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Joel Hayward's Poetry
"Hayward's eclectic poetry reflects his enigmatic mind. ...
His poems are passionate and full of rich images and exert a strong and dignified intelligence."
― Chaff
Welcome to Joel Hayward's Poetry
I created this page as a place to post selections of the poetry I have been writing over the last few years. Many of these poems are unpublished and will go into my fifth collection. My fourth, Pain and Passing: Islamic Poems of Grief and Healing, about the tragic death of my wife Kathy, appeared in January 2018. Some other poems posted here are included in my recent book, Poems from the Straight Path: A Book of Islamic Verse (White Cloud Press, 2017). Others appeared in Splitting the Moon: A Collection of Islamic Poetry (Kube, 2012) and Lifeblood: A Book of Poems (Totem Press, 2003).
(This is a copyright free image. The author Joel Hayward has placed this image in the public domain for use without licenses or restrictions and has waived all rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.)
(This is a copyright free image. The author Joel Hayward has placed this image in the public domain for use without licenses or restrictions and has waived all rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.)
"Hayward’s journey of exploration, transformation and illumination forms the beating heart of this moving collection of poetry [which is] a timely and important work that reveals the struggle and profound insights of someone bridging cultures and faith traditions."
— Passion Islam, November 2017.
(This is a copyright free image. The author Joel Hayward has placed this image in the public domain for use without licenses or restrictions and has waived all rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.)
"[Joel Hayward] is a very skilful and gifted poet whose way with words is impressive. His poems ... provide a powerful commentary on the social, political, moral and religious challenges and difficulties currently facing Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The fact that he is able to do this in an elegant, evocative and inspiring way is an added bonus. ... The poet is able to blend the personal, emotional, spiritual and existential dimensions of human experience, and do so without in any way over-playing or undermining any aspect. This is a very rare skill for a poet to possess. ... This is one of the best collections of Islamic poems I have read for some time; a must read for both Muslims and non-Muslims.”
— Muhammad Khan, The Muslim News, Issue 276 (27 April 2012)
"Memorable and insightful. ... Thumbs up for Hayward's work"
— Evening Standard, 9 May 2003
"... as an academic, and now as a poet and fiction writer, Hayward has achieved much. This is a complex book, and deserves a much longer review. Hayward is at home with the visceral, the cut and thrust of argument, war and death, pain and revenge.... The poems are racy and innovative, a definite cut above the moderate fare currently on offer. You enter a whole new world when you read Joel Hayward's poetry."
— Southern Ocean Review, Issue 27 (12th April 2003)
"Hayward's eclectic poetry reflects his enigmatic mind. ... His poems are passionate and full of rich images and exert a strong and dignified intelligence. Hayward exerts a courageous strength, rebelling against his past creative constraints, and in perhaps a flush of originality and ambitious flair, has achieved a work of art."
— Chaff, 14 July 2003
Latest poems:
I have become a stranger
I have watched this man who looks a bit like me but so much
older stumble
over things that never mattered
and question the certainties that always had
I saw him scowl at the crescent moon
slide the book into that
tight gap on the shelf
ask why and why and why
and why
He told me that God's not
on His throne
the cosmos is as empty as his own soul
faith brings no benefit
this side of death
Foul thoughts from a stranger
who has eaten the moist fruit of providence
who has sipped the sweetest wine
that flows from the garden
I see that dreams of mountains have become
sleepless nights in a stony valley
I hear garbled cries in the dark
but I also know that among his ashes is a warm coal ready
to welcome the Lord's breath and kindle again within him
tongues of yellow
and blue belief
Drifting beyond
You are drifting from the shore
and that same tugging tide
has washed away the worst
of my midnight misery
A few stars have climbed spiral stairs
back into the darkness that had
shut me in a closet
Your voice is nowhere
in the wind which weakens
within me
and even the coldness
of your death is thawing
in the Lord's warm breath
Why am I not pleased that
this plague of pains is
falling?
Must I feel terrors
and torments to prove
to myself
how much
you meant?
Your voice is nowhere
but I don't need to
hear it to remember
how much I owe you
Those words
If you had seen your
own grave you
would have stopped
and read
of the love you had
always wanted
and said to me, look
that's so romantic
although I never was
and words on
a stone were
the best I could do
but God knows
— I hope you do too
that every word
came from that
good side of me
and not the other
Closure
If it's walking through a door
and shutting it behind me
looking forward
seldom back
reaching an understanding
with unruly emotions
not having the horror
and the jolting upright
when you visit at night
in swarms of the past
I'd rather suffer as I do
and still feel you're
somewhere not
nowhere
To be God
I loathe my yearning to be
the Lord of the Worlds
for only a minute
or less
not to feed the fly-covered starving
destroy the devil's musicians in Syria
rip barbed wire from around the enslaved
cure that devouring thing
but return you to my world
and go back to
how things were
before you left
Emptiness
I search an empty sky
scan the horizon
between life and
the gloaming
I find you inside as shade
from this
intense heat
as a low cloud of
dripping memories
I sit in a room of paper walls
and listen
for a whisper
yet you were quiet in life
so nothing's changed
In my unspoken voice you say
no it's fine as
you did whenever I suggested
I'd do something for you
instead of for me
but now it's not fine and I struggle
beneath
such emptiness
A single strand
What can that single coppery strand
curled and lonely on the dresser
pulled from my brush tell me
about the way my life
will be now that grass has begun to grow on her grave
while I'm back in that land where grass can't grow
with a call to prayer fluttering like a ribbon in a warm westerly
reminding me that everything in this world and the next belongs
to the One who gave her coppery hair that she wore long and proudly
and I'd brushed after she'd answered some fluttering call of her own?
Unanswered?
