Self Determination

In the rays of a burning fight-
Carelessly draped around a light
Deep clouds of painful dignity-
Bestowed with powerful creativity-
Make a seamless life connection.

On the verge of a modest horizon,
Between the shadows of resilience
And explosions of pure brilliance,
The dichotomies of night and day-
Provide vivid palettes of inspiration.

Merging in every other which way,
The surreal places of introspection,
Provide visions and insights so clear;
Awareness for everything far and near


J.Bibi

A Conceit by Maya Angelou

Give me your hand

Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand.

Peace XVIII by Khalil Gibran

The tempest calmed after bending the branches of the trees and leaning heavily upon the grain in the field. The stars appeared as broken remnants of lightning, but now silence prevailed over all, as if Nature's war had never been fought.

At that hour a young woman entered her chamber and knelt by her bed sobbing bitterly. Her heart flamed with agony but she could finally open her lips and say, "Oh Lord, bring him home safely to me. I have exhausted my tears and can offer no more, oh Lord, full of love and mercy. My patience is drained and calamity is seeking possession of my heart. Save him, oh Lord, from the iron paws of War; deliver him from such unmerciful Death, for he is weak, governed by the strong. Oh Lord, save my beloved, who is Thine own son, from the foe, who is Thy foe. Keep him from the forced pathway to Death's door; let him see me, or come and take me to him."

Quietly a young man entered. His head was wrapped in bandage soaked with escaping life.

He approached he with a greeting of tears and laughter, then took her hand and placed against it his flaming lips. And with a voice with bespoke past sorrow, and joy of union, and uncertainty of her reaction, he said, "Fear me not, for I am the object of your plea. Be glad, for Peace has carried me back safely to you, and humanity has restored what greed essayed to take from us. Be not sad, but smile, my beloved. Do not express bewilderment, for Love has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy. I am your one. Think me not a specter emerging from the House of Death to visit your Home of Beauty. 

"Do not be frightened, for I am now Truth, spared from swords and fire to reveal to the people the triumph of Love over War. I am Word uttering introduction to the play of happiness and peace."

Then the young man became speechless and his tears spoke the language of the heart; and the angels of Joy hovered about that dwelling, and the two hearts restored the singleness which had been taken from them.

At dawn the two stood in the middle of the field contemplating the beauty of Nature injured by the tempest. After a deep and comforting silence, the soldier said to his sweetheart, "Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun."

Entrenched

For every trench dug,
Flowers of freedom die.
In every fortified ditch,
the dark obscures light.
Let seeds embed truly,
Cradled by strong earth-
Inside of any kind of dirt-
But not cement or plastic,
For the blooms of beauty
Grow from roots authentic
And not from any forgery.

J.Bibi

Politics

In Rome, Athens, Moscow and the Middle East; foundations laid,
The messiness of people power and the new way it should be done-
From the capitalist democracies and to the communist structures-

A way gleaned then forged- and denied but on parallel, the spiritual
Warriors and sages of theist and deist, soothsayers and instigators,
From the philosophy of starry heavens, to the dirt of Earthly fertility-

The games of leaders and followers, constantly dying and re-birthing;
In whose hands the soul is held, to the power that will truly become
And one step ahead of the last, let the labour of time be passed on.


J.Bibi

Do not abandon the faith in me

A scowl of sun struck down my mother, tolling her grave with golden gongs ~ 'Lament' Sylvia Plath


Do not abandon the faith in me-
The wailing grows louder and louder,
And the tears fall as shooting guns-
In time, the echos will cause landslides,

Do not abandon the faith in me,
Set adrift spinning, lost in alien galaxies-
Wave after wave of painful shame;
Moments relayed into a future- 
Weaving a legacy to become undone.

Do not abandon the faith in me,
In vision obscured by lies-
The pain that is slapped away;
As a mountain precipice hides the sun.

Do not abandon the faith in me-
Though steel be born out of fire,
And madness covers gaping wounds-
The dizzy lacerations must stop;
From faith is born vision and strength.

