Tag: world

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Poems

Beauty

Abundant
It fills our streets
Blown around by the wind
Or splashed by fast cars

Don’t blink
It’s in the brief moments
Before and during
The familiar and the strange
Greet each other
You might miss it

It’s in the gleam of knowing eyes
In the air that fills lungs
Inhaled for life
And then expelled
Back into the ether

It weaves its way
In and around
Filling spaces of
Intentions and actions
Of the moving and the still
Of the enduring
And the eroding

As equally sought after
As it is misclassified
Misattributed
And overlooked
Eternally demanded
And damned

Noticing beauty
Takes a keen mind
Sharing it
Takes love
And creating it…
That takes courage

Categories
Poems

Notes

Quarter tonic
Sugar with sugar
Sweet tongue
Semolina Lena

Noncognizant strikes
Dodge brother, dodge
Relentless moving
Those dark eyes always worth it

What I would give
To make this right
To step out of character
Or am I in one now?

Tired of this
Fearing its endlessness
The closer I am to one
The farther I am from both

When the notes I hear
Or the words, dear
My world flips
But I’m quarter built

Flipping like it’s
Practice makes perfect
Play the notes, play
As close as I can get

Limits limit
But memories punish
Flabbergasted and expectant
What are you doing? Incredulous

I am flipping and practicing
Playing notes and replaying nostalgia
Giving love like watering the parched
Learning to strike the balance

Leave me be, demons
You turn sustenance into air
After I’ve fed my soul
I shall have my peace

Categories
Poems

“To my friends…”

I know you, friend,
I recognize my self in you,
Your countenance a canvas of your heart,
Or a parchment with ink bright red,
I’ve never met you,
But I see the part of you,
That would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me,
Respect, dignity, and solidarity our shared language,
You have my gratitude.

It is so difficult to find you,
A necessity,
If it was so easy,
Then they would find us,
With their language of conformity and violence,
Copy-cats of blind majority,
Bent on propagating and steering,
We recognize the steps of their dance,
From a mile away,
We try to steer clear,
But sometimes our shared language,
Calls on us to act.

To the scoundrels,
I know you,
I recognize my self in you,
But that was an old self,
I left it behind long ago,
A fossil,
I’ve never met you,
But I see the part of you,
That would hurt me,
For entertainment,
Or derived righteousness,
Humanity’s parroting scoundrel.

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Author’s note: I dedicate this poem to Sarah Hegazi (Rest in Power), a queer feminist activist from Egypt who recently passed away while seeking asylum here, in Canada, and to all who are navigating and surviving cruelness and systemic injustice.