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Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world...  Moby ****, Herman Melville


Call me
Ishmael.

I hail
from
the clan
of Adam.

I am the
beloved
child
of Hagar;
unbowed son
of an upright
Ibrahim.

I am
the older
half brother
of Musa,
cousin to
Isa and
father to
Muhammad.

I work
in a bakery
that
overlooks
the roiling
waters of
the Nile.

It’s
owned
by an
Egyptian
General,
managed
by a
platoon
of his
hand picked
lieutenants.

I fire the
ovens,
roll the
dough
and pack
the loaves.

We bake
all day
but it seems
we cannot
quench
the hunger
that grips
our people.

My
brother
Musa
says
I bake
the bread
of tyrants
and serve it
to a people
starving for
freedom.

Musa
likes to say
if we wish
to feast at
the banquet
of liberty
we must
refuse
to eat
the bread
of fear.

In winter
our hunger
blends with
the misery
of living
in frigid
apartments.

My
dilapidated flat
in Darb Al-Ahmar
is one of a
thousand owned
by Cairo’s
most notorious
police chief.

The roofs leak,
the plumbing
is broken,
no heat in winter,
in summer
it’s a sweltering
furnace.

My home
is the
handiwork of a
cold blooded
landlord’s
indifference
to the freezing
rooms they
force us
to live in.

In their eyes,
our sole purpose
in life is to feather
their nest.

They demand
that the rent be paid
on the first of every month
and will make our life miserable
if we’re one day late
or a half a pound short.

Do they
actually
think
that we
live
only
to assure
the
warmth
and comfort
for them
and their
children?

In winter
they freeze
us into
inaction;
while
during the
summer,
swirling
ceiling fans
fail to relieve the
oppressive heat
of fire they
breathe down
our necks.

The batons
of the police
freely swing to
crack a head if
we fail to bow to
their authority
or grease
the extortionists
palms with
tributes to their
*******.

They never
shake down
their friends
that drive
the fancy
silver
Mercedes.

The big guys
roll wherever
they want.  

They
roll over
anything
they
choose.

They take
up parking
spaces in our lives;
leaving less room
for us to park
our tiny scooters.

I’m certain
the name
on their
drivers license
says privilege
and impunity.

Yet
somehow
we
always
get stuck
picking up
the tab
for
their
tolls.

Some slavishly
put coins
in parking meters
for them and get
compensated for it
by being offered
the opportunity
to wash their cars.

I’m glad
that I get
to bake
bread.

I was talking
to my friend
Isa at the
coffee shop,
he said,
“We needn't
live in a constant
state of
want and fear.”

A young man
sitting at
the next table
was a zealous
believer from
The Muslim
Brotherhood.

His name is
Muhammad,
he hands me
The Holy Quran.

My dear
Muslim
brother
exhorts
me to
submit.

He says that is
the way to a
fearless life;
free of any
need,
save
Allah’s
salvation.

My  
Muslim
brother
is firm
in his
belief
that
all
the answers
to
all
my problems
and
all
the answers
to
all
Egypt's problems
were
breathed on to
the pages of
The Holy Quran
with
The Prophet Muhammad’s
-(may peace be upon him)-
own breath;
his tongue
inscribing
the holy pages
in Arabic
squeezed
out by the
loving
embrace
of the
Angel
Gabriel.

Mubarak also boasts that
he too has all the answers to
alleviate the ills that plague us.

He’s
been ruling us
for forty years;
while the
Holy Quran
has been
with us
forever.

Our  
impatience
grows
as we yearn
for these promises
to be filled.

Mubarak swears  
he knows what is best
for the children
of Egypt.

Mubarak insists
that the way to
freedom from
want and fear
is submission to
his perpetual rule.

I get uneasy when
someone suggests
an infallibility.

I accept the
supreme dominion
and divine knowledge
of the Quran and Hadiths
but I’m not too sure
that the Imams,
politicians and
generals who
swore by its
truth really
understand
it themselves.

I am left
to question
if any of them
even see me?  

I am more of a
person then a
Muslim;
and
sometimes
I wonder
if even
Allah
has forgotten
the peril of
Ibrahim’s
children.

I wonder have
I disappeared
from Allah’s
unblinking eye
as well?

Sometimes
I look into
the mirror
to see if
I am real.

I am relieved
to see my image.

I have not
become invisible
to myself.

I am
emboldened
to know
that I am a
real person
of flesh and bones
with a mind
full of conviction
refreshed
with the blood
of a warm beating
heart.

I remind myself
I am a man,
not a faceless
subject
to be ruled.

I am an individual
not just another
submissive being
under the control
of a pious Imam.

I am Ishmael.

I recognize the fire of
life in my own eyes.

I can see the scars
of my decisions,
that my life has
etched upon my face.

I am not invisible.

I am not a casualty
of the twists of history
or the events of fate.

