God’s Blessings
“Are we ok?”
You ask though we are
always
And you cuddle
Squeezy
Like you did at seven
when you talked about hair
as you still do
You love to wind me up
Hate it when it works
“I haven’t annoyed you, have I?”
“No, not yet.”
Our eyes
the same
smile
You have prattled
a river forever
Sometimes
I drift
Yet I know that one day
as I die
I’ll need you there
… and I’ll live for every word
The Journey Back
In the belly of the whale
I curled as
a not-yet within a mother
shivering with pain I couldn’t feel
and called your name once
through the starless space
of titanic depth
You asked your slate gray friend
to rise as a filling balloon
from the crushing weight
of mistakes grown from knowledge
without experience
and sent me sprawling
I blinked blind in a sun forgotten
that burned some shame off my skin
as I coughed away my drowning
for nine years then three
and looked inland for the meaning
of a second life apparently here
You had heard
You had accompanied me
always inside my shallow breaths
and waited for my groan to climb
a ladder from what felt dead
deep within a broken shell
I heard a call in a windless breeze that bore
my name as a seagull’s caw
and my purpose as a kiss of clarity
And I call yours again: Allah
Yesterday
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?
Holy Qur’an
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
The Voyage of a Scholar
On the day that paper clips and files
And memos snowed upon a city
I opened an unfamiliar book
To see what had brought that storm
Each night I brushed back dreams
By turning pages of profundity
To learn what had placed death
In the eyes of passport photos
The heavens opened for
Forty days within my mind
And soul in a Noah’s flood of
Confusing certainties
The willing dead were absent in
Every word but my forty days
Left greater questions buoyant
And curiosity unvanquished
I sailed twenty times
In eight years through
Surah seas of calm swells
Pushed by winds of conscience
Twenty times I charted their
Depths – truly Pacific –
Before I knew that I
Knew nothing
When tranquil winds lifted
La ilaha illallah I heard a soft
Muhammadur Rasulullah
Slip without thought from my lips
A book read twenty times asked
When I would embrace its truth
And in a small stillness I replied
Now oh Lord, Now
Too Often
Shaytan winks
Within …
a market
a boy
a vest
two wires
a second
a hole
a mistake
a crime
a sin
Lamentations
What possessed me
To sin like that?
Regret sighs
And I look down
I hide my eyes
As a child avoiding dad’s
I can’t turn them from You
You are anywhere
What possessed me
To welcome shame?
I breathe out
After a slow inhale
I try not to focus
And I want my mind to wander
A lead-heavy clarity within
Reminds me that You expect more
What possessed me
To act as though You weren’t here?
You never leave or step further
Than an eyelash fallen on my cheek
I don’t want my end to come
In this moment
How could I face You
And say I did it knowing You saw?
No Despair in Lamentations
You swooped and caught me
Knowing I would trip, stumble and fail
You heard my sorrowful lament
Before my lips formed words
You understood my thoughts
Before I even thought them
From the instant my soul began to groan
Your tender fingers touched my chest
Before defeat could overcome me
You told me I had the hope of triumph
I cupped my hands in prayer
And they were already full of grace
The moment I inhaled for Astagfirullah
You placed peace within my lungs
The Cleft
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 gash 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
Will I Write a Poem about Her and Sin?
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
Regret in Cashmere
A stubbled beggar with a faded mutt
Pressing tight and a hungry brown hat
I think holding coins three of four
In winter’s pain of frozen lungs
And a running nose wiped on
A sleeve said “Your coat looks warm”
While I walked wrapped smiling in
Cashmere black and warm except
My heart which pushed flippant words
“So does yours” from lips that
Still tasted of red sweets from
The cinema but the stabbing lance
Of conscience that pierced my side
Told me like a nana’s sermon that I had
Ignored Allah’s words and walked too
Far in a coat meant for the one who could
Not buy what I could: another
In Different Rooms
I choose solitude
They watch television
Downstairs
I bend as they recline
I place my mind on a mat
While theirs slip through adverts
About cat food and sofas
I whisper to You of truth and grace
While they discuss invented worlds
And cockney characters
Seclusion is never forlorn
We are together
As they are
Downstairs
And I love them
The World is an Asian Intersection
Holding out
An empty baby
Monkeylike
Two months old or nine
Dusty, limp and sun-dried
A desiccated mother
Large teeth missing
Appears at the window
With a bonelike hand cupped
Within the opportune moment
Offered by a red light and begs
For her God’s provision
A fully-toothed driver
Eased by his creator
And the tired air-con
Warns the torn and shocked
Who shrinks in comfort
In the cream leather back
About the fine he’d pay if he
Slipped her a note of
No known value
To lengthen life
And please the lover
Of mothers
Such Power
She acted her iman in forty-one
Covered Facebook photos for 2,431
Friends and she looked like a Muslima
Should and built a wall of pious bricks
But after burning all Israelis
With kerosene-soaked words
And when she graffitied
“I f---ing hate that b--ch Lady Gaga!!!”
On her wall
And seven bearded friends liked it and
Weighed in with their own
Hard-knuckled violence
Another pulled his lips tight and made her
Extinct with a single press and
Now he can’t even remember
His friend’s angry name
Everything
You have ninety-nine names of splendour
I am Abdullah
You are greater than all universes and anything beyond
I stand five foot seven
You are infinite and time fits within Your palm
While my hair grows grey
You are magnificent and ever so flawless
My feet get too hot in summer
And I sometimes snore (so I’m told)
You see everything always
My eyes get red from too much reading
But I study Your book ― religiously
You understand far more than all knowledge
I don’t even know where Moldova is
Without searching Wikipedia
You parted the sea and split the moon
While I get tired carrying groceries
You answer millions of prayers ― billions? ― at once
Yet I can’t follow television when my daughter chatters
But I listen to Shoshana (usually)
You created her and Michaela
I am merely their adoring father
I am Abdullah
You are everything
I am happy
At the Office on Thursday
The Ambassador and I
spoke Arabic and I
led him in
Nearly all I knew lasted the
feeling of a rushed breath
but was more
It was a lot to one who had
not talked easily
all day
His grin stretched when
he heard Ana Muslim
Alhamdulillah
The Undersecretary of
State’s astonishment
blinked
Two shared as brothers
while a Lord in
pinstripes smiled
The Ambassador’s state
of rocks and sand loved
by three grew
Two Muslims and
a wide-eyed mandarin
pulled lands together
My office glowed with a
Surah’s truth ― 49:13 ―
and I thanked You
Everywhere
Susurrating grass, the sway of pliant poplars and nodding
Leaves on a creeper which presses against the window
Whisper something sweet that exists in every single thing
A cracked mountain’s exhaust pumps like a dying
Chevrolet something eternal into an unloving
Cloud of ash through which birds won’t fly
A silver school twisting like a ribbon or a bed-sheet
Deep yet where light rays illuminate its movement
Lives to tell oceans about something exalted
Sparrows fluttering nervously up and back from the
Old bread left near the clothesline by a grandmother
Blink a message in beady eyes like Morse code
Something perfect comes as a reply from the wings
Of locusts that steal almost all life from fields of hope
Sown by those whose children emerge without sin
And the slow drip of bluish water from a frozen point
Within a glacial cave creates a cadence that beats
Something healing at the pace of a whale’s heart
The too-often cough of a smoking uncle holds the purity
Of something living that swirls then vanishes
As it holds aloft the vitalising glory of its owner
Even evil flying from an assassin’s rifle can’t sully the
Perfection of The Name carried with the prior knowledge
Of the One who will roll up time with justice read from a book