To Love Like Him

When my hands are empty and my heart grieved,
The wounds that nothing can heal,
I look up to you ...
I bring you the broken toy that no child would play with,
The land, no farmer would plow,
You take my worthless pebbles and return me with gold.
I wonder how you do what you do!

You take my pain and keep my sorrows,
You touch and turn my tears to pearls,
Never asked me once, to return what is yours,
Even though, I am yours too...
I wonder how you do what you do!

I run, I fall, I play with dirt,
I hear you calling my name out loud,
Too eager to play I turn a deaf ear
but when I come back home crying, bruised and hurt,
You run to me, You pick me up.
I wonder how you do what you do!
  
I let loose the reins of my heart,
I bow in temples, I kneel in the mosques.
I play in the holy water, like sparrow on a summer afternoon...
Yet, Where ever I go, Where ever I pray,
I end up finding you there.
I wonder how you do what you do!

I know, all you want from me is to be yours
And yet, you let me go away as far I want to go.
Though, all it would take for you is a word "happen"
and it will, before the blink of an eye.
Still you never choose your will over mine...
You wait for me to come to you,
Even if it means eternity.

I am dazzled, I am amazed,

by the million ways you have loved me, 

and a million more...
My Lord, You taught me how to Love! 

Morning Star

When the night was darkest,

And the desire breathed its last breath,

Standing at the edge of the world,

Where there was no more land to step on,

And no way of turning back,

I said good bye to the parting dreams.

When the night was darkest,

I laid under a lonely tree, waiting for the last beat,

I closed my eyes.

I closed my eyes and it was there, the morning star!

I bathed in its tender light and my soul brightened.

Though, it is still the darkest night,

And I stand at the edge of the world,

But I have him to hold my hand

And walk with me; together we carve a path on the Milkyway

We walk towards the light.

There is a new world and a new beginning, budding open,

Standing there, on the other side of the end.

The Scent of Rain

He waits for the wounds to get infectious, rotten and festering before he offers you dressing, sits with you and sheds tears. 

He watches, as you starve. He is never in hurry. He waits and waits patiently until all you can think of is a drop of water and a morsel of food. And then he walks in, in all his glory, with an apple from the forbidden tree and a glass of wine, with a drop of blood in it. 

He flatters, he lures, he threats, he empties and discards but with the chosen ones, he sometimes gets generous. He employs them, a collar around their necks and a leash, in his hand. I hear them howling in the early morning hours. It late, too late.

I went to my Island and built walls where there were windows. I locked the doors and got rid of the keys. I was contented with my self-imposed isolation. The next thing I know, Harry is standing right behind me, keenly browsing through the books I stacked on my shelf.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath.  “You never care for an invitation do you?”

He turned, said “Why should I?... I never leave”. 

I made my way to the chair and dropped on it. “Let’s face it. Only one of us is going to make it to the end and I will make sure it’s not you”. 

Harry laughed “You are threatening me? I mean … Seriously? That’s hilarious”. 

I shook my head “Well. Honestly speaking, if I kill myself right now that will be an act of kindness but with you still alive, I will prefer to be unkind”. 

Harry took the other chair; it’s just two of those at my place. He said “Try it…. may be you get lucky. But the real problem here is” He paused, “that you, and me… we are the same. You are Harry and I am you”. He leaned back in the chair “First, you got to find a way to separate the two”. 

I smirked “This is where you get wrong. We are not the same, you are not me and you can never be. However…. what you are trying VERY hard to do is to make me believe that I am you”. I smiled “Dude, you need to see a shrink, though I kind of feel sorry for that guy already”.

His eyes sparkled, “You know why you hate me? I am not any different than your annual exams, you see, I am a TEST. Who likes it haanh? No one, you can never like me. But you know what, that is not fair. It’s not. When you pass, you are the hero but when you fail, you blame the Test...you blame Harry! I don’t like that. I am, I am just a Test and you all, all of you, you think that I will go to Hell for testing you….pufffhhhh … cracks me up. I am doing you a favor; actually I am doing God a favor. How else would he know what your filthy little souls are capable of?”

So we were back to square one. I told him “Harry, you like playing God don’t you? This testing people stuff. It’s not your job, it never was. And you know why you are what you are cause YOU my friend screwed up your test. What did you do Harry, though yours was the simplest of all tests but no, you blew it up. Big guy with a big ego. You are a Failure Harry, a sadist. You like bringing people down so they can join you at your level, sure as hell makes you feel less screwed up doesn't it”. 

His eye burrows stiffened, he leaned closer to me and inhaled, uttered a moan, a sigh “You still smell of me”.