I take
responsibility
for me.

I am not a fish
swimming within
a giant school
trapped in an
ocean current
propelled
to a
predetermined
destination
of a well
laid net.

I am a man.

Let it be known
that I claim
responsibility
for my manhood
and I will
command
respect from
those who now
lord over me.

Like my father
Ibrahim, they
will recognize
me as an
unbowed
upright man.

They will
call me
Ishmael.

As I stand
I will raise my voice.

I will not remain
voiceless.

I am one voice
of many
who like me
have not
been heard.

We were once
grovelling dogs
that have been
transformed
into free range wolves,
set free from its cage,
we now form in packs
howling for justice.

We
will raise
our voice
in concert
so all
may hear.

We
will
make
them
listen.

They will
know who
I am.

Call me Ishmael.

Music Selection:
Muddy Waters
Mannish Boy

Oakland
2/9/12
jbm
this poem is part of a series on the Arab Spring
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
.one of the great dissatisfactions of life: dreaming... which makes me suspect of the anglo-saxons and their subsequent branches of sub-ethicities... they dream... they have recurring dreams... lucid dreams... i find that slightly suspicious... i rarely dream and if i do dream, the dreams are so bogus or so uninteresting that they make no sense to: "interpret" them via any freud-cubism schematic - that a woman's sun hat implies: the depth of ****** and promiscuity, or some otherwise bogus stretching it mate, really stretching that analogy... but why do the anglo-saxons have such lucid dreams, even recurring dreams? are they descendants of joseph: der traumgehhilfe? last time i had a dream? oh... family invites me to say, three memebers of the family don't like me... **** the rest of the family with a knife, a gun and a baseball bat (somewhere in south east asia)... a few of the killed members run into the street to die... i somehow pick up a kalashnikov and shoot the murderous 3... then i jump into slender boat with a motor with 3 or 4 women... 'jesus'... and i escape the scene of retribution sailing to... cambodia! **** me... even sylvester stallone or jason statham or arnie wouldn't star in a movie as b-movie as this... but anglo-saxons seem to have the most vivid dreams... two good examples: h. p. lovecraft and william burroughs... is dreaming a form of escapism? if so, then evidently i'm quiet content with reality... like today: too much pop psychology, too much self-help guru mishmash, too much advice: not enough stories... video streaming a game being played... etc., so i retreat, even from modern music, into? here's a beginner's guide list to medieval music:

       1. qui habitat in adiutorio altissimi
       2. da pacem domine
       3. agni parthene
       4. dum pater familias
       5. chevalier, mult estes guariz
       6. virga iesse floruit
       7. walther von der vogelweide's
                 palästinalied
       8. codex buranus no. 179:
                     tempus est locundum
       9. non é gran causa
      10. herr holger
      11. herr mannelig
      12. die eisenfaust am lanzenschaft
      13. meie din liechter schin
      14. under der linden
      15. mayenzeit one neidt
      16. mönch von salzburg (das nachthorn)

   why would i have stopped at merely
Orff's reading of Carmina Burana -
                 sure... that's the entry point...
   but the radio only plays o fortuna till
the cows come home in a full-moon lit night...
yawn...
    if only: fortune plango vulnera,
      veris leta facies, omnia sol temperat,
     floret silva, or... or!
   a monk's love song for the queen of england -
were diu werlt alle min:
              were diu werlt alle min
              von dem mere unze an den Rin,
              des wolt ih mih darben
              daz diu chunegin von Engellant
               lege an minen armen.

but no... it's o fortuna or nothing from that album
on the radio...
    i get it, great song...
   but why is auld lang syne only sung once
a year, on new year's eve?!
              
as with women, so with music, one simply tires of
contemporary examples: not exactly the music
but the lyrics behind the music...
                        music will never change to appease
the brute and the beast... but modern lyricism
is just agitating... it exhaust with its choice
of subject matters...
                                and by the looks of it...
    i spend too much time with music to find myself
in needing the comfort of a woman's voice,
a cuddle or relationship or whatever you want
to call it from now on...
           i am wedded to three women that will
never materialize: Euterpe, Sophia and Amber...
and all the better...
                                i could never wallow in what's
currently being wallowed in...
by some who have these recurrent dreams
and are unable to stop them from recurring...
hence my suspicion with the anglo-saxon traits
of vivid dreaming: this cruch of relying on dreams...
of so easily being ***** by celesto-cerebral powers
that impregnate their sleeping heads with
these realities that only exist in the mind and
a sleeping mind at that!


