Grooving to Something so Human in Me

PHOTO BY SI

You, in me, creep up in the dead o' night
I've taken a few sips of poison, just to be clear, just in case the mediocres want to label it,
So, you creep up, and I'm ecstatic.

You want me, you want me to throw all asunder,
You, you want me to rip apart entrails, while the beast still lives, eyes wide open, eyes wide shut
Am I aware, fully aware of what I do, what I've done?

Fear. All for instilling fear in the Other. And the Other? Who? or What?
It stands in my way.
I do what I've seen my brethren do.
I pick up. I toss. I shake.

I create fear.

Because I have power over all.
Overall I have power. Power.
It speaks to me.
Like Iblis whispering the sweet somethings. Something so meaningful. Something so terrible. Horrible. Pathological. Maniacal.

Human.

Oh, Human! What class of species are we?
We, who kill, with wrath, with twisted grins, a death grimace, so ugly.
We kill the Other. Yes. For consumption. For pleasure.
But for something deeper.

For ego. Who's the King of the World?
Oh, hail the King!
For, he/she/they/ze is the One who rules over all animals.
We, oh we get to maim and kill without conscience.
For ego.

Who's the King of the World?

Just so you know...the feminine is the masculine is the masculine is the feminine.
Hell! We are all the same.
In Lust. Lust for Violence. Lust for the Flesh of the Other.
So, they look on with eyes open as we wrench the fuck out of their lives.

But I'm human. I'm human. That's who I am.

And so...

I'm forgiven. Forgiven.

You're dead. And I'm forgiven. Forgiven.

And now, I have to floss my teeth and be free of trapped rotting meat. Meat.
Your flesh. In between.

Let's play with you like a lasso. Swing here. Swing there. By the tail.
Your fear, I don't see. I only see Human. And I'm forgiven.

Forgiven.
Eat. Eat. Eat.

Forgiven.

Oh, I'm grooving. Dancing to the sounds of speciesism.
It tastes just right, don't you know it!
I'll swallow whole your silent screams, your heartbreaking pain...distress calling.
911. 911.
Distress calling. Nonhuman. Though.

Don't bother.

The bloodied carcass...you know, the one I kicked around while IT's eyes were still open.
I was allowed. It's ok then. I was allowed. Cuz it's all residual energy.
Energy I can't handle when among my brethren.
Energy I can technologize.
In the form of machines that slice you, crush you, mince you,

Eyes, ears, mouth, tongue, organs - oh everything under the sun cuz you're tasty.
Tasty.
Tasty.
Tasty.
I let it out like letting the cat outta the bag. What?
Oh, just the shadow. Oh this shadow, grooving something human.

Before I suffocate it. In it.

You can bet it'll happen.
In that lake that's been marked. Someday soon. Cuz I can't stand what's between my teeth.

On that day, the chickens, the real ones, will come home to roost.

Only in our dreams

It is both sad and beautiful when the love we have always wanted visits us in a dream and whispers those warm, fuzzy words with a conviction that nobody in our wakeful state/existence has ever done.

Although it was just a dream, it succeeded in giving us precious momentary joy before our eyes inevitably popped open to the unrequited reality that, unlike the dream, stubbornly refused/refuses to vanish.

Despite the fact that the fantasy is no more, during the morning after, we sensed a lightness in our step as if we could still hear the soft and heartfelt timbre of our beloved midnight chimera.

When we are told "I love you."

PHOTO BY SI

*احبك التى احببتنى له

Ahabbakal-lathi Ahbabtani Lah

May God, for whose sake you love me, love you also. 

"I love you" is not easy to say but in this day and age, we say it a lot, and often impulsively, without understanding its profound meaning. 

Love, in its true essence, is infinite, unconditional, awareness. 

In my life experience, I've witnessed how it's used to trap people in co-dependent relationships, in abusive relationships, in controlling relationships, in manipulative relationships, in conditional relationships...What all of these types of relationships have in common is the threat of punishment if one or both or several members of the pair/group behave in a manner that does not comply with the "rules" that are supposed to be understood when "I love you" is said. Parents can do this to their children so they adopt family norms and values, and the roles and identities that the parents demand of them. Friends can do this to friends to gain loyalty. Lovers can do this to each other to keep them faithful. Etc. 