J.Bibi

'Imagination, is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last, you create what you will'.  George Bernard Shaw

'Every child is an artist, the problem is staying at artist when you grow up'.  Pablo Picasso

'Think left and think right, oh the thinks you can think up if you only try!'  Dr Seuss

You see things and you think but I dream things that never were; and I say, 'why not?  George Bernard Shaw

Promised

The road towards relief,
Stretches into the distance
Debris scattered everywhere,
Conceals the lost path,
Light spread far over the land
Beckons so much closer,
What is there to be seen, 
The many similarities, 
Despite the crazy differences,
Weird shaped obstacles 
And straight lines that lead
To a future barely visible,
Bring forth an ethereal promise.
A daily walk into surrealism.

J.Bibi

Life Promise

The day opens as the sun soars-
In crystallised rays the newness
Begins, once again.

The passive fire,
Fights the coldness of the fog

And the drops of diamonds,
Cling, as the displayed promises
Of a renewed night:

Emerging from the fading
Darkness, the refreshed earth

Is adorned by the necklace of time-
As a living body of the Universe.

J.Bibi

GOOD DAY GOOD EVENING

It's night be the flame
And the red that colors the clouds
Good day sir Good evening madam
You don't look your age

What does it matter if your embraces
Make the twin stars bleed
What does it matter if your face is painted
if hoarfrost glitters on the branches

Of granite or marble
Your age will show
And the shade of the great trees
will walk on your graves.

Robert Desnos, translated by Amy Levin

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

'Shame, the swampland of the soul... secrecy, silence and judgement...empathy is the antidote to shame...'

'You cannot talk about race, without talking about privilege and when people talk about privilege, they get paralysed by shame..'

I like this woman's words a lot, extremely interesting...because I'm a weak person and I don't know how to hide.
A long time ago, I decided that life was too short to be paralysed by shame.  There is so much in the world, in our lives which causes shame and everytime I encounter it, I hear a child's voice scream, no!  Shame is the symptom, not the cause and symptoms, can be overcome.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie

Dismemberment Opposed

Pulled and dragged, 
Tethered by the ropes of the four winds,
Peeling skin and bloodied bones-
And an innocence lost
There is only so much tolerable-
Enough, really is enough!
 Dig in to stand strong
And though the currents whip,
Hold firm the ropes-
Though they dig and burn the hands;

As the momentum rips the soles of the feet,
The sheer ferocity of power-
Pulls harder still as the resistance cuts

And the friction on the hands and feet-
Leaves a trail of fire.

Be still, be calmed,
The onslaught is not strong;
Burning judgements based on blind ignorance-
Make for nasty surprises of forced confrontation;
The survivor may become the only valid contender-
Taking on cruel and arrogant would be aggressors,
To stop the steeds of torment and to slow down,
The horsepower pressures of virtual dismemberment.

J.Bibi

Kismet

They all turn away.
They turn away their heads,
Their eyes and their ears-
As they try desperately
To hide their hearts.
Such a familiar place to be,
But sooner or later-
They do turn back
Everything changes.
Standing on a cliff edge,
There is nowhere to go-
Except up or down.
Alive all these years,
The wings are strong-
The only way really is,
To dare to jump.
Running towards the edge
The air screams past,
'Don't you dare!' Is the cry-
'Don't you dare even try!'
Everything is already written,
Your kismet is set in stone.
Except it can change,
If you try, from deeper
Within, than even your bones.

J.Bibi

Overpowering


The light it shines so bright, it blocks out the shadows of dark
In the community-minded everglades of green paradise lost, the long rays of the sun-
Forgive everyone, except those who cannot see and are blinded by all that made them come undone.
When you can see it all fade away and the silence overpowers everything,
Then to survive, without props, without delusions, means facing harrowing truths-
The kind that are so big, that it is easy to ignore them, by looking at the distracting news.

J.Bibi

No Man's Land

The tears fall free, some more dear than others
Caused by fears, some more valid than others,
Within real time the windmills of change do rot-
Focusing the glaring stares on big singular spots,
Cruel and manipulative are the herders of fate-
All vulnerable and power hungry leaders of hate,
Small voices amongst the crescendos screeching,
For Utopian ideals to be upheld, left beseeching,
The fury of wronged herds should be left alone-
Ideals of humanity, should never be left at home.
So say quietly the wisest sages of no man's land;
Ones' who don't belong but dare to make a stand,
Amongst furores of rage and avenged tenfold pain-
Grounded spirits are those who keep the others sane.

