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Joel Hayward Apr 2016
As I beckoned to the horizon and plucked the rising sun
Swallowed it and gulped the Atlantic to cool my burning throat
You spoke to my pride from inside a breadcrumb and said be smaller

Like Alice I shrank as I spun and became nothing … almost
I felt my heart swell and lift me as a balloon
To float through a vista of Your wonderland
Joel Hayward Apr 2016
Shaytan murmured
Write a poem about her!
I started
Words flowed
And were good

A muse! Such allure!

“You came and stood close
And I so wished my eyes
Weren’t red
From writing
My lecture
Late at night”

Allah said
Don’t type any more

So I didn’t

It wasn’t good

I dragged the cursor
Across the rest
With restraint and
What-ifs
Then tapped

Delete
Joel Hayward Apr 2016
In a desert midnight no darker than dawn
With cloudless heavens evident and stretching
To the edges of Bedouins’ minds and ours
Where owls govern with Your permission

You plunged a mighty fist deep
Into the heart and gripped a molten rag
And pulled it into a peak of crags
In which the **** You wanted grew

With a rush of wind you shaped that
Tear into a world-sized hollow to shelter
A man and a starfilled future for any who
Might accept what tugged at him that night

You once said Be! and time commenced
But earlier you had chosen from first
Until final a stream of Rusul and You placed
In that cleft the last Rasul alone but never

And in the radiance of a challenging word
Your spirit whose wings dripped pearls
Asked the silent one who sailed in prayer
To revolve the world on a different axis

Running feet across the earth carried him
To the comfort of arms that felt a beating
Chest bursting with ten million truths and her
Assurances trounced the whisperer’s last ditch

Words of mercy flow around us through a gentle
Heart in a stone cavity in the shade of a night
Without shadows beneath a cloudless cover
Which owls rule ... for a shrinking time
Joel Hayward Apr 2016
Shaytan winks

Within …

a market
a boy
a vest
two wires
a second
a hole
a mistake
a crime
Joel Hayward Apr 2016
When I let my eyes

fall
           into
                       its
                               wisdom

I don’t hear my voice
inside but

an angelic Lily Afshar
playing guitar with her eyes
closed

gently

and singing

note perfect

in the Irish flute voice
of that shaven-headed girl
who tore a photo of
some pope

The dancing of meaning
inside somewhere
changes me like …

nothing I can describe

and I can’t say
what I want except
to be prophetwise
and to gain Your smile

So I read and

sink
             within
                           its
                                    magic
Joel Hayward Apr 2016
You owned that second
when I could do
nothing

You ruled the world
as the road shrank
in my eyes

You Oh Allah
were my seatbelt
which held

You were the airbag
that loved me
in a flash

You were all and above
when I slid
as nothing

You whispered hush
and steel noise and glass
complied

You oh Allah
took no life there
nor let me

You control the heavens
earth and in-between
and You decide

Can I ever repay
You for a blink
of lasting life?
Joel Hayward Apr 2016
An email flew from a
Graceless yesterday
Lodging deep
And he groaned
Falling forward
Staring at a portent

He pulled the arrow’s shaft
And a trickle of pain
Ran down his exposed breast
But he pressed
His palm and prayed

Oh Allah what have I done?
Have I not paid
Enough?

You have paid a full price
And justice asks
For nothing now

He read and tears fell
Upon his keyboard
And he thanked
The one who shot for
Aiming so well

A dove flew from his fingers
Returning with
Noah’s sign and
He sighed
Giving thanks
And embraced truth
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