"I love you" can also be used to deceive someone into thinking that the relationship is authentic and that it has a future. When the words do not translate into action, our intuition might inform us the relationship is toxic and in order to save ourselves, and possibly the other person, we must remove ourselves from the situation, for a while, or forever. 

But some of us were born fools. Our lives are forever chained to self-destructive cycles. Unrequited love, heartbreak, and shame remain part of our life narrative. 

How do we detach ourselves from the need to say "I love you" out of fear of losing someone? How do we detach ourselves from the yearning to hear those words said to us overlooking the fact that they may not be coming from a genuine place of love? 

When we connect Love to the infinite - this may be God in their various forms, the universe, the spirit world... - we might find the key to our liberation from the kind of harmful attachments that get in the way of us reaching our full potential as beings capable of experiencing infinite awareness - the awareness of seeing and being everyone and everything all at the same time. 

Our full potential is just that: a deep, abiding Love for everything and everyone, without attachment to one thing or one person. This is why Muslims are encouraged to say the Arabic dua above when they are told "I love you" by another/others. The dua immediately connects the person who said "I love you" to the infinite energy that is God/the universe; it is a prayer for that person that he/she/they might experience the infinite awareness of seeing and being everyone and everything and therefore, learning and imbibing Love's true essence. 

We can nurture this Love in us when we say "I love you" from a place of understanding, compassion, and kindness, and not from fear, infatuation, or possessiveness. We can say it without the need to make the other person do what we want them to do or make them change for us. We can say it when we truly see that in our uniqueness, even in the messy, tangled circumstances of our lives, we are all reflections of one another. 

I might see myself in you and you might see yourself in me if we dig deeper and go beyond the superficial, the mediocre. The drama. 

Self-transformation is possible when we let go of the need for the one and embrace the freedom inherent in our universe/god, in its abundance, in infinite awareness, in the all. That is Love. 

Next time, think before you say "I love you" to someone. True liberation comes when there are no strings attached and no games played. 

I am grateful to the wisdom of Sufism, Indigenous spirituality, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and all the people out there who continue to teach me the lessons I need to learn to move me towards absolution. I forgive you and I forgive me. 

*The 2nd word in the Arabic should have the letter "thal" not "tal" as it is written here. The letter "thal" wasn't on the Arabic keyboard I used.

Hue-me-lee-(tee)-ated

In this mind of mine, the floodgates open when the MP3 goes live as soon as I'm out the door.

The beat-beating-rap-pa-pop-pop-grrrr of the tunes I'd consume - soundtrack for self-involved mutter.

But I walk the walk.
Runway-perfect.
Keeping a steady pace.
Fast but not lightning speed.

'Cuz there's a beat pounding in my head that's making me feel the hot sassy she-male this being seems to be at the moment.

Swinging my hips.
Sleeves rolled up.
Hands in pockets.
Sunglasses donned.

Undeterred in the least by eventual or maybe the ongoing humiliation...

...of having succumbed a number of times to the heart-shaped branding that scars you for life.

You know what I mean.

Yeah. Can't touch this.

Second Thoughts

متى ستور غتي؟

في الثتا ء والصيف؟

اليو غدا؟

عند الندم و السلام؟

وا تؤ جل رحلتك و تمكث عندي ليل اكثر؟

When will you bid me farewell?

In winter or summer?

Today or tomorrow?

With regret or with peace?

Or will you postpone your journey and stay with me for one more night?

PHOTO BY SI

Methycal Dreaming at Close Range

PHOTO BY SI

We try hard to fit into big adult shoes, the kind of shoes that command supremacy,

Supremacy of belief, supremacy of opinion, supremacy of bodily integrity, supremacy of space, to boldly go where...

In those shoes, we could be like them,
the ones with privileged destinies,
handcrafted by doting deities.  

But we weren't born of that magnetic quality, Instead, we were a homely, pedestrian variety, Invisible to the artist's deft hands,
for the artist's muse can no doubt be,
Anything other than beauty,
Beholden in their creator's eye. 