J.Bibi

Children don't belong

Children, don't belong in the barbaric world of adults
Not in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, or France.
The cool minds behind lethal actions, stupefy
All reason and rational thought, 
Voiceless people speak not with words but with-
Violent and uncontrolled actions and the victims,
fight back with ever more thoughtless, angrier actions.

As the madmen of money, recline in united idylls
Of cohesion and laissez faire deceptions;  
The indifference to the children who live in adult worlds, 
Who have their humanity assaulted and grow ever more desensitised,
 Is ever more clearer as the patterns grow,
In cyclical escalations, moving further from the previous generations.
Real resistance is hard, knowing when not to abandon the principles of life,
To withstand insult and injury, for the greater good.
These are the visible and undesirable possibilities triggered
And sanctioned, by the arguably suspect reasoning,
Of the children who didn't belong, in those adult worlds.

From the midst of chaos and terror,
Is born mercy and greatness,
The most hungered know too well the taste of sustenance;
From out of fires of turmoil are born people,
Who know the difference between hot and cold
And choose their own paths between destruction and resurrection,
Such are some of the children, who don't belong in crazy adult worlds.

J.Bibi

The Fluid World

 Some scholarly thinker* said:
'Communism is the enemy of faith,
while Capitalism is the enemy of Humanity.
Materialism is the belief of both of them.'
And, 'Life in Communism is production
and that of Capitalism is Taxation.'
*Muhammad Iqbal


Swimming through the whirlpools of humanity
And through the tides of faith 
And surfing on the waves of materialistic beliefs, 
One wonders, about the solidness of jetsam and flotsam-
On the shores of necessity, what of the production and taxation?
Are they the inevitable currents of labour, 
That etch the human spirit with soothing manifestations?
Or unnecessary cesspit's of profit-only productions,
Which create tsunami losses in terms of social investments?

J.Bibi

Attitude

Change,
Starts as the
The tornado begins, 
With a single raindrop.

Against colossal mountains,
The singular falling
Pebble
Creates a landslide-

That devastates
All in it's path-
That nature,
Cannot be altered,

So it is known.
But in reality, 
The minute differences,
Create tidal waves of change.



J.Bibi

To Diffuse Non-Conformity

This world a rock-hard jungle of insinuations,
That leaves nothing to the tender imagination,
Of humankind and the realities of tough living-
A trance state of paranoia and non-forgiving-
Airing visions of hell and shock in far places
Creating blind indifference with silent-stone faces, 
With no luck for the ordinary and the irrelevant, 
Sky spaces for those for whom status is prevalent-
Games rigged to persist with the era of non-entity,
Systems built and maintained to diffuse non-conformity.


J.Bibi

Change

Sometimes, 
There are words, 
Which just cannot be said,
Not stand alone words,
No- but words that make patterns,
That reflect emotions, 
That clarify, 
that accuse,
That betray-
True, 
Tones matter, 
Times matter 
But most of all, 
Understanding matters-
from here to there, 
Before actions change-
The fabric of time and existence,
It is words,
That destroy and create, 
Life lines.

J.Bibi

The Way of Heaven is to benefit others and not to injure.The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete. ~Lao-Tzu

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia." Anonymous  

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent. - Plato

 The rich reap the profits of war as we are led by their media to fear terrorists barging through our front doors.

 Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, go out and get busy.- Dale Carnegie

Spinning through life

The roundabout of life, spins sometimes slow, sometimes fast-
Yet the patterns remain the same and keep on track,
The insignificance of the players known, by screams amid
The spinning heads and involuntary upchucks of fluid,
Blurred streaks of flashing colours and light;
The eternal forces that push and pull, 
Controlling decreased and increased plight,
Momentum causes the eyes to close and vision to dull
Which then helps ward off the dizziness-
But also renders even more helpless 
And submissive- the occupants of the ride
The force of gravity leaves no place to hide,
Hold on to the sanity of empowered resilience
Or let go the truths of lived brilliance.
 

J.Bibi

Vision


The lies,
They bandage and contain the quivering hearts;
Those quivering hearts fear destruction,
For it is,
What is promised. 