(nb. not proof read, apologies in advance for any mistakes, upon rereading will correct if any appear - or i'll just keep them...)

look at these two slogans: let's make America great (again)!
complimenting the English variation
let's get our country back! ring any bells? i guess you must
have heard one or the other as an English speaker -
it's hardly surprising - the English Prime Minister singing
a little toodeloo then uttering the word right upon
reentering number 10 - shambles ahoy! every rat and
mutineer bailed - we're in free-fall, Trotsky had it coming,
this guy hasn't - hardliner but a bubble-gum tongue -
it stretches like a joke my English teacher said:
how was copper wire invented? hmm? two Scots
tugging and pulling in opposite directions a two pence coin -
for all their worth, they joked the blond quiff of
both Boris and President Donald Yeltsin - where one
gets drunk on egoism, the other just gets drunk -
even though they don't like him in Scotland, they sure as
hell bought the slogan like a Big Mac - the problem is
there's a zenith, and then a necessary decline -
you can reach the zenith of breaking the 100m sprint,
but then a stock-market dip (necessary) -
much of Britain's exit from the European Union was due
to the campaign trail of the Doodle T - the best politician
i assume is the one that enjoys the most prodding jokes,
which also means the majority of votes,
jokes and votes walk hand-in-hand - people don't want
leaders, they want caricatures - after all, the little existences
have to matter with a joke in the Oval office.
i can't imagine the unholy alliance of feminists running
the place in the west - Theresa May in England,
Hilary Clinton in America, Angela Merkel in Germany,
Ms. Le Pen in France, the Polish prime minister
Beata Szydło - it has to look like a 2nd Cold War scenario,
a break from World Wars... Putin and pukka Tyson Trump
on the other side, macho v. macho - man talk and
the ultimate bromance. i know that Nietzsche referenced
genius too much, assuredly i hear that a lot too around
here with child geniuses storming around for silverware -
children geniuses and not original? so technically you're
talking about data storage in porridge - trained monkeys,
right? those children will be scarred for life as if they
saw their parents ******* - what sort of genius is a genius
if he doesn't work from blank but is there are a memory
gimmick to boost hopes of curing dementia?
philosophy doesn't do geniuses, it does things like Spinoza,
solitary wanderers, loners - outsiders and mesmerisers,
there's no genius in philosophy - there's only solitude -
granted that an open-minded psychiatrist is a modern subplot
in not reading philosophy - where is the ultimate source
of compassionate solely theory based (anti) psychiatry?
in reading philosophy books rather than exercising authority /
abusing it - R. D. Laing is a perfect example -
who wrote after reading philosophy books - i mean read them,
in the English speaking world i recommend reading
the works of the anti-psychiatric movement of the 1960s,
which was much bigger than the Beat Movement - obviously
not as dazzling, but with poetry you're imitating Philippe Petit
(film, the walk) - i watched it and my legs experienced
needles, and a firm assertion of gravity and the location
of the floor - films like that are worse than horror -
you share the heart of the original, but given it's Plato's cave
we're talking about representing the events, you realise
that no matter how much you want your shadow to be
Philippe Petit, you hear from the outside world, your legs
are firmly on the ground - basically: **** that - men are not
born equal, they have to live by principle to be at least moderating
their excellence into a respectable cohesion (democracy) -
quiet simply juggling their strengths with their weaknesses -
man is not born equal, he was to strive for equal measure -
when subduing their strengths and when exfoliating them -
no man is born equal, as no man is an island - the two synchronise.
(i'm deliberately masking what's coming)...
but there is genius in philosophy - but only in one area of
interest - religion... we know that popular beliefs are
grounded in plagiarism - the Trojans became the Romans
via the accounts of Virgil, and we know the Trojans in
becoming Romans plagiarised the Greek polytheism -
Zeus became Jupiter, Poseidon became Neptune,
Cronos became Saturn, Hera became Juno, Aphrodite
became Venus... etc., it was done to mimic the Greek heart
from the defeat at Troy, to invoke a heart that overcame -
every pauper and every king would identify with
this pluralism - but a second plagiarism had to come -
it was prophetically echoed from approximately 2000 years -
the Greeks later plagiarised the Hebrew concept -
the monotheistic concept, yet because their thinking
was so advanced (or so they thought) they dismissed the
sects of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and
the Zealots... their hero was their antagonist - and nothing
of their learning was actually work their concerns since
they boasted of their Aristotle and their Plato and their
Socrates - the peddle-stool effect appeared -
but what if a Latin man (well, these letters are Roman) were
to say - never mind the son, how about the father?
in Christianity the father is rather anonymous in his
omnipresence etc. - but let's assume on the biological tenet
that we are referring to the old testament god -
would we want to plagiarise the Greek plagiarism of
Hebrew? i already mentioned the four prime canons as
imitations of the tetragrammaton - of course they're
intended to not be identical accounts, but there must be
two that are mirror images - i.e. referring to h      &      h
of the tetragrammaton - if there are no two mirror images
then we are bothered - i can see why the Greek mind thought
that Y refers to a convergence, a mother, a father, a child
and the entry point to the gospel: a genealogy -
Y being representative of a convergence - past and present,
following through - this is all about first impressions,
from what i can remember and regurgitate back -
in Catholic school we were taught by majority the gospel
of St. Mark - the others were discredited -
i can't tell you if there are two identical gospels (or at least
with very little variation between them) - what comes after
them is what comes after all essences of religion,
bureaucracy - imams and priests, yoga teachers and
whatever it is that comes with religion for the common man,
but in the new testament this is the essence, a shady
reinterpretation of the tetragrammaton - but a Latin man
who didn't bother to attribute symbols with nouns,
but made his alphabet musically orientated for the
castrato and the choirs to come - a (alpha) b (beta)...
o (omicron / omega) it became obvious that the four letters
arranged as so with missing Adam and missing Eve
would provide more than just four interpretations of
the same event / person - for when a Greek has to cut off
-lpha from a to attach it to another letter to create meta,
the Latin man has only to cut off less, perhaps dentistry's
ah, or otherwise cut off -ee from b... the world is full
of such possibilities, and this is the only area where
genius can be applied to philosophy - the genius of
philosophy is within religion, and nowhere else -
of course mind that i don't identify myself as one -
i treat genius as an angel or a demon, that fairy-tale
race of creatures that whisper into your ear - markedly
geniuses are more powerful in demanding an individual
rather than clones of the individual, e.g. Mohammad
and Muslims, Jesus and Christians... which is why i suppose
the genius of Moses also allowed others to write on sacred
paper, but of course excluding Malachi for falling into
heresy with a polytheistic concept of reincarnation, not
oddly enough Malachi's was the last book before the two
major strands of his heresy emerged like Behemoths.
Terry O'Leary Jul 2013
Remember all the Wise Men on their knees upon your yacht?
With orphans on their backs they’d crawled (with others that they’d brought)
Through rubble on the highway sands and residues of Lot.
They came from severed cities selling postcards of your thoughts,
Though offered for a penny piece, not even worth a jot.