He smiled cunningly. “Do you think I don’t know? I can see it” He pointed his finger towards my left chest. “Deep in there, you liked my place better, this “level” you call it. You liked it, you know you did. The swamp, the filth, it is where you felt you belonged. It welcomed you… it….it owned you….and these angels of yours, what did they do when you needed them? You kept knocking and knocking and knocking…… No” He placed his finger on his lips “silence, nothing. You didn’t hear from them because they … DON’T CARE… give a damn” his hands went up in the air, his voice louder. 

He looked at me with pity, “I will give you what he didn’t. You, you are special to me. You are…”. He hesitated, his voice dampened “You remind me of love. I loved him as one should be loved, just like you did. I touched the heights that no one dared to; all I did, all I did was love. Nothing for myself. I was … what do you call it … ‘star struck’.” He paused. His tongue flicked out and wiped his lips in a quick snake like move.

“When I look at you I see myself. This pain, this anger, these…these bloody haunting question Why? Why? Why?” His voice louder, angrier “What did I lack? What was it that I didn’t do for him? I would have done anything for him, anything. If he asked me to, I would jump off the edge of sky for him and wouldn’t even ask why.  I gave him the best of me; I laid my emotions bare in his feet, I bowed to him and never raised my head. But what did he do?  Why … What was it that I didn’t have?”  Drops of water lingered at the corner of his eyes. 

I said to him, “Hey, Harry. Come on man. I never got my answers either. Let’s just say Shit happens”.

He quickly wiped his eyes with his hand “no, no its doesn’t. This love and hate. These are the sides of the same coin. It’s time to flip it, show the world that they can’t step on us…no not anymore.” He slowed down, stared at me “Your eyes … this … this darkness, flickering, dancing in your eyes. You are mine. You have always been mine. Don’t hide from it”. His voice grew softer “You… You need it. You need Me and we both know that”.  

I laughed “Stop yanking me. I don’t wear a collar around my neck and you are not holding my leash. I need you, Yes I do. But do I want you? Nops! I don’t.” I leaned back in my chair, carefree.

He looked as relaxed, as certain as I was. He smiled at me and said “But You will….. You will see that and when the time comes, I will not let you down. We will both see that. It’s only, a matter of time". He leaned  forward, closer to me "I mean, look around you. Come on, take a look. I am ALL you are left with". His eyes shined with vanity, his voice thickened with assertion "I am your only choice. There is nothing left…nothing. No doors no windows nothing. No more miracles” 

I got closer to him, staring back in his devil eyes. “Miracles?.... Harry, you know I was what I made myself to be..... Although I lost what I created but what you don’t know is that the Miracle…the Magic, is in these hands. If I can create it once, I will create it again. If I lose it again, I will create it again and again”. I saw his confidence melting, crawling back to where it came from. His face stiffened. I said "I will do what I WILL, but what I am afraid of, is that YOU will always find my will stronger than your ambitions”.

I watched his color change. He was furious. Though there were no windows and the doors were locked, but a fresh breeze blew and brought the scent of rain.

Prisoner of The Night

The night is moonless, not a single star in the sky. I look up at the darkness and think of the constellations. It was months ago when I looked up at the sky, holding a lantern in my hand. The light filled me up that night, the kind moonlight. I think of Moses and how he must have felt walking up the mountain of Sinai. The wholeness, the satiation, the joy of the one who found a secret pathway to heavens. I was dazzled by the light when the night quietly, tenderly crawled in my veins and began to flow, the night of the 25^th.

I walk under the moonless sky and think of that night, its very thought strums my heart and all I hear is shrieks, no words, no thoughts, no visions just waves of pains pushing the tears to shore. 

It grew in me like a vine, spreading everywhere. It covered my thinking like a cloud. The days began to revolve around it, my existence was fading and the night was taking over, unaware I laid under the sky marveling the constellation, Orion.  

The night secretly continued stealing the stars. The sky was turning dark while unaware, besotted I danced the dance of joy.

“The dancers dance,

Tapping their toes,

tip tap tip, tip tap tip

The singers sing,

the melody echoes,

The orchestra plays,

The notes go high,

and low and high

till the dancers are the song,

the singers are the music,

merging into one

another

and all !

the cries, the claps,

the cheers, the tears,

the pain, the pleasures……..”

I danced and danced and the night kept stealing the stars, robbing the sky off its glittering hopes. That night, I laid under a shady tree, in the kind moonlight; I fell asleep like a child in her mother’s lap.

When I woke up, the moon had faded into darkness. The storms uprooted the last of the shady trees and the ground under my feet was barren.

Words lost, thoughts blank

I turned to Prayers

And found them mute

I ran to angels

And found them deaf

I searched my heart

Every nook and corner

I looked and looked and looked for him

My God was Gone!

My God was Gone...

The thirst, the unquenchable thirst. 

The night ran through my veins and took over my soul; all I can see is the darkness wrapped around a moonless sky, robbed off the moon and the stars. 