We must then seek satisfaction in tainted dust,
Deluding us on our trip towards elusive heights,
that all but vanish into oblivion when mediocrity rises with the sun.

Success is their glory, while ours, mere fantasy,
Infected with some kind of cataclysm,
that, upon detonation, reveals the poverties of our reckless minds.

An insatiable Hunger. For the Elevation of our Being.

Yet, we linger evermore, in deference, temple to the ground,
Humili-tied to the bondage of invisibility,
No other place to go, we retreat into a wounded esteem,
Hanging by a crystalline thread. 

In a fatal turn towards stygian shores,
We're drawn instinctively to hallowed turf,
Populated by a uniformed Authority,
that all too soon, discover our strange ilk is made of vices.

Such sufferings are found across human terrains, however motley, 

A convergence of countless stoned effigies,
Nothing more than confined paracletes of you and I.

It's the common thread that keeps running through us,
So, do not dare to ascend the well-calibrated rungs, for, at the top, is an unseen quietus,
Expertly formulated by thick-skinned Justice, this, our new sentence, declared,
For no other grounds but the peurile audacity of our skittish hearts.

Stop now! Stop that which we carelessly granted ourselves.
Stop the abdication of our cursed counterfeit crowns,
neuro-configured in cells, where requisite rehab was the prototype.

Sadly, free will interfered with the predetermined slithering of the thread.

Fools!
The spindle would have run its course!
These four walls would have given way to our Liberation!
But, for that carnage-prone dis-eaze, that love has forsaken!

We now listen for the sound of reverberating footsteps,
An overture for the final symphony that might surely end with mechanized applause,
An ear-splitting clap-clap, followed by 15 seconds of silence,
A twisted mimicry by the Heads - with a hint of irony on speed,
of the 15 years as punishment for our compulsive deeds.

Too late.
You and I are now dead. 

This poem is dedicated to RLS and others in similar circumstances whose punishment surpasses their  “crime”. 

Say it without saying it

PHOTO BY SI

S-s-s-secretzzz

Shhhhh....

I've moved thruuu this life, since that day, on the 24 of 04 of 09...


That day, when life was supposed to have felt different, but actually, it hadn't hit me yet
'Cuz I was trapped in somebody else's storm, a storm I had a hand in creating.

I got trapped. So did the audible articulations. They all stopped moving,
It feels for good.

For the good, I suppose. Yes.

For...

I am a criminal.
A tainted body.
A filthy mind.
A sadist's soul.
Undercover.
With s-s-s-secretzzz
To delight in the mens sibi conscia recti of the Other, my Lover.

Lover, you want me. But do you know me?
You're so naive, you won't take a second look.
You think the package is all there.
Nice. Neat. Compact.

But. Under the glimmering shadow of tenderness. Your hands.
I swallow my reality to make space for yours.
And yours. O my God. Yours is a deluge of likelihood - revered by the male historicity.

Yet, you stand apart, your strong arms wrench you "lone wolf"
tight, tight, tight, you occupy. Me.

That feeling, yes, that feeling when each becomes one.
And I'll say it without saying it.

Ugly

"Ugly" is a word that should be deleted from all languages if it's used to describe people and their physical features. 

I grew up hearing this word used against me time and time again by people who called themselves my friends and white kids who didn't like brown-skinned girls with facial hair. The internal shit storms that resulted in being constantly insulted in this way ended up creating some pretty challenging external shit storms in my life as I grew into adulthood. For one, I started behaving like those who called me ugly and heaped this word and words like it onto my friends when I began university. Then, in Japan, I publicly humiliated a good friend at the time by shouting disrespectful language including <ugly> at him in a very public place. We were in Tokyo and out clubbing in Roppongi. My mouth left nothing to the imagination and spitted out vile verbiage. Other friends were with us. They were shocked into silence for fear that I might turn on them. My friend kept his cool and didn’t say much. But I knew then and know now that my abuse deeply affected him.