They mused
               “How are you feeling? What it is you want, you’ve got.
               The words you scrawl on calling cards: ‘I AM – the others NOT’
               Shun wisdoms of the Seven Seas: ‘Salvation can’t be bought’ –
               Your fathers tried before you and your fathers came to naught.

               “You started out by gelding goats and then by casting lots
               Of bodies to the battlefields, contorted, tight and taut,
               Then wallowed in the wake of trails the dervish devil trots.

               “With marching bands of fatherlands, and drums of Hottentots,
               You lure your legions in harm’s way like giant juggernauts.
               Like Tweedle Dum your minions come (the sober and the sots,
               The troglodytes, barbarians, and mislead patriots,
               The Vandals, Huns and Hannibals and seaport Cypriots,
               The Japanese, the Congolese, Americans and Scots)
               To vanquish bows and arrows, spears and catapulted shots
               Of those who hide in bamboo huts their families, pale, distraught,
               (Their withered wives with dried up *******, their swollen babes in cots)
               Who swoon, engulfed in poison darts and vats of acid hot,
               Consumed by magic mushroom clouds, atomic megawatts.

               “In churches of your deities, your Holy Huguenots,
               Your Imams, Rabbis, Voodoo Dolls and Mitered Lancelots
               Lit wicked kindled candled walls in temples (while we fought)
               (Used pins and needles, magic spells on makeshift mock whatnots)
               And mosques, cathedrals, synagogues have blessed each new onslaught
               With prayers for pipers, puppets, pawns, your rigid armed robots.

               “Upon your knees in golden naves, while peeking through the slots,
               You horded thirty silver pieces, downed a whiskey shot,
               Then crossed yourself and wrapped yourself in furs of ocelots,
               And danced on cleated cloven hoofs in purple polka-dots,
               Then drank His blood from chalice cups with pious afterthoughts.

               “You’ve treated men like mongrels chained, like little flies to swat,
               By doing what you wanted to, instead of what you aught;
               You’ve wiped your nose with dollar bills and paid your serfs with snot,
               But when you’ve paused to preen your pride, you’ve scrubbed a scarlet blot.

               “In ashes of our victories: the diamonds that you sought,
               The crock of gold, the Golden fleece of bogus Argonauts -
               In mirrors of your lifelessness, the evils you begot.
              
               “The haunted winds strew leaves of time across a shallow plot
               Where now, beneath the frozen stones blanched bodies bathe in rot,
               Disintegrate, return to dust to feed Forget-Me-Nots
               Amidst the bane and pits of pain where broken bones lie caught.

               “In fields above the catacombs and tombs of Camelot
               The black and withered tree of Death arises from the spot
               Where oft beneath a bleeding moon you hid your gold in pots
               Embedding doubts neath barren bogs where roots of wormwood squat.

