Naa Hoy

Naa hoy, naa hoy Mareekanay

Calankaatha heeso,

ani Soomaali baan ahay

 

Naa hoy, naa hoy Mareekanay

car soo dhawow

 

Dhibka iyo rabshathaa

dadkayna kadaa

 

Our words for your guns

are sticks and one:

Sticks because your weapons are as harmless

as the tongues you use to slander what black is.

Sticks because we build with

the helicopter carcasses you leave behind

when the bodies of your soldiers are spent.

Sticks because we’ve been scion-ed into a generation of re-growth

and with your shells we armor the freedom of our new birth.

 

Naa hoy, naa hooy…

 

One.

One because you could only ever murder one,

an individual never the struggle.

One because it’s no longer a question of solidarity,

for in our oppression, we become one.

One because the iron wrought with your one

holds in its hardened state the essence of genocide,

and with each fire, one, I hear the indigenous cries

that have been painted over with white lies.

And as your sticks and one, wound my brothers sides

(like your false image of Christ),

I too am to die, and our mixed blood will nourish the earth

and give birth to new growth that cries freedom in words of:

 

Naa hoy, naa hoy Mareekanay

calankaatha heeso,

ani Soomaali baan ahay

 

Naa hoy, naa hoy Mareekanay

car soo dhawow

 

Dhibka iyo rabshathaa

dadkayna kadaa

Difference

In you or me,
I see the dream of my soul come alive.
With breath and touch,
universal expansion compares nothing
to our love. 

We weigh more than light.
Are brighter than the foam of the sea
when the high noon sun
glances off its trough.

To say we are eternal
is enough
to send in me in the dream of your soul
and never wake up.

When your hand locks, and clenches
mine, which is  yours, which is ours,
I feel the many different loves of the world
and my soul turns sour,
becoming jealous of itself.

Although our bodies are real,
physical and tangible,
every moment my soul clings harder
to my collarbone
and calls even harder to yours.

In much the same way
the sky accepted the moon and the sun
soon after it split from the earth,
my love and my reality for you
will continue
long after I have gone from this world.

We have filled the difference.

Gathering Thoughts

When I woke up this morning, I thought of what little time I had and how much of the world I am destined to see. But I remembered reading in “The Miracle of Mindfulness”, by Thich Nhat Hanh, that once time is divided, much of it is lost. So I stand by my body, and recognize I have all the time in the world. And it’s only my thoughts that limit what I am able to see.

Abstract painting. Center form. Half lotus. Yin Yang on left. House in the mountains. Transparent. Zen Garden. Hard to paint rocks. But then again it’s abstract.

She is in New York.

Why is it I feel more comfortable holding a brush than I do when holding a pencil?

We played piano together. Not the greatest tune. But it may have very well been our souls dancing.

5 days, until I return. Still so much to do.

I’m pretty sure no one ever hears me. I talk even more.

…

Enlightenment

The smell of wet brick
and aged books flood me;
taken to an earthen sculpture
whose movement only stirs the sea
of acrylic and every heavy leg placed beneath the colour,
reverberates and sets in motion all the world,
and paints my beginning, which is the same as yours,
but tell me otherwise.

Inform me rapidly like pearls
falling from their thread, only swifter
and more different than what we’ve known—
chant a great deal of proverbs
in hope that I’ll approach
to accept your clever words,
pull me from the distant deeps
and quench me with a tone
from your endless golden chord
as would the Angel’s tremor hold me
throughout the storming of its horn.

Wash my sins away
with your blessed heaven gourd.
Tell your God of my reluctance
and pray that I’m absorbed
within the light that emanates
from every step beyond my door,
from every string beyond His core.

I’ve retired from the people
and at the point where I was weakest—
at the point where good or evil
had a chance to lift me from my seat!
I found that I had lost all passion,
and if the world had come to crashing
I would not help to lift a single piece.

Remnants of Enlightenment

In the night I hear you whisper.

It’s as if a bodhisattva
lost the light within the cold
and shivered.
At the moment where he numbs,
is when you take hold
and I succumb to great emotion.

Whereby the night
no longer moves but foams
at the mouth, bobbing. Waiting
for my first step
to understand my perfection.

And your whisper resonates,
knocking framed calligraphy
off the wall, and there begins
my flight.

There we fade into the night.

Love is My Religion

“As long as there is duality,
[one's] relationship is with Adam and Eve.
But when duality retreats, the one [reality] is God.
When the path of Lordship (rububiyat) appears,
the dust of humanness departs.”

Entangle me within love,
that I may stumble in ecstasy.
Close my eyes and surround my heart
until all else fades and God is I!

There is no distinction
between the lover and beloved.
Within me there is, without me there is
and in us all He is.

Harmony,
oneness within all.
The Universe is love
and in us all His love.

Open your conscience (qalbi)
to the light of it all,
to the spirituality of love.

hun, po

Heaven and Earth,

What do we see when we look up? Beyond the occasional bird or plane. Beyond the clouds. The sky. The darkness after. The moon. And everything we classify as space. Beyond the universe?

What lies where nothing is? The expanse where everything will soon engulf?

What dreams mold and multiply where everything will be?