It is true : that when nasty things happen to us, and we are unable to fight back, we keep it in until the pressure causes a blow up or a meltdown. My friend, I believe, might have guessed that my hatefulness that night wasn’t about him. I was calling myself that ugly human, and that night, I was showing my ugliness, my narcissistic tendencies. I could have better directed my anger to something that brought me and my friends joy. I apologized to him in the proceeding days, but the damage had been done. In the years ahead, I once again found myself the target of people’s coarse criticism well into my late 30s/early 40s.

It is something that I will carry in me for the rest of my life no matter how many people tell me I'm not. I don't take compliments about how I look well and this is the reason for it. And please, don't tell me I'm not ugly, because that's not the point. I'm not looking for sympathetic praise. The indignity of being told "you're ugly" was not only a recurring threat in my childhood. It was even more disgusting when I suffered through adults acting out their immaturity in this regard, humiliating me in front of people I loved.

I was never a huge fan of Seinfeld, but once I watched that episode about the "two-faced girlfriend" where Seinfeld is with a woman whose face appears to shift from attractive to not-so-attractive according to Seinfeld and his male friends. What a shitty piece of comedy that ridicules the maturity of a woman's face! 

Those shifts in facial appearance represent the maturity we all inevitably grow into. Our lives become more complicated, messy at times...we feel and think about things more deeply. Many of us no longer wear that childhood innocence. Of course, it might reappear during various moments that remind us of the child within. What our faces present to the world is a soul/spirit/essence who has simply lived, survived, and thrived. An entity created from the dust of the universe and put on this earth to move through life cycles of happiness, pain, confusion, loss, tragedy, regret, retribution, (dis)ability, and all the other labyrinthine circumstances and emotions that continually transform us from one way of being to another, from one way of looking to another.

To label these shifts in people, sometimes even within seconds like the character in that fucked up Seinfeld episode, and call them "ugly" is doing a serious disservice to humxnity. We will never evolve as a species unless we stop denying the gift of that vital beauty in all of us. The beauty of growth and aging...the beauty of our childhood memories running through our blood to remind us at times of who we were/are and all the brilliant ways stardust has changed us.

There are no ugly faces in this world. We are people with stories to tell.

This is Henry

Speak, speak, Little Boy. Weak little drummer boy. Cat gotchyer tongue?

Weak little Henry boy
Knuckles jutting thru brick-stained skin.
Prepubescent fingers folding into a neophyte's fists,
joints cackling, crackling,
betraying the boy's cursed frailty
Tough-guy threat done gone dead.

Henry ducked and dashed.
Seeking asylum on the other side...
A schoolyard where tender-aged disciples were playing under the hawk-eye gaze of white civility.

Slackening his pace.
Chest-deep in an undulating alabaster sea.
Seen nor Unseen.
Henry, BIG little PAKI BOY Henry! 
As conspicuous as a cockroach on a slice of white bread!
As odd...
who, at a dire moment before, had nearly gotten his head flattened by the volatile hyperbolic masculinity of white youth.

But now, now, BIG little, little BIG Henry Boy, was irrevocably turned into a speck of dust, a fuzzy indiscernible spot of brown, that an artist's rendering of the insufferable stain was not a rendering at all, but a mistake. Yet, a more sinister design is now evident. A Mephistophelian oversight. 

A re-birth. 

PHOTO BY SI

Al-Muharrir: The Sheer Madness and Method of Writing an Epic

In this 44th year to mark my birth, I have decided to embark on a soul-defining journey of knowledge-seeking, skills-crafting, and spirit-nurturing by fashioning an adventurous epic tale written all in English verse about a mighty little girl named Al-Muharrir who single-handedly instigates the resurrection of an Iraq decimated by military invasion and occupation.

She is a Prophet and a Warrior, a new Messenger of God, who rises from the dead from her own vicious tragedy to avenge and vanquish those who have dared to erase the noble vestiges of her land, her language, her herstories and theirstories, her country's gifts to humankind and humanity, her people, and the world. How she seeks justice will surprise the reader, for her story is not the age-old story of past kings and rulers who created all manner of tortures for their fellow humans and other species while at the same time being blindly praised for their virtues.

Here are the series of modules, each of which I must complete and/or master before moving onto the next course. It's a lifelong journey!

The end result should be The BOOK and a collection of instrumental tunes that reflect the epic. 