               “While waiting at the river Styx, in twisted time untaught,
               From branches of the gallows tree, in recollections wrought,
               Your soul, a beggar’s blanket, hangs in crazy quilted knots,
               With dangling pearls and diamond studs mid dripping crimson clots
               And gaping wounds with bulging eyes like fouling apricots,
               For wrapped in chains around your throat, the Reaper’s grim garrote.”

Yes, that’s the fate of all your kind, disclosed by Wise Men taught.

But that was, oh, so long ago, by now you have forgot…
softcomponent Nov 2013
Waterborn water horse upon shutter drawn blades,
in the form of these blinds in your face
as you peek beyond peaks in your ability to see..
pixels in the mountaintop, drippity drop drop on the cottages embalmed moss roof,
and a beautiful day, and a beautiful day, and a beautiful thought that told me to say
I felt it in the air when you said that you cared through your fair molten hair on that blonde summers day on top of the rock of Eli, in relay for the slight elegance
upon and underneath irrelevance, and shelf Imams in books on Islam..

Shabat Shalom on Hanukkah.. celebrate the stars insofar as Andromeda,  
my mommas thumb on her 13th year, her 16th beer, the work-man's clear intentions with the way he mentioned words in tension, clenching marbles in his startled glance,
***** minds rubbed upon his work-man pants as this city grows bigger prose in the rows and roads of goals never reached upon the age of 70,
plenty see this creed as Cree in nature,
ship-shaper upon white paper, written in natures hip-hop hater,
forests are erased here.. drugs are never laced here.. I feel like I'm 8 here.. but I'm 8 with a career in thinking intangible all-honesty's on unity..

I see God as the groove master.
I'm just a disco disaster, looking to plaster a little bit of dissidence upon the fence in recompense for the densest chessboard invasion of Kicking Horse pass,
but alas, I broke my arm, wearing a cast you can hope to sign if you wish to charm the devilish sin of sugar-gin, open in to relig-IN.. as in I no longer ****, I Pope..
I wanna take a Pope of every single religiounana,
and see what they saw, and believe what they want, and concieve of their god and impede on their laws..

crows caw, upon a cross and there's a JEEzz-- static discharge.. he interrupts me..
he says to look.. and when I look he tells me to see see see see see, please see, I see what you see, it's not Jeez-me like the Bible Belt.. it's Jeez-US,
we must realize what I meant to grasp as the cusp you have teetered on since before the common age.. each and every all of us is a sage in the same way..
we're all God, and.. we're all God, and.. we're all God, and.. we're all God, and
shake the hand of the rainbows faint glow.. merry old isotope, Santa Claus hippy hope, never tethered hemp rope, old Egyptian space probe, great globe goddess..
**** decimated Odessa, I guess us was lest we forget this or get us to pinch out the **** of a historical era of error.. concentrated terror of terrorists in concentration camps..
an oil lamp burning upon sand saddled socks and snow-covered rocks and an old Buddhist templed temperament held in this mountain of tea and honey..
wearing my runny nosed halted-horrific, all-it-every-and-us is this terrific..
my distance from hand to hand is still as prolific, get the gesture? or am I just a cosmic jester?

lesser is best, so lest we forget the rest all congested in bread and butter covered brain matter,
rain shatters flames and her face was the place I escaped for a hit of false tragedy.
an older poem.
Gary Gibbens Mar 2012
?Jihadi??

Orange sand

Raw sewage

Diesel fumes and burning flesh

Screams and the black blood boiling

This is Sadr City

It might still be mourning

Time for prayer

Imams calling

Even now
We hope for the night

In darkness, we lose our reasons not to hide

Between the sirens and the screaming

We still dream
Our dreams

Involve silence
Not the detonations

Ripping closer and closer

We dream of thick re-enforced cement

Faltering drones

IEDs that fail

Strong hands on friendly weapons

And somewhere a door that opens on home

Warm food, open arms and home.
The Duchess May 2013
It is the same thing that we are told over and over
In all our classes, all our days
For one hundred and eighty days on end.

In math we are told about the Pythagorean theorem and Pathetic Fallacy~~
But some of us still do not know the value of "X".

It is after parents get called from teachers saying that their child is:
hyperactive
easily distracted
unfocused
doesn't do the proper thing
And that their child, who is brilliant, cannot be in a Level One class.

We all have different abilities and thought processes.
Why is it that a class full of individuals is tested by all of the same means?

Exams are the way society tells you your worth.