I walk for miles; I fall and walk again searching for the morning star in the stretch of night but everything I touch turns into darkness, merging into the night. I walk miles and miles, my feet blistered and my lips parched but the night has no end and no beginning to return to.
The Sinai of Moses is burned.  

The Forgotten

The loud silence of a broken heart

A thousand wordless thoughts …

Dreams, frozen in time

Sunken deep in the ocean’s bottom

A treasure meant to be lost.
 

The Giver

The sacred heart knows no trade, no boundaries, no conditions

Don’t question the one who loves for love, not needs, wants or reasons.  

What treasure’s worth? To the greed-less one

What wealth would mean to him who takes none?

How full hands can match the power, the strength of empty hands?

What slavery of golden shackles to the freedom, the freedom in having nothing?

What is ‘desire’ to the sated soul? What reality to the one asleep?

What cure for the ill, who wants no cure? What remedy to the sick, who wants no health?

What separation to those whose soul is one? What distance to the traveler of time?

What present to the dweller of memories means? What absence to the ones never gone?

What more will he seek? who found his peace. What he will take who is the giver?

For Love, if true is sated and full, Selfless yet sovereign.

To Love

Condemn the heart for it is guilty and chain the words inside

Fight with love, a battle fierce. Show the beast no mercy

Fight a war meant to be lost, but don’t hand your foe a win

For in this war no side wins, there is but loss, no victory

Breed a pain, nurture it well, too dear to lose to joys

See the world with eyes closed, to seek the vanished peace

Grow a vine strange, which bears the fruits to else

Feed it on your hunger to grow, and your thirst to spread.

Sins of the Father (I)

"No temptation has overtaken you except which is common to mankind. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted he will also provide a way out so you can endure it." (1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV)

There was still roof above my head, so I laid on the floor and kept staring at it. I thought of food and its cost, and what it takes to pay it. I thought of dignity and valor, and of honest living and how far from reality they are. I thought of love, trust, friends and all other wrong investments of emotions. I tried to sell a clean soul to the dirty hands and now I lay on the floor, staring at the roof surrounded by the stink of liquor and vomit. 

I heard his footsteps coming upstairs, the hammering sound of his boots. The lighting stroked and the dark room trembled. I kept lying on the floor bare, paralyzed, and wounded. His footsteps were getting closer and closer. He banged the door open and walked in the dark room, his black rob flying behind him like a thick dark rain cloud chasing a storm. He walked straight up to me and sat on the floor. He said nothing. He looked around the dark room, sniffed the ugly stink, I watched his expressions of disgust and it made me laugh, a venomous laughter.

Harry smiled and his pointed teeth sparkled in the darkness. He stared at me for a while and said: “so, here we are again”.

I turned my head to look at him and the slight movement caused my blood to rush faster to the wounds, to freedom. 

I said: “What do we do now Harry. What do we do?”

He leaned over me, staring me in the eyes, bringing his face closer to mine breathing in my breath. His clever eyes shined the shine of victory, the sparkle of triumph and cleverness. 

  

He said: “Look at you, you delicate little human”. His calloused hands caressed my bare arm. “Look, what they have done to you, those you … trusted and loved and blah blah blah” He paused to take a breath, more like a sigh. “Where all your stinky little values and principles have brought you ... haaanh… in this pool of your own blood and puke?”.  His words full of hate and mockery. 

I tried to lift my head to answer him but it made the breathing more difficult, I coughed, struggled to breathe.

He said ”Hey, easy easy easy. You are going to kill yourself. Take it easy. I am here, I am right here with you”

Lying close to death I laughed. “Yes… You are here, yes you are. So” … I coughed fought to breathe “So what do we do now Harry. What is it that brings you to me out of all the billion others”.

He smiled “You know baby girl, you have always had my attention. I see in you what they don’t” He stopped and pointed at the sky. “And He doesn’t”.  He stopped to wet his lips with his tongue. “You, my little child, you are capable of wonders. I have seen you grow up, I have been with you throughout the time since the moment you opened your eyes, I have never …. Never left you alone. No, not even for a minute. And did I ever ask you for anything in return? Did I ask you to come bow to me, do the halleluiah, sing me a hymn or kneel before me? Did I? Never….”

I pulled all my strength and said “So, this charity of yours. Is it like…like an NGO or something for abandoned dogs, my kind?”

He laughed hysterically. “See, this is why I adore you. You are the best of the lot. So strong, so brave, so….so.. free. No strings, nothing holding you back but yourself. Let me tell you this” He wiped his lips with his tongue again and came closer, looking me in the eyes “If only, you could let yourself go, set it free You will reach the heights that no one , no soul has ever reached before. You have all that it takes; you have everything and no limits, no chains. Give yourself to me. Yes, it’s just a little I ask of you, and I will give you the entire world under your feet. You will Rule. Trust me; I am as good as my words”.

