Haiku # 695

العمرُ لم يُبقِ مني
الا هذا الشعر
أكتِبهُ لأقول أنني أُحبكِ

~

Spring in the mountains
all day I sit listening
to the wind in the pines

Wandering Thought # 110

The moments and experiences that turn into memories and persist within us are always the ones that carry an emotional weight. The rest of the things we go through we do not remember or recall. So our memory and recollection of the world is always subjective, reflecting ourselves and set of emotions and being in that particular moment, the person we were at the time. But, also, the memory which persists within us is not a finished memory or a static image; it changes within us as we change, for the memory itself is always grasped and viewed through the prism of emotions and thought, our growth and maturity, which are ever shifting.

It is not always the experience we go through which creates the memory within us, the opposite can also be true. Some emotions can be so intense that they generate a set of images and feelings that acquire the hue and shape of reality and thus persist within us, becoming more real than reality itself. That is how artists, in particular, grasp the world. But what is true for the artist is also true for the “normal” person. Memory and image making are no passive activity but a creative process that goes down to the very roots of our being and idea of the world. The person is both generator and creator, grasping reality not as a fait-accompli, but always creating it out if the prime material the world and our situation within it provides. In the truest sense, “we are the poets of our lives.”

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Free Verse # 453 (a small poem)

Without them knowing
all the poets and painters
borrow from your beauty
to write and paint

~

Night falls
In the darkness
I feel myself being lowered
into a place of light

~

I begin every day with a small poem, and that is the little sun I plant inside my heart to accompany me throughout the day, that is my little prayer, my conversation with God.

I began by seeing her with my eyes, then I saw her with my heart.

It is the kindness that I love most in a face.

My woman has a body made of poems; I unravel her by delving into the waters of her mystery.

~

أكتب
كأنني امرر أصابعي ببطئ
فوق تعاريج بشرتك،
كأنني أتنشق رائحة شعرك
في صباحٍ خريفي.

~

When I am alone and silent
I find your face floating
to the surface of my heart
like a gentle wave of light

~

Though I’ve only known it
through the grace of poetry
your touch has pronounced
a holy utterance in me
turning my heart into a chapel
and a place of worship
filled with the fire of your love

These Poems

These poems, I write them
so I would not forget
how you taste like,
how you smell,
how simply seeing you
fills my heart with light.

These poems are doors
I keep going through,
doors opening to rooms
filled with endless skies,
rooms where you have just left
as I walked in
leaving only your scent
and a letter or two.

These poems remind me
of the stain of your lipstick
on the wine glass from that night
that we laughed and shared our silence
and looked into each other’s eyes
and knew.

These poems are my heartbeats
caught in a capsule
and carried by the waves
always towards you,
but you are the sea
and you are the waves
and the shore beyond is you.

These poems always say
one and the same thing,
“there is no place left in me
for being and non-being,
I am all-being, in you.”

These poems always say the same thing
though each time
a little stronger and more deeply,
these poems say, “I love you.”

Wandering Thought # 109

Part of becoming mature lies in the realization that we do not know ourselves as well as we thought we did, that we are not transparent to ourselves and that we act motivated by certain forces, desires, emotions, and needs we have no control or knowledge of. Part of becoming mature consists in trying to befriend and bring light to this shadow life, while knowing that life will end before this endeavor does.

Wandering Thought # 108

Truths are always hard, which we don’t want to hear, because they disturb our sense of complacency and comfort, they shatter our self-image and hold on the world. If we are not willing to accept and reconstruct ourselves accordingly we are doomed to unhappiness and a mediocre life. We are doomed to repeat the same errors again and again and to stay caught in the same cycles of addiction and thought. Facing the truth takes courage, confidence, humility, and some hardness towards ourselves. Without that we will perish not having achieved our full potential.

Wandering Thought # 107

Only the weak person wants to bind others in contracts of blackmail and fear. These contracts come in many forms; one of them is love and kindness.

These Poems

These poems I write
are birds I send away
over mountains and fields,
through white clouds
and over distant seas,
so that, one dawn of day,
they might return
and tap at my window,
fill my heart with their song
having seen your beautiful face.