But it is the same society that:
says abortion is wrong but then looks down on teenage parents
promotes natural beauty but has models flushed with makeup, hair extentions, false lashes, and nails
shows slender people for their weight loss commercial that look like an hour glass already
has pastors that preach charity but own jets and sports cars
has Imams who preach against greed but are all fat
has parents who want their child to get a good education to get a good paying job but hate how rich the neighbors are
is run by governments that preach peace but endorse war
Has colleges who want smarter kids but increase the tuition

What does it mean to "make the mark?"

to the kids who study hard and barely miss the target
to the kids that know what it feels like to be worth that D or that A when a teacher hands back a test
to the kids who are never good enough in their English teacher's eyes
to the kids whose writing is missing key literary techniques or was too informal to be understood

What does it mean to "make the mark?"

to the math teacher who pesters you about trying harder when you can't tell them "X" but can tell them the date of any war
to the science teacher who tells you to know the periodic table and yells in distress of their 'worst student'

We're told everything that we learn we'll use the information again but never do when we walk out the door.

They try to prepair you for the world, but they don't prepair you for life.

always being the second best
not getting the scholarship that you needed to go to college
not getting the solo on your last concert night.

not being able to make the mark

What does it mean to "make the mark?"
wordvango May 2015
hours since I was home,
my sign is astrological calm
twelve dozen months or years until
Revelations 12:1
or twelve tribes
twelve sons of Jacob
twelve Imams legitimate  successors
twelve Disciples, narrates the Prophet Yusuf
and his twelve brothers,
the twelfth moon of Jupiter, Lysithea,
the number of Magnesium, my son's weight
at three months plus his nine inside,
my cranial nerves,
C in hexadecimal,
NGC 12 spiral galaxy,
is craps on the first roll?
Najwa Kareem Aug 2022
KEIN RESPEKT Für SIE, NWMI
NO RESPECT For YOU, NWMI
Generally speaking, KEIN RESPEKT

In the grand scheme of things,
they do NOTHING FOR THE OPPRESSED
NWMI tun im Grunde NICHTS FÜR DIE MUSTADHAFIN

Tell me, what have they done for Yemen?
Tell me, what have they done for Palestine?
Tell me, what have they done for Syria?
Tell me, what have they done for Nigeria?
Tell me, what have they done for Myanmar?
Tell me, what have they done for oppressed Blacks in America
besides feeding some black persons who are homeless
food of lesser quality than they fed themselves at their Galas/parties and at their Eid celebrations
and offering a few BLM programs during BLM's buzz moment, trending time, media coverage frenzy?

Unlike many other Islamic, non-profit organizations run by Muslims,
they have all this money to do a lot with
And comparatively speaking,
they continuously have all this money to do a lot with

Though NWMI, you've learned from with unyielding thanks to them a few Imams and leaders
branded as freedom fighters
voices of the oppressed
who have taught you accurate information
and as far as I know, have not been guest speakers at any of your "signature" programs

So you encourage social responsibility through service
Serving who?
Serving "your own"?
Serving those who in comparison to the world's oppressed and needy
and to those oppressed and needy, both Muslims and non-Muslims in your own backyard
don't need to be served
Ha ha, what a joke

"Hold on to the rope of Allah all together and be not divided." Qur'an 3:103
in bold it reads, a welcome to their website
Well, they've divided themselves
They've separated themselves alright
from the Mustadhafin
The most oppressed of the believers,
they've separated themselves from    

I'm sure the ones you look to as role models
the Ahlul Bayt (AS)
would highly approve of your complicit, apathetic ways
Their feet followed the Mustadhafin everywhere they were
everywhere they went
You're NOT following in the Ahlul Bayt's footsteps
You're NOT

We smell hypocrisy and we hate that smell
We hate that smell called hypocrisy

KEIN RESPEKT Für SIE, NWMI

Tell me, what have you done for Iraq?
Tell me, what have you done for Afghanistan?
Tell me, what have you done for Somalia?
Tell me, what have you done for Pakistan?
Tell me, what have you done for Palästina, for again, Palestine   
"...PALESTINE CONTINUES TO BE THE ISSUE
and ISRAEL, ZIONIST ISRAEL CONTINUES TO BE THE PROBLEM." (IMAM ASI, 5/2008)  
Surely, you know, they're dying right now
They're mourning right now. RIGHT NOW
Tell me, what have you done for them?

Tell me, what have you done for me and my people...yeh the ones who are suffering in unfathomable ways all over the place?
Tell me, what have you done for my bleeding mercilessly, oppressed family?
Tell me, what have you done for my yelling loudly, screaming their hearts out for help brethren...our brothers and our sisters?
Tell me, what have you done for my regularly targeted, innocent, dear human friends?

