,
Deferential, tireless---surest among your
           ties,
I lived entire years suffering, accepting
Blame for anything that came to your
         mind without asking 'whys .'

  They who put false love in token arms
Around your deluded dying head with
       seeming charms,
And falsely called whatever words you
       uttered 'perfect and wise'--
Who led you to deviate from Allah's Holy
       Word
And thus corrupt your love as a father,
       and so die in foresaken esteem--

  Came 'round your coffin the day you
       died, perchance
To lift their heads up boldly, and with
       your 'will' in hand trace
Every bit of everything that ever
       belonged to you--at once
A final heartbreak showing that
       together we didn't belong in spirit,
And that love, like me, was to you a mere
        pastime albeit parental disguise!

                                         -by
                                 Hakim H. Kassim.
                                 (December 18, 2021)
                                 /-Jigjiga.
NOTE: The quotation in the 13th and 14th lines ('echoes . . .horse') is borrowed from Sylvia Plath's poem "Words" (dated February 01, 1963--just ten days before her death by suicide at age 30.)

(-personal note: In light of evident emotional weight that I borne while preparing this poem, in particular, I only wish to remark that 'hindsight,' while helping me
if only generally (i.e. as a writer), did nothing to ease genuine disappointment or ******-emotional trauma in actual event thereof, or at any rate distance experience of parental abuse into intellectual categorization whatsoever.)
Hakim Kassim
Written by
Hakim Kassim  M/Jigjiga, Ethiopia
(M/Jigjiga, Ethiopia)   
212
   Vishal Pant
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