The language I learned to love in,

Is no longer uttered on my lips

It has no recipient

It has no end

Sometimes, by mistake when I speak

In your language and sing your songs

I catch my heart skipping beats

And dreaming of love songs

And a life that I once dreamt of

Is faded like words washed away on a piece of

Paper erased in time

Like an insult, if your name is uttered

It exists neither here nor there,

No pride, no love, no gain

Numb to your love and name

A reflex perhaps

The words I learned to love in

Remind me that once upon a time

You were mine

I halt my heart and remember to not love you

In your language or mine

Because those words

That twists the rs and ys

Insisting the I’s

Remind me of every conversation

I had with you when

I joined the r’s, y’s and I’s

As I rested my lips on your lips

The words rolled away from my tongue

To form the words

That I only uttered where I ended and you began

Ever heard the saying the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

How good are one’s intentions if it does not take into account the freewill of the one the intention is being imposed on? The missionaries brought Jesus to Indian savages who worshipped spirits and dressed in loincloths. They intended to help the savages become civilized and attain heaven. So they controlled and assimilated them by taking away their kids, way of life, dignity to ensure entry into heaven, their heaven.

How good is one’s intention is it does not recognize our interconnectedness? We believe that we are providing for our family a healthy, wholesome food, when we are taking away the child of another, slaughtering and serving them on a platter, while disregarding the pain of another because it does not speak the same words that legitimize the mass killings of a species, we deemed ingredient. Once upon a time, the colonialists provided for their families when resources ran scarce on their lands, by robbing the lands of spices and silk and making slaves of us all in the process because we did not speak their language and welcomed them with an open heart. Animals trust us, love us, are kind to us but given the chance we rob them blind of everything even their lives.

How good is one’s intention when the end goad is to appeal and appease the ego? We intend to do charity and give to the poor by flashing a camera in their face, to show to the world how kind we are, disregarding the capacity of true consent of a man who has not eaten in days. How good is our intention if to appease our guilty mind the amount given is a mere fraction of a fraction of our earning, while we live in palaces?

Are good intentions about separating the world, into distinct categories, neatly ordered and kept apart. If there, is we, then there is automatically they, and what we are is always better than they the outsiders? I exclude you, us exclude them, when we create the world, when we put labels that separate, definitions that exclude how good are our intentions for this world. In some indigenous cultures mother is used to define the relationship of a child with every older woman of the tribe so that the pressure of caregiving does not fall merely on one person alone. How beautiful is a world where words bring together all, no labels, no up or down, no one alone? No ego to appeal, only a world to live in. Notice that there is many nouns but not many adjectives to which to admire the world.

In Anthropology the concept of critical cultural relativism asks questions about cultural practices and who is accepting them and why they are doing so and if they are in line with the historical practices and values of their culture. If it is only serving one subgroup of the culture or the whole culture as whole. Like in a family, is the family acting like a family? if there are people acting on their self-motivated interests and not of the family as whole. My family may be different than yours but can yours be deemed a healthy family if they are acting as solo individuals and not thinking of the whole.

Our world is not merely changed by intentions but by actions, actions that are put together in words. Environments, and cultures that shape us, define us.

‘’the road to hell is paved with good intentions’’

By the nuns and fathers

Who saw a dire need to do good

Jesus was brought to the savages

Indians that needed saving

Indians that needed to be civiziled

That’s why they ripped them of their kids

Put them in schools

That tortured them

Killed them

So, they could go to heaven

A civilized heaven full of good intentions and a white Jesus.

We needed to provide protein for our families

That why we killed the kids of others

So that we can feast on their protein

That’s probably why the colonialists

Stole our spices and jewels

Made us slaves

because they needed the spice to

Preserve their meat for long winter months

And feed their families

We give to charity

To do good and feel good

But do we feel good and that’s why we do good

Is that why we flash a camera

In the face of a hungry man

For whom consent is the least of his worries

But a right to his dignity

We strip a man of their respect

By giving a fraction of a fraction

Of a salary

Through which we live like kings

How noble of us

The world is round,

Not a box,

Things flow in this world

We are not bound by walls

We create them

We create communities

By words that separate us to them

I exclude you

Us exclude them

That’s maybe why we pollute the world

It flows as someone else’s problem

How many have lost their lives in the name of nations

Merely a factual concept, peons in the game of hoarding resources

When the world is divided, separated, distinctly named

There is no place for everyone at the table

Our world is not merely changed by intentions but by actions

That are fuelled by the imagination that create the world

Where there are villains and heroes

A stark divide

That paint the world in black and white.