In the grand scheme of things,
Nix
Nothing

KEIN RESPEKT Für SIE, NWMI
NO RESPECT For YOU, NWMI
I THINK YOU HEARD ME

By: Najwa Kareem
*From this day of Jumaa Mubarak, this day of consciousness and reflection forward, BOYCOTT NWMI (New Wave Muslim Initiative) and organizations/entities that function similarly! We don't need them. We don't need them wasting our time. We don't need them harming us. We don't need them using their organization's culture to shape, develop, and cultivate a generation of our Muslim children into punks, scaredy cats, humans oriented in spirituality and not action, etc. At a time when we, caring Muslims and other human beings are thinking about and acting in ways to support, assist, advocate, and stand up for our brothers and our sisters including children in Palestine (Gaza) who were murdered last weekend and their grieving love ones, Muslim/Islamic organizations like NWMI should be stepping up to the plate with a bat in hand ready to swing. BOYCOTT NWMI and organizations/entities that function similar to NWMI!
Chad Young Sep 2020
You look like the blessed Middle East.
Your smile is like 1000 Fatimas.
Your eyes so full and ready to serve humanity.
Jet black hair that portrays the night.
Cream skin like Pistachio ice cream.
Several hundred eyelashes as rays of a dark lit sun.
A nose of a hundred thousand prostrations to God.
To touch your jacket would give off
a mystical scent.
To straighten your tie would be a service to Mother Mary.
Fingers like petals of lillies.
"Hi Chad" you whisper with an ecstatic Hijaz.
Legs forgotten by a million Quranic recitations.
Pious seal of purity.
"I am not the beauty you seek" the black globe of your eye
betrays.
One hundred 'Ali's have circled round me.
Ten Yusif's have proposed.
"I am a fairy tale like no other" you let out
with a diamond glint in your eye
"You and me, we'll make a love that cannot be forgotten."
"I will make you worship at my shrine."
A thousand Husayns cannot handle me.
I am my daddy's little girl.
You must pray five times with me
every day we are together.
You must testify to Muhammad
as the Seal of the Prophets.
"What of the Qaim?" I plead with her.
She replies, "Of that I don't know."
"Then a thousand mirrors of beauty are still shut
to you joon."
"Though you are moonshine of the Twelve Imams,
I must send you on your travels
and leave this page with a sploch."
Pinterest pilot picture
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
and to think: there's a human face behind
the horror;
it's ultimately unimaginable,
or a variation of relentless
theology never consolidated
as in: always providing a priest:
sermon of Baal
                                 - why do
we need them? please remind me...
   why do we need priests and imams?
that's hardly a worse affair
with the already staged Holocaust
and ethnic cleansing of
the disintegrating Yugoslavia -
am i to care about the Vatican lard
because it just staged something
memorable like not wearing
reds suede shoes? oh... hip hip hooray!
i'm all ears and applause.
they wear the dog collars
but never the choir boys' leash -
i'd cleanse the marble floors with their
desecration - because they are nothing
more than what some are called
state benefit scroungers -
               abracadabra crappers -
                     i'm actually unemployed
because you deem priests as worthy of
being a demanded profession...
this is my Martin Luther kindred oath -
only with the Poles and the Irish
can this circus go on as it is;
what can these priests actually summon?
a warm ****, and carbonated waters
of lake Galilee; and that's all folks;
but nonetheless you keep them
employed, as you said to Socrates:
cobblers and bartenders and carpenters
to the gas chambers! because we need
impotent priests of Baal / Jesus Christ!
Mateuš Conrad May 2018
what do you call a spider without a spiderweb?
    hardly a beef eating tarantula,
came the spider from his web
and scuttled along the pave- like
a missing shoe in a tsunami of
Oxford St. shoppers,
   alternatively (like) a crack-******* addict
i happened to observe, with
a lightbulb in a red phone box
with me standing in it eyeing him
before the hyena dealers buchered
his *** for copper?
    5am London is a twilight zone...
but hell, the tarantula lost
the ability to be arcitecturally
sound, dropped to the floor like
the ape off a tree with a pulsating
lilac mushroom...
     and that psychedelic enzyme
theory of the fungus is...
   wait for it... another way to sieve
through what has the San Francisco
stamp of approval for a Saturday
night in...
                   drinking beer and laughing
at your own jokes in a post-communist
****-show of a "democratised"
society... well... isn't,  exactly to everyone's
taste...
    'cos that: bang bang Nancy riding
horses made of sticks into Santa Fe...
     went by like: woosh!
           watcha know,  Texans not too
lady-bi titillating **** rhetoric...
            and in other news...
that chubby moon-key worth of
every subsequent Monday dropped
from a tree, with a tarantula kippah...
if the fungus took a free ride
so did the ****** spider,
    who... had the gift of prophesisng
its future as, cushty,
   conspired with the fungus...
    'hell, this monkey will someday
build lavish aquariums for us,
feed us... pet us...'
    hence the beef-eating venture...
and the missing spiderweb production
missing like footprints on a beach...
can't tell you that I don't see
             a similarity, but there's a vital
bit missing...
no, because you don't exactly sit
around drinking beer waiting for something
like this...
    it just drops out of nowhere
and your hands start moving out of their
own will, idle only a minute prior..
hardly a sort of conversation you might
have, drinking in a bar,
with someone, other than...
   at this point even your own shadow would
run away and hide in a shadow of a tree,
forge peek-ah-boo, ******'s way gone,
and yes, only second beer in...
    a blocked toilet that began with
a translation of English
    soap operas of 40 years...
   opery mydlane...
        mydło = soap...
     yes yes, sure, Finnegans Wake
   "is": translatable...
         a little bit of bilingualism doesn't
hurt...
       unless it comes from monolingual
bureaucrats who deem it a:
   split-eddie...
          heart on my heart,
I've sat with dangerous psychopaths
doing an arithmetic exam,
while learning a lesson in empathy
at a St. John's Cross course for
first aiders...
      one even laughed about bashing his
head against a wall,
and running naked with a sword
into the street...
      but we had a laugh:
    I started to think whar prison must be
like, esp. with the Imams...
            soap operas though...
elsewhere they're known as
    tele-novellas...
                        all in all...
this is just shy from my usual escapade...
into the zamarki / technicalities
of language,
    notably in translation,
but notably in words that never made
it into the rigid rubric of ideology...
only recently i wrote something and
stashed it into a draft compartment...
    niche intrest...
          if i could counter the cartesian
res cogitans with res vanus...
  surely I could counter Heidegger's
dasein with... daseit...
     a tiny diffrence...
  the poem remains abandoned like
a public grotto for grafitti,
waiting less for a nurse to heal it,
but for a squatter to move into
the abandoned space,
   and become like a tarantula
          trying to remember how it was
to weave, a titanium silk thread into
snowflake lace...
      if only to find the squatter
  to occupy
   the scribble I might dare to call poem
that possesses all the qualities
of an abandoned house...
     and like a doormouse:
not a peep-squeak out of me in
any fathomable elaboration of due
narrative,
    when the difference is based upon
alternating the meditation invested
in daseiN prior, and now... ha ha...
     daseiT...
                       i'm sure heidegger had
in mind 's (ist) within the da-sein compound,
     as much as isn't (ist nicht)...
       given there's the "talk" of time,
I subscribe to the being and form of time,
rather than to being and formlessness of nothing
(which, becomes non-being
   and the form of nothingness)...
    already a meditative language ensues,
much akin to my current
reading material...
       dropping ashes on the buddha:
   the teachings of Zen master seung sahn