Everywhere it is,
In all corners,
The grandiosity
Covers, 
The insecurity;

Disbelief and weakness-
Universal.

Blink, open, then blink again-
Breathe-
This intense vision,
Requires total patience,
Belief and psychological precision.


J.Bibi

I know nothing, 

except the fact of my ignorance. 

~ Socrates

Don't let your ears hear,
What your eyes didn't see, 
And don't let your mouth say 
What your heart doesn't feel.

Lost and Found

The maze; it confounds, paralyses and blinds
All the different ways there are lead to loss,
The melting pot resembling the kaleidoscope-
Always is contaminated by the fear and pain.
Belief, in God, in people, in love and in healing.
Words of wisdom to a child, in total love-belief.
See, with what you know, as well as with what you feel.
Look through unblinkered eyes, past the debris and lies.

J.Bibi

The Fool

The fool is the one who shows, knowing
And hiding, sometimes, always, maybe.

In all words and with wondering ways,
The signs flash and the stars do foretell;
The inner rhythms warn as the disquiet,
Of the animals before a storm to look,
Listen and think and know to represent,
The sealing of fate and then by revelations;
Showing it becomes that of a time too late.

The fool is the one who knows, showing 
And telling, sometimes, always, maybe.

In future, the past is that is which sways,
The many monsters who always foretell,
All the many ways of a destructive quiet,
Through signs and warnings to look, know
Reckonings within threads of the present,
Hinting and suggesting at these revelations
Which will come to be in a mapping out of fate.

J.Bibi

Imagination is everything. 

It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

Favourites; Khalil Gibran, Hafiz, Rumi

Do not run away. 

Run inward, 

As unripe grapes hurry

Towards their own sweetness.

~Rumi

The most important places on earth

 Are the heart of the believer,

 The stomachs of the poor

 And the mind of a child.

~Lupe Fiasco

Settings

Calamities of the mind,
Do not compare,
To the
Calamities of the heart;

Those in shimmering mirrors,
Playing, dignified remnants;
Those preening,
Deadpan-
Openings and arrivals-
Of new colourful beats,

Concurring with the heart and
Delegations-
The fiery gift, 
Of Independence 

And happiness files,
That bulge
The saturation of all
Sad times, those uncorrected
Individuals,
With those
Limitless boundaries,

Awake,
Amidst heavenly
Settings,
With lawns of expression,
Creating inspiring fountains.

J.Bibi

A Prison Evening

Each star a rung,
night comes down the spiral
staircase of the evening.
The breeze passes by so very close
as if someone just happened to speak of love.
In the courtyard,
the trees are absorbed refugees
embroidering maps of return on the sky.
On the roof,
the moon - lovingly, generously -
is turning the stars
into a dust of sheen.
From every corner, dark-green shadows,
in ripples, come towards me.
At any moment they may break over me,
like the waves of pain each time I remember
this separation from my lover.

This thought keeps consoling me:
though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed
in rooms where lovers are destined to meet,
they cannot snuff out the moon, so today,
nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed,
no poison of torture make me bitter,
if just one evening in prison
can be so strangely sweet, 

 if just one moment anywhere on this earth. 

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

A MIRROR FOR THE CLOUDS 

Wings;
but they are made of wax .
And the rain cascading
is no rain,
but ships for tears.

A MIRROR FOR THE 20th CENTURY

child's face.
A book
inscribed on the entrails of a crow.
A monster drawing close,
holding a flower.
A rock
breathing in the lungs of a madman.
This is,
this is the twentieth century.

A MIRROR FOR THE ADORING BODY

Every day
the adoring body melts in the air,
becomes a fragrance;
it revolves, summoning every fragrance
to come to its bed,
enshroud its dreams,
dissolve as incense
and as incense return.

Its first verses are a child's torment
lost in the whirlpool of bridges,
knowing neither how to stay
in the water, nor how to cross.

A MIRROR FOR THE WITNESS

When the spears came to rest in the dying gasp of Husain,
and adorned themselves with the body of Husain,
and the horses trampled every pore in the body of Husain,
and plundered and despoiled
were the garments of Husain,

I saw every stone leaning tenderly over Husain,
I saw every flower sleeping on the shoulder of Husain,
I saw every river
walking in the funeral of Husain.