If we want to change the world, ask the world does it need changing

If we want to help, ask those that need, how we can help them

If we want to care for another, ask them how they need to be cared for

If we want to live, ask others if our lifestyle is encroaching upon their right to life.

If we speak, ask other is our words hurt, divide, judge or condemn

Intentions are born of our language, environment, culture, resources, history

Whether they are good or bad is asking whether the world is in black or white

But when the light shines in, everything is made of color with each sunrise

Critical cultural relativism looks at why, who, and to whom does it serve our practices.

Does it serve one or all?

A home is made whole when all its members are united in their differences.

Differences that challenge our egos’ that maybe just maybe we do not know everything

And knowing that might make us a little us sure of ourselves.

But when our ground is shaken, do we not hold the hand of another to find our balance?

And would that be such a bad thing after all to not know everything and learn a little something everyday so that we are together in our uncertainty as we go through life?

Do you not have any shame?

For all your words of wisdom

Do you fall short of words at the sight of men?

How do you sleep at night knowing you made a perversion of the truth?

How do you sleep at night knowing you cut the roots of a blossoming tree and paved it with concrete?

You only seek the status quo, in all your pomp and flair, you are nothing but a slave, a cog in a machine

that goes round and round, making slaves of us all

slave to beauty

slave to money

slave to titles

It is not freedom you seek

it is not rest, nor is it family

your philosophies speak of veiled suns, colorful cages, barbed homes, and flowery prisons

it speaks of beauty without freedom

it speaks of a family without love

it speaks of a heart that stopped beating in passion

it speaks of a heart alive to the beeping of a heart monitor, barely alive, tied to the machine

Do you not have shame when you face another woman?

Do you not have any shame sentencing her to a life of meaningless servitude to a godless system?

Time and time again, you befriend and come laced with poisoned apples

To stab at the first sight of disobedience to a god that has no compassion, no love, no kindness, to a god that is merciless, to a God that demands sacrifice.

It is not god that you serve, it is the devil.

Behind your false smile and your proud heart

Lies a thousand lies that make up the bricks of your prison

Where you will rot and remain

Like pharaohs of the olden times

Buried in monuments, sent off with false promises of gold and goods in the afterlife

Brick by brick, an illusion

For the oxygen that gives life also rots the skin and flesh down to the bone

So whether you are buried under the meadow or deep within the pyramids

You will rot and remain with your lies

You say you are home, but a home is not a home where there is no dignity, equality, integrity

It is a house with a warden and prison inmates

Even a shed becomes a home if there is love

Even a prison becomes a monastery if there is self-reflection

It is not the walls that make us

It is not the doors that trap us

It is writing the wrongs as right.

It is twisting the truth that gives us a life sentence to the lies that make up our prison.

We shop with our eyes wide open and yet we are blind

We touch the soft, the rugged and the velvety and yet we feel nothing

We smell cinnamon, spices filling up the air and yet we are full and unfazed by the aroma

We taste sweet, savory, spicy treats that fill us to the brim and yet we are wanting for more

Are we ever satiated when our desires are endless?

Do we ever feel the full extent of the things we buy.

Is the cost merely in currency or do we leave behind a part of our soul

Isn't the cost too expensive at each sale, bargain deal and liquidation center

The exchange is not merely between the cash register and the currency be it plastic, metallic or paper

The trade is between and in between entire nations, one serving another served round and round.

Isn’t the cost too expensive when we buy into injustice, slavery, exploitation, destruction for a piece of cloth to cover our shame, a trinket to fill our empty homes, shoes that we will never wear because as long as we keep buying, we will never put back together pieces of our soul that slowly keep being tied to things, more and more things until there is nothing left of us to trade.