by stephen mitchell  (grove / atlantic Inc.)...
  i'm sure I'll find a squatter
who will enter this abandoned house
of a "poem",
        and elaborate on,
any inconveniences,
     notably the missing conventionality
of: a poem is not a poem
without a rhyme...
         yeah yeah...
and those poems that aim to
be "songs"...
     seriously, Shakespeare?
     Robbie Burns, zee baßtard,
   has 'em singing ****** numb-skulled
silly, every Hogmanay and even
by the Thames, each year...
at precisely, circa, mid-night...
                 even if quoted a million
times, a millionth celt and 'glican will
know             a one more
                               d'moor...
                                      tip of tear
having exhaled a line from auld lang syne.
He is coming again
He will strike like never before
He stings more like a scorpion
He is despise by many
Even his people love him not
He has been around for long
But nobody seems to welcome him
He is coming again...
Everybody running helter-skelter
The market is nothing but scurry
Like a war zone,
No one wants to be affected
With the strong weapon he wields
Many people at large at his sight
He is coming again...
No one can withstand his wrath
The noblest is not sure
The wealthy is scared
The dumb speak more about him
The deaf hear him clearer
The blind see him often
The poor live not by it
He is coming again...
Our Pastors shy, our Imams timid
Our politicians make no friend with him
Our judges visit him not often
Our police know not his house
Our families are searching for what is not lost
Our Children are not familiar with him
He is coming again...
No place is safe to hide
For he strikes like thunder
No one to turn to
For everyone is not pure
No darkness can cover him
For he sees even in the dark
His shadow covers everywhere
He is coming again...
He has paid his dues
his journey is far away wonder land
But, he has boarded a vehicle that will arrive
Sooner or later he will arrive
Tell the black widow
Caution the wealthy
Let the powerful be aware
Wake the heart of the feeble
The TRUTH is coming again.
Dana A Jul 2019
When you crack open my skull
You are met with a steaming heap of noodles
Serving for one

For one,
I have touched death
It’s close
And I’m broken

I broke in,
Rattled the bars of my cage
My mane half-silver
With age

With age
My bones creak
The shell-shock on the beach
Sea gunk and sea junk
I’m afraid I have already sunk

Sunken eyes
Darting side to side
While the noodles in my skull
Rest and cease to fry

Friars, Rabbis, Imams and Popes
Where do I pin my hopes?
A futile search while I try to scope
For fuel for my noodles

My noodles
A sad pile of snakes
How do I even begin to rake through these
Sodium-laden
Sadium-laden
Strings on a plate?

© frenchfriesforbirds

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