I smirked “Trust you? Really? Look at me Harry, look at me, didn’t it occur to you I am done trusting. Why don’t you cut the crap and tell me what you want?”

He lowered his voice “What I want? ... I want to save you” running his fingers in my hair. “I want you to be stronger, I want to heal you. Why is it that you are always giving, giving and giving and when you need there is no one to give you as much as a word of kindness? Why does it has to be you who is always the victim?  Your choices are clear honey, choose… be the slave or the master. There is nothing between that, nothing.”

I took a deep breath and looked at the roof again; it was still there where it was. I said calmly “Harry, you know all I wanted; all I ever wanted was to be a shepherd. No big dreams just few sheep grazing in the vast green pastures while I sit under a tree and read a book” 

Harry jumped “Shepherd? You got to be kidding me. You know what you are, you know who you are. Do you think that you can walk out of all this like a hobo? “Sheep” for hell’s sake.” He leered and said cunningly “you know there is this tale about the sins of the father”

I cut him “don’t talk to me about the father shit Harry.”

He went quite for a while. He looked away, staring at some far distant invisible horizon. “Hurts, I know it hurts. I shouldn’t have brought up the father stuff. But it hurts me too. I was abandoned, just like you and my father never took me back home. He left me alone, just like you in the middle of the jungle to fight with the hyenas, fox and vultures on my own. I had no one and I went through this” he pointed his hand at me, my bruised and bleeding body. “I know you don’t like me much, but trust me, I am the only one who can feel your pain”.

I closed my eyes “I am tired Harry. I am tired. Why don’t you take your pity ass somewhere else?”

Harry whispered “I can’t leave you. How can I? You…You are the purpose of my existence. You, make me who I am. You make me “Harry”. Tell me; what will I do without you or … or… what will your so called ‘God’ do without you? Nothing… Nothing else to do. I will wait. I will wait”.

The Author

I crossed the hallway, though I was walking but I felt I was the only static object in the scene. The windows and doors went passing by, I was static but I found myself there, standing at the door of the dark room.

The cloud in my head kept breathing in the corner for days and days, feeble breathing that I heard but ignored, a tiny growth.  But then, the vapors multiplied before I could do anything they were far too many, crawling out of my brain, filling up my ears, spreading over my eyes. I feared, when it gets all foggy I won’t be able to see a thing but to my surprise, the fog opened enigmatic visions that I knew existed somewhere in the dimensions my eyes were too unequipped to explore, things that once belonged to me but laid beyond the grasp of my fleeting memory, odors so familiar, so known but unregistered in the log of my senses, a life that I lived unaware of its existence, déjà vu. 

I reached for the door knob, my heart beating in my throat. I twisted the knob and felt my tendons pulling on my stretched muscles forcing them to obey the orders of my brain; my heart rebelled, feared and trembled. I thought of the times I reached this point and retreated many, many times. Sheer darkness, the air grew heavier with weight of whirling thoughts, whispers, memories and time. Time the solitary resident of the dark room. I didn’t know where to start unfolding it. The tangled knotted past, a present that has no name or the future with all its intriguing mysticism. I stood baffled, witness to the existence of a world that only saints and Sufi spoke about, too naïve to understand I struggled. I failed, I failed, I failed. I struggled. Its taste still tingling at the corner of my mouth; the taste of old wine. I took a drop and soared, touched the clouds and flipped my wings, in broad day light I flew above the eagles with my feet on ground. I traveled miles and crossed the oceans, I went there where I wanted to be and saw the one I wanted to see and spent ages there yet all the time it took was mere minutes, mere few. I want more; I want more from the fountain. Though I know it is washing away my desires, slowly secretly taking me somewhere above all that I wanted and want. A part of me is longing to take a draught but something whispers in me to be afraid. The whispers crowd me, “the dark room will swallow you, you will not be able to see beyond the fog, you will lose everything and everyone, who will accept what you will become, no one with their right state of mind will understand where you are, no hand will pull you out, you will be gone, you will never be able to put the soul back in its body, can you take and digest it you can’t, no one can, it is kept hidden not to be found, don’t cross the boundaries, there is no going back….don’t don’t”. But I find myself already standing there at the edge. I have the soul of God and the body of Devil. The soul paid the price, long enough for the sins of the body and all I am doing is letting it go, free. 

"Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body."  1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Love or Truth, they are in constant state of evolution. Love can only be as static as life itself. Truth, can only be as truthful as reality and reality, like life, is in constant state of motion too.

Evolution, it is this varying state that enjoys the rain but has to bear the harshness of sun for it to grow and keep growing. The seed has to burst,the pain is excruciating, at a point it seems like the end but the shoot is to be let out and the root, too. Every end is milestone to set a new beginning in motion. The erosion, the decay, the adversity and the pain are all there to carve a pathway leading to a higher state of existence. The cocoon has to remain enclosed, congested and captive in its own being. The price has to be paid.