Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure
Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word
My choicest hours
Are the hours I spend with You --
O Allah, I can't live in this world
Without remembering You--
How can I endure the next world
Without seeing Your face?
I am a stranger in Your country
And lonely among Your worshippers:
This is the substance of my complaint.

At 82, he rises early, hurries to the barn
As fast as he can go, and at his age,
The shambling gait looks like a run.

"Retire?" I asked just once.
"Die in my boots," said he,
"Or hanging in a fence."

"Vacation?" his foolish son inquired.
"Each morning standing at the gate,
To see the sunrise is my vacation!" his reply.

"Rest?" I still must ask.
"I'll sleep when I am dead!"
How many times I've heard this?
I don't know.

I come, a tourist, to the farm I once called home,
The place he never left...will never leave.
Some day we'll find him, hanging in a fence,
Or stuck and cold in a snowy ditch,
Out on the fields or pastures that he loves.

No matter that my mother waits as always,
Looking out at distances,
At some late hour,
Wondering where her man is, and
Holding dinner warming on the stove.

Two lives inseparable in life, but winding down.

First,
You teach me to think
With my own brains
Feel out my way
With my own feet
Treat me the same
As the boys


Second,
You put me in a school
Where they teach me to read
- oh, what a world!
They teach me to look
At international
Literature
- Marge Piercy,
Maya Angelou
And the like

Next,
You show me the crimson
Powder meant for foreheads
A deeper red for blood
Spilt on beds.
A life of compromise
And adjustment


Ripping out my ideas
And opinions
Telling me they're worthless
A baby, a house,
A life of adjustment
Is all this was meant for.


Tearing my beliefs
In an equal world
An equal society
Where society rises
To meet human morality


Is this what you taught me to read for?
Sorry sirs, ladies.
I tip my hat and bow.
Sorry to disappoint.
I was meant for an equal position
And I'll take it
- by force or mutual
compromise.

I know what to say
Just not how to say it.

I don't seek your permission...
To write about the what, why and how.
It could be a haiku or come in the shape of a cow.

I don't need your approval...
When I don't sound the least bit poetic...
In my mismatched metaphors or ill-rhymed acrostic.

I'm not asking for your blessing...
When I pen down and put up what I think...
Be it in cloying cliches or in tear drenched ink.

I don't crave for your understanding...
When my 10 word poems weren't filtered through your poetic lens,
Or if my contributions in collaborations lack in sense.

I don't hope for your likes...
If my content does not tickle your fancy,
Or if my words just rubs you silly.

I mean no disrespect...
But don't be too quick to click on the 'comment' button.
Private messaging has been put there for a reason.

I don't mean to cramp your style...*
You're entitled to your own opinions of course...
But if you've got nothing good to say, please save it and shove it up yours.

An abandoned room with a desk full of papers,

A burial site of a teenage unrequited love story.

The dried up pens retired from long hours of cheap labor,

The waste basket choked on raw emotional infatuation.

Cracked, broken picture frames lie helplessly on the floor,

A thousand words without complete sentences.

The light bulb revoked the spotlight on the show,

The stage crew gave up on cutting out paper butterflies.

The microphone, still turned on, awaits for a solo,

Tapping for an approval initiates a spark of interest.

"Testing, testing, testing."

The breath of a hopeless romantic heaves a sigh of relief.

"I'm back, everyone," I announce.

"Embrace the love wounds because I am free."