*MODULE A: Selected Readings

I: Reading: The Shahnameh
II: Reading: The Divine Comedy 
III: Reading: The Lord of the Rings
IV: Reading: Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello
VI: Reading: The Illiad and The Odyssey
VII: Reading: Moby Dick
VII: Reading: The Epic of Gilgamesh 
VIII: Reading: The Poetics of the Obscene: Ibn Hajjaj and Sukhf
IX: Reading: Black Hearts 
X: Reading: The Corpse Washer
XI: Reading: The Quran
XII: Reading: The Forgotten Queens of Islam
XIII: Reading: The Ramayana and Mahabharata
XIV: Reading: Indigenous Literature and Storytelling from Around the World
XV: Reading: Rituals of War: The Body and Violence in Mesopotamia
XVI: Reading: Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia
XVII: Reading: The Occult, Witchcraft, Sorcery in Indigenous, African, Eastern and Western Habitats
XVIII: Studies: Arabic Poetry
XIX: Reading: Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in War Veterans
XX: Reading: Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays
XXI: Reading: Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Muslims
XXII: Reading: The Self, Spirituality, God, and the Cosmos
XXIII: Reading: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirits
XXIV: Reading: Black Sumer: The African Origins of Civilization
XXV: Reading: Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society
XXVI: Reading: The Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature

*This list will continue to grow and represent a more diverse selection of books from all regions of the world as I progress with the imagining of the story. There will also be a separate module to understand poetry and how it's constructed, used, and presented in different historical and cultural contexts. 

Al-Muharrir

Digital Art by Neon

CONCURRENT MODULES B: Languages, Music, & Illustration

I: Iraqi Arabic, Classical Arabic
II. Art: Digital epics

III. Music: Learn how to compose & produce electronica, synthwave

MODULE C: Philosophy

Mostly readings that will include learning from both Eastern and Western philosophers - ancient and contemporary. Will develop list of readings shortly.

MODULE D: Virtual Travel

Certain embattled and/or ancient regions in our world granted I have access. Maybe not actual travel, but virtual seems like a good alternative. 

MODULE E: Esoteric Literature & Practices 

Tons of books to read. I will put them up here shortly. 

Selection of Oracle and Tarot Decks

MODULE F: The Writing Begins - concurrent with Modules D & F

Al-Muharrir starts to take shape in verse drawing from the vast literary, historical, spiritual/religious, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technological, modern, and social inventions and institutions that inform and impact human behaviour.

MODULE G: Intellectual Property Rights

Designate someone or a group of people who will inherit the rights of Al-Muharrir and who will present the contents of the Epic to the public in a manner consistent with the overall themes of this devotion to the Divine, to the Arts, and to the Angels, SDG and AJ, whose spirits will continue to guide the completion of this sheroic legend. They will be in my thoughts, my practice and my performance till the day I expire. This much, I promise them, for they will forever be uniquely just themselves; yet, through their narratives, they will intuitively encompass the spirits and passions of everyone else too, particularly the disappeared, the forgotten, and the wretched of our Earth.

Themes: Justice - Virtue - Mercy. 

And so, Al-Muharrir must surely begin...Oh...if you decide to embark on a similar journey and create your own rendition of Al-Muharrir and finish it before I do, then I will kiss the ground you walk on because through you, my vision became a reality regardless of the recipient of such glory. 

Al-Muharrir, in her essential wholeness, is already everywhere and her power belongs to everyone. 

Thank the Divine. 

...

Myriad Ilk

PHOTO BY SI

This one was no pretty boy.
An angry boy, he was.

His fists were always ready for the thrill of a fight,
Kicking, punching, pulling, wrestling,
knocking the senses out of the ones who dared to enter the bogeyman's ring.

From whence he retrieved this bullish power, nobody thought to guess.

To them, he was a girrrrrrrl gone wild,
made wilder by the abominable protrusions that forced his invalidation.

So, for a time, he retreated into a festering muteness
so the child might avoid the turbulence of incongruity.

But now, alas, now, his blood boils again,
and thus begins the modifications that necessitate the giving back of a life.