You were my muse

For all that was beautiful

You were my curse

For all that I believed in

Your love a farce

For all that I trusted

In you my lover, my Judas

In you I found a lesson

A lesson in love and a lifetime in words

My muse, my deceiver

For whom

My life needed art to be saved

And a thousand words to be understood

#judas #love #betrayal #artist #muse #pain

For years our union was despised

You worshipped Ishwar and I, Allah

Creator of the universe

Who has seen, who has heard, who has felt the divine love?

I thought ours was cosmic, spanning thousands of years into the present

A beautiful love born of innocence

When you had not yet learned to hate my god.

Years into the future who knew that cruelty would become its legacy

Hate silenced your heart

You heard none of love

No matter the screams

I became a burden

A lovely crime

That was meant to not only be erased but betrayed

In a way

I could never stand up

and speak of a love that could look beyond rituals

a love that would re-write the pages of history

a history where we pray together to those that remain unseen

felt in love, a love so divine it erases the cruel words meant to taint our union

but your heart had already turned deaf, filled with hate for my kind

reducing me to value, set by your people, who weigh love in gold.

I was never fond of gold so I chose the dirt that made my beating heart

I chose the dirt to which I shall return, to which you shall return.

#god #interfaith #love #hate #discrimination #pain

Sometimes I keep quiet

By fear of remembering the past as the present

And uttering words

That reminds me of you

In a life that has ever since

Changed so much

That sometimes I forget all the pain

And try to be happy in a world

where you are happy without me.

I made a deal with the devil

I made a deal where I exchanged some love, a hug, a spoon of kindness, and a pinch of affection for a boulder of pain, a pain that paints the sky in shades of grey and a trail of muddy tears

when the pain subsided, the boulder crushed it all, all that was left was a mere scar. Merely a dent on the surface, a rolling tear that escapes numb echoes

I made a bad decision the first, the second, the third time, a friend, an acquaintance, a lover

Left me scars, and then some more. Few more boulders rolled out.

I learned of the world as boulders and heavy loads that crushes all in its way

So what if I made a deal with the devil for a moment of rest, he could have my soul

I made a deal with the devil, with his charming smile, his tricks, his illusions to fly me away, far far away. He flew me so far away that one day I flew far away from everything that made me, me.

The boulder rolled and rolled away but it stopped hurting.

The first

The second

The third

I struggled to claim back my soul, floating in an ocean of souls, lost like mine

I got caught in a web of fears, gripping away at my flesh, clawing into my skin

I took each and every thorn and threw them away, far far away into the unknown

But there is always a catch with the devil, he never stops now does he, in his ways,

In his pursuit of chaos?

my soul, my smile, my rest, my very breath

He clings on

I made a deal with the devil but It's over

I made a deal with the devil not knowing, he lives in the shadows, he lives in the scars

Because the devil's sin is vanity and what he cannot live without out is being acknowledged

Even in the scars, he left behind.

I made a deal with the devil for some love and he gave me a lifetime of a muse in each scar, each one, a prose that writes itself, carrying boulders that unload years of rain.

#prose #pain #poetry

I've only really known pain

The language to describe my woes

So many words to say it hurts

So many ways to say I hurt

I've only really known to talk, share and discuss

With my mothers, their mothers, their sisters and brothers

Tales of patriarchy hidden in bruised bodies, in stolen lands, in anxious hearts

Hidden deep within mental illness that bring about hysteria in good women

Promises made, unkept I've only become too familiar to empty words

From a lover, a brother, a friend whose promises bestowed hope but delivered

Nothing more than disappointment once again

Happiness or rather the words to describe joy, true contentment

Only but a foreign territory far too wild to be part of my story

Unfamiliar to the fullest extent in this heart that learned early on

More ways of concealing pain

Than one to describe happiness merely present for a moment

A glimpse, a shadow, far too rare to become a habit

Far to foreign for me to learn to be happy once again

It is a habit, merely a fact that I keep learning within

Over and over again

To talk of pain, and its remains

Because this world no longer knows how to heal or mend

But only to break and wreck over and over again

#pain #habit #poetry