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.