Such revisions in form and function are entirely imperceptible to the naked eye of public scrutiny, for civilization's exclusive categorizations of birds and breeds
expose the asininity of its sacrilege against our extraordinary human natures.

We are, in fact, swarming multitudes of particularities,
some in perpetual motion as they meander through permeable surfaces,
breaking normative barriers, and generally stirring the shit out of
murderously enforced "respectable" socieities.

This boy is not a crime.

But the ones incarcerated in minds grossly puny and pernicious
blindly and ruthlessly seek the boy's deletion.

The boy perseveres, and seeks recovery, exploring the myriad ilk of tempestuous masculinities,

no longer slack in this discordant shell.

Consequence

PHOTO BY SI

Stelliferous illuminations allow gratitude to advance in tortoise-like pace 

along channels oneiric in such moments, 

tragically transforming back to an astrophobic disposition 

when the Heavens' guiding celestial spirit is enisled 'neath traitorous brows.

Such moments. Acquiescent to what can only be termed Life.

Such moments. Revive an afflictive certainty of the world's virtue.

But when the morrow ascends as an agile pilferer

It ferociously extirpates glee with blood-thirsty artillery

So our souls remain forever perturbed, 

perplexed by habitual newsprint tales, x-rays of infamy and iniquity.

O Divine one, absolve us all from the innate infernos we have fashioned into Hell,

So that we may strive in earnest for a most potent pedigree of conscience 

that effortlessly emerges within those few fateful seconds before we make that...

one irreparable, inexpiable...

...plunge. 

And Then the Heavens Painted in Green

PHOTO BY SI

It was our epic drive across these divergent landscapes.

In a country we called Home.

Picturesque is Nature’s splendour, with exquisite attention to detail.

But historic.

In the many calamitous paths the country trampled through

to create this current civilization of systems that…

…robbed Indigeneity,

…silenced the whizzing of struggling arrows,

…roared the boom, boom of guns and royal proclamations,

…sanctioned the abduction of brown-skinned children from all they knew,

…forced them into dark, shadowy corridors that echoed the filthy thoughts of desperate men and women, of faith.

And so infrastructures were built on an annihilation.

My baby and I heard the longing whispers of the lost children,

who were now mere spectres of their former glorious selves,

wandering heaving forests and searching hungry ravines,

pouring forth their drink and distress, into wells,

that swallowed up the harm done with a shushhhhhhhh

lasting for generations, shameful secrets of a budding nation.

From the Westcoast to the Eastcoast, we whizzed by multiple unmarked graves,

Of the missing and murdered,

At that time, hashtags did not exist, so the world remained in utter ignorance of #MMIW.

Our country protected for the while from the inevitable disgrace that came too late.

Over the sound of an exhausted, gurgling minivan,

filled to the top of clutter and wares from lives we left behind,

my baby and I steered with cautious speed as we caught the devious glints of disappearing sunlight.

We drove some nights under sky so mystically obscure,

we feared we too would become insignificant stats,

but we were privileged to have the gods on our side.

Upon crossing the defining lines between fascination and monotony,

We headed northward to spend a few lazy days in good company.

No moonlight to offer a safe way to our destination, only the infrequent glare of oncoming traffic.

But as we edged closer to a lonesome stretch, driving up, up into hills unknown,

we looked through the windshield to observe a curiosity hovering above,

We slowed, my foot on the brakes, in awe.

It was as if an invisible hand were painting the atmosphere.

Thick brush strokes of incandescent green hues.

This lustrous phenomenon of jade and emerald tapered off,

floating down, vanishing into the artificial lights of the highway

We marveled at the flight of time through this hypnotic haze,

beckoning us to greater heights,

to a greater recognition of our frailties,

a knowing that we shall reap what we sow,

For then the Heavens painted in green.

In that moment, my baby and I witnessed a transcendence of millions,

from the atrocities of a wounded past,

they moved back to that familiar home of grace and abundance,

where they once spoke the tongues of animals and insects, of trees and grass, of rivers and streams, of hills and earth.

And then the Heavens painted in green,

And then the Heavens painted in green,

Lighting up the starkness of a brutal truth,

And glowing with the promise of a triumphant resurrection.