silencing speaking and speaking from silence

We always talk about how people don't listen
says my mother as we chat
and I know I have also thought about that
but I don't think I would have this position
before everyone expected me to be silent.

Now that I talk when told to refrain
I take up space that holds others back
from their lives and it isn't meant as an attack
but it seems to bring them pain
and their response to quiet me feels violent.

Who does not speak in history?
All the women and the subaltern people
and they have emerged more feeble
from the treachery
of the dominant.

So keep speaking I say to myself
and to all the people trying to find words
to express their feelings even when told it is absurd
that they speak and reveal
their truth in the moment.

Ikhlas

Why did I start to worship God in the early moments of my life?
Why did I start to sing God's praise and send my prayers to the Most High?
Longing for greater strength of heart to love and transcend
the restraints of my humanity in this life and beyond the end.

Striving to make a better world by loving all near and far,
I tried to excelled at compassion and to keep my heart from being hard.
I worked to read the scriptures and to sing songs of praise.
I spent time in meditation and walked beside a lake.

Now I see my books get stolen and my thoughts drop into someone else's mind
I cannot think as clearly and my vision has become blind.
But the thought at first that I held to of loving all people
Keeps me resistant to the everpresent evil

Of the hateful and the greedy and vicious onlookers
who try to drag me down and blind me forever.
I try to walk lightly and to keep myself alight
with the love I felt when first loving God Most High.

They might be better from what they steal from me,
and I try to let it go and be less greedy.
I try to think that my spirit has been built to give
and I try to make my space a place where all want to worship.

Shadow hangs over

The birds chatter breaks the sound of electricity shadowed.
The sun's weak light does not break the cold's tenacity, shadowed.

The cries of the cat don't pull at my back and she worries somewhere else.
What ominous words have been spoken in secret ferocity, shadowed.

Our house's darkness holds visions veiled from me.
Morning brings new fears and my life stays shadowed.

Forgive me

How much of the hatred in my mind represents your design? Forgive me.
The hostility of others assaults my mind. Forgive me.

I see my sins and sort through them still with exhaustion.
I keep looking at my sins and pulling myself up crying. Forgive me.

The random lusts live with wasted money in a space so vast in my life.
Where I should have beeen seeing I remained blind. Forgive me.

confidences

If you confide in me
your secrets will hide in me.

What you don't disclose will remain concealed
and I will not expose anything.

I will cover your faults and not reveal them even to myself,
And on the day of Judgement my faults will be covered as well.

Monologues

I am talking to an invisible audience
that doesn't want to listen to me applaud myself
This is like writing about death and sleep
and dreary days and shining sun and towering trees

I know I was conscious of other peoples thoughts
They told me I was crazy but I am not
Most people hear voices, that's true
My psychiatrist hears voices too.

Who are they and what do they hear,
You cannot send numbers
You cannot send names
The astral world has endless games.

The ethereal reaalms hold our bodies
Some people think that if you cause harm you do that in the afterlife
without permission you go to hell
sometimes if its just impossible you will as well

I feel rather bad about the people I beam,
I know my thoughts caan be low and mean,
I wish for forgiveness from all who hear
Until a better veil appears.

In order to achieve understanding: words

All night he meditated on the words

In the creation of the heavens and the earth
and in the alternation of night and day
verily there are signs for those who are endowed with insight.

Did the universe unfold with all its brightly lit worlds?
Did he see the earth begin and end, and each sorrowful mistake?
Did Allah's beloved, Allah's perfect messenger
watch and cry with joy and wonder or because he felt his heart break?

Did he gaze at humanity's story in its completeness
and bless each moment? Were the babies guarded and the elders
honored across the millenia? Did the hours of each generation
and their life in heaven make his tears fall with wonder?

Did he see us surrounded by nuclear weapons,
and smoggy skies? Were the extinct marched into space
two by two, group by group as he contemplated their end.
Did he see heaven and the evaporation of states?

Were the martyrs of Hajj revealed and each one named,
their swift moments shining? Were the people fought for liberation
in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe all glowing like flames?
As he wept did he redeem creation?