"أديـنُ بدينِ الحــــبِ أنّى توجّـهـتْ .. ركـائـبهُ ، فالحبُّ ديـني وإيـمَاني" // HAYAT

Thoughts on my religion being a person,
I go to sleep with an aching heart and drained limbs, happy, licking honey off the ceiling after a phone call that raised the prayers, laughter, and tears there. Don’t tell me this isn’t the reason Moses talked to God.

At my highest, I clench my hand pretending its theirs, they rarely exist by my side, yet they are there at every breath, every moan, every “Me” I speak and every “Us” I dare to also speak and all the steps I drench my feet with to get where I want.

I wonder if there is a God up there, one who actually made me whirl in my skin without actual music in the name of love, and I end up doing nothing but thank him in case he actually created all of this and tell him about how beautiful my God is, if you want to tell me there has to be only one God, I’ll swallow a flower and some poems and lick my lover’s fingertips and show you how I, too, can glow and breathe more softly than a mountain, how I too, can be a goddess. 

The superiority of the believed to be the only God is in the huge doubt that he might not even exist, yet all of this does. I read one day “I don’t know if you or I exist, but somewhere there are poems about us.”.

The chances of us human beings being Gods are the same chances of the most called God being a god. It baffles me too, but I stop doubting it once I am kissed by my lover.

One might argue that a human is a horrifyingly mortal creature, that one moment can make us not be anymore which makes the Gods mentioned in books more powerful than we could ever be, I say, the power we put into being constantly kind, is mightier than anything, that in itself equals us to any potent higher being. 

When your religion is a person, when your God is a person and all the magic they create to whatever you were before them makes you walk in days feeling every bit of your surroundings, being humbled by how alive everything is, at your highest and lowest, you fall on your knees in awe towards the majesty of all that exists, and all of what doesn’t, and you love all of that and what is in between as well with everything you are. Everything around me is a part of me, my lover’s body can compel me to give so much to whatever I breathe around, their lips can shatter me and have me praying loudly. Their mere being, leaves my shoulders more persistent to lift themselves up rather than be lifted.

Don’t tell me this is not why Majnun found no shame in leaving his kingdom, found no shame in being the weakest beneath all of those layers of skies praying in howls, tolerance and confidence of his religion even when Layla spoke nothing to him. 

Yesterday I read somewhere, "الصلاة خير من الحب." "Prayer is better than love." What is a prayer without love? What, if not sincere, selfless love can make you stand in reverence and repeat to yourself that you are weak against all of what comes before and after you and repeat the name of the one that has all of that higher power on you?

And just like a whirling dervish spinning in ecstasy, even though a hundred religious scholar can argue that what he is doing is complete blasphemy, I, just like a dervish, arch my back, quiver and exhale nothing but their name. And with each repetition, with each veneration comes a trance into every bit of both me and the whirling one leaving us bigger, smaller, more evanescent, more helpless, more holy than anything we pray to in the first place, anything that exists, and all of what doesn’t, and anything that is in between. 

A DEATHLESS QUANDARY // HUSSAIN

The day was ready
To be seized at 9:30 AM.
I always wake up
With the sun already hoisted. Sometimes it pains me
To wake up after the sun shines.
The sun’s streaks escalate
Over the desolate cage
Of my cat, that knew nothing
Of being carnally surreptitious.

I write everywhere.
Upon the tapestries,
In a mall,
At school,
Wherever the urge,
The trance
Enmeshes me like wild ivies.

One time, I wrote
Something about
How wretched we are,
And one told me,
“Sir, congratulations on
The writing! Keep it up! ”
And the sorry bastard
Fled without even telling
Me what he made out of it.

And then,
At one sanguine moment
In time, I wrote
About how overwhelmed I was Tethered to another
And I let her read it
And she said,
“Could’ve been simpler.”
The lady killed
Me in a literary fashion.
It was like hearing a world renowned Poet thrash your works.

And at night, I am a hunter that feeds
On the moon’s agony.
I write
And write
And take long pauses
Smoke a cigarette if time
Permits,
Or just sit lifeless
On a persnickety chair
And write again.
Some nights, 15 deaths.
Others, Only 3
Or worse, None.

I write
Until I exhaust myself
And my mom checks on me
Whilst saying,
“Go to sleep,
Or I’ll have to call your father.”
But my father does not
Entertain
Late night duels.
But when he’s
Wide awake,
He’d tell me,
“You get nothing from this.
Focus on other things.
Sports.
Working out.”

Etcetera
Until he vanquished himself
To sleep.

It’s not that I hate them,
Nor all of you.

It’s just that sometimes,
When I write
It’s like talking
To frozen pillars.
To sleeping trains.
To barren terrains.

And I surmise
It would always be
Like that.

THIS IS A THOUGHT // MAJID ALTURKI

Lost in a thought
without any plans on
touching this place again.
I’ve grown tired of
this petty ground,
its decayed stories
and pseudo dreams.
I’ve grown tired of
nothingness;
may I be denuded
physically and mentally,
may I be eternally stripped
from this horrid place
wrought with sorrows and prejudice.
May this thought be endless.
We halt in silence.

ANTIDEPRESSANTS // ARMAN

Realities as decomposed societies set, still lives on.
Society is the crossbred of fables and obsolesce.
Reality for the individual differs, believers in disbelief, disbelievers in disbelief.
Belief is six feet below.
Truth for believers lie in realities. Reality for the disbeliever lies in truths.
Atrocious civilisations nearing transcendental ruin, for the pillars are fractured, the bases decayed and the headstones are unbinding.