The Black Panther ~John Hall Wheelock

There is a panther caged within my breast,
But what his name, there is no breast shall know
Save mine, nor what it is that drives him so,
Backward and forward, in relentless quest—
That silent rage, baffled but unsuppressed,
The soft pad of the stealthy feet that go
Over my body's prison to and fro,
Trying the walls forever without rest.

All day I feed him with my living heart,
But when the night puts forth her dreams and stars,
The inexorable frenzy re-awakes:
His wrath is hurled upon the trembling bars,
The eternal passion stretches me apart,
And I lie silent— but my body shakes.

Bargaining

The nit-picking,
The haggling and wrangling,
All in a days work,
The arguments often
Repeated and the
Gestures mimicked
These prices,
These words of subtlety,
That create differences
Of give and take
In the market places
Of common folk
And the stately seats
Of political power.

J.Bibi

HERE IS THE NEWS AT MIDNIGHT

bong

President George Bush has attacked five Iraqi tourists
with a knife. A spokesman for the White House said
"Better that, than
World War Three".

bong

A motorist has set fire to himself in protest
at rising petrol prices. The leader of the Opposition has
hailed him as a martyr and called on the Government
to cause more oil to be created in the bowels
of the earth.

bong

After a decade of study, a respected think tank
has published a twenty volume report showing that
the arms industry does more harm than good.
A banker has condemned the report as factually correct
but naïve.

bong

Scientists at Porton Down have discovered that
the Foot and Mouth Disease virus can be modified
to attack humans. A top scientific expert said
"We are looking for ways to cure the
common crowd."

bong

~Richard Lawson

They say that nobody's badr

Than Moqtada al Sadr

But when shove comes to push

He's no worse than Bush

~Richard Lawson

A FAIRGROUND RIDE

two kids inside a car
fight
for the right
to spin a useless steering wheel

politics

~Richard Lawson

Tears

Those acid tears that fell,
They were a drop too many-
And the lies that they tell,
To keep themselves happy-
In every corner of hell,
There are victims unknown,
In every walk of life,
Those who have been pushed down
And rise despite the strife-
Fighting every frown,
Singing and dancing to stay alive.
Squeezed out despite the resolve
Soaking away good intentions
Letting the demons absolve;
Clearing vision for new directions.

J.Bibi

Veils and Masks of History

The walls built in haste by the hands of insignificance, 
Are the signposts of the strong.

The sun burnt skins and blistered limbs-
Are the cost of the aged faces of innocence.

Inconvenient facts are always veiled by lies
And mask the hopelessness and fears of the lost.

The lacerated souls and anguished cries-
Are drowned by exotic suns and the shelter of promised lands.

With sunny smiles and survivalist wiles,
The broken hearted testimonies are always overshadowed.

The hidden wounded of dehumanised depravity,
Know that every brave smile has a past not shown-

Every righteous force has a relevant story
And truths left strategically left unknown for a clean history.

J.Bibi 

Incognito

Though the sun warms navy to sapphire,

The mahogany core bleeds frozen fire-

In drips and in spurts-

The memory still hurts

But in time it dulls to numb-
Incognito do the colours become

And give to the lie of harmony;

Drowning every day,

Fighting in every way-

The life path of some is lacerated-

Leading to steps always exacerbated,
When the invisible walls of pain close in-
The prisms of light continue for the living.

J.Bibi

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play. - Immanuel Kant

 Like other revolutionaries I can thank God for the reactionaries. They clarify the issue. ~Robin G. Collingwood 

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit. - Baltasar Gracian

Religion Quotes

Our enemies are not those of different religions or beliefs, our enemy is our own ignorance. Imam Ali Ibn Abu Talib (as)

 Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution” ~Khalil Gibran

"The man who tries to prove his belief superior to the faith of another, does not know the meaning of religion." ~Inayat Khan

"Know then that the body is merely a Garment. Go seek the wearer, not the cloak" ~Rumi

 Self-pity is the worst poverty; it overwhelms man until he sees nothing but illness, trouble and pain." ~ Inayat Khan

 

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all" ~Aristotle

 The deeper that sorrow carves in to your being, the more joy you can contain." ~Khalil Gibran