My prayer is as cold as her cheek when I
kissed her goodbye and the thought that my God
who has raised Lazarus of the Four Days becausehis Beloved asked but left me
unloved
inflicted her with that cruel and tortuous death like an
East German agent with pliers and some curved blade is much too much
to believe and my questions
fill the quiet and pulsating
emptiness of space as fully and sadly as cold water fills a bath that
someone has forgotten to drain yet if
C S Lewis and Rumi could not
find adequate answers then I am golden Custer battling Indians and I must
submit for the sake of sanity to trust that the Most Compassionate
and Ever Merciful
intends something I can't see but still my prayers
drip like an old faucet into a cold bath
Our last date
Oh how smooth you became
as though you hadn't just died
but had become as young
as when I took you to live in that
narrow red house with
squirrels on the fence
and your eyes were as blue
as I'd ever seen eyes but yours
stared at nothing
and I knew you were elsewhere
seeing things as bright
as you'd ever seen bright
while I held you like a first date
though I knew it
was our last
and cried like I had when our girls were born
but they weren't even there when I said
goodbye to an easy mother and easier wife who hadn't
complained at those foolish things in my life
Mon héroïne
I carried something deep inside
my pocket like Frodo's ring
with the cruel gravity of Jupiter making every step beside you
a slog through Russian snow
I never told you
I couldn't bear the thought
you wouldn't fight
and oh how valiant you were!
Even that French emperor that I have
in pewter in a box in storage
would have thumped you on the shoulder
Oh tu as un cœur de lion!
yet a lion had already clamped its teeth into your shoulder
such pain
and you fought impossibly
until you finally fell into that shadowy shaft
without knowing that I had carried a secret
for eighteen months
that you, mon brave soldat, had only six months to live
Inhaling her soul
I gulped to inhale her soul
as she sighed while it spilled
as the blood of birth
and I cried at the absence of her future
I reached to catch it before it slipped away
but these sin-slick hands couldn't grip such purity
What would I have done with it anyway?
Kept it like a genie to uncork whenever regrets weighed most?
Whenever my shame crept out?
It escaped faster than I had imagined
though no feather fell
or flutter caught my eye
into a spinning growing void in which only one word
is ever said and always in a whisper
Your photograph
You smile in a picture on a shelf
and whenever I pass I greet you
as a boy passing the waiting dog
that Dad had said he couldn't play with
until after homework
I salute you with a sigh
that climbs a long ladder from a deep pain
though the Lord of all worlds
had slammed shut in my face that most unlovely door
leaving you in pearlescent light
and me inside the shadows of a willow weeping
An eyebrow arches to hold aloft your eyes like Chinese lanterns
glowing as they drift away
soon to fall
And no one but me will know
that I'd taken that photo on the very day
your left lung collapsed
with cancer clutching like coal in a cave
Out of place
Everything is out of place
a curiously dead wife on anyone's bed
in a city long forgotten
her soul departing from an old people's home
lip hanging lower than it used to
new running shoes in the corner
disposable nappies next to a bra on an unused food tray
eyeliner on eyes that hadn't opened for days
cold skin in a room into which the sun streamed
morphine flowing through a tube into a life that had left
devotion from such an imperfect husband
who knew she'd hate her hair like that
and stroked her fringe back into place
Acceptance
From your bed in the ward you saw a modest ribbon of pale sky
through a window that could open only slightly, like your eyes
a high sky as achingly thin as the skin of your arms
bruised like rain clouds
Yellowy eyes revealed what lips never uttered
a beaten acceptance that the sky will exist long after you do not
and your eyes fell on me like a child rushing for a tight hug
and mine swept you up like a father who'd failed to stop you tripping
Oh you patient soul who had never asked for more or complained of less
that same sky will also stretch above my grave
but until I fall into shadows I'll never forget you
an easy companion who said little during drives and nothing during pain
Night
Night crawls like lizards
with tongues of opalescent horror
Sleep is a blanket on someone else's bed
and I jolt and gasp like she had
connected by that plastic tube
to a life finally withdrawn
Sleep is torn from my lungs which choke
on fears that close around me as coal dust
and all I see in the dark are the
worst things she suffered
from cancer's tongues of horror
Then radiance reaches from your woken soul
and you recite Quran over me
like a Southern faith healer
with laying on of hands
They slither away from the light
you've conjured and I sleep oh I sleep
Daylight memories appear as camera flashes
petty poltergeists easily banished
Yet darkness always follows day as an anxious housemaid
Memories slip their skins and crawl from discarded scales
again where they shouldn't
Abu Dhabi
You asked me please to take you home
two days before you left with another
I am there now and you are elsewhere
Here my sorrow bakes and my tears dry without falling
I sit in air conditioned anguish near a mosque
where I don't want to pray
You called this home and loved it here
but now you're in the cold earth
I cannot visit
On my desk your pewter camel kneels
as though he misses you like I do
Oh you loved to see their long-lashed beauty
by that fast road through the desert
and when I see them next I'll remember
how you collected them in wood and metal and pride
while my failure to bring you back
consumes me like your disease
So enjoy what God will give you:
shade and camels in families and my father's friendship
and pray for me in the cool breeze that blows through
the open doors of that boundless mosque
It is home
Prayers
Our forlorn prayers fell on the floor
as unfixed pages
scripture underfoot
beauty walked on and wasted
promises dirtied
but you had folded one small prayer
like a tear-damp hanky
placed it deep within your pocket
and when you inhaled all life on the far side
he asked you for it
You gave it to him still folded
like a love note in school
and he met your eyes as he opened
and read
and smiled
Death certificate
A death certificate opened
on my computer screen
like a white rose in a light mist
Immaculate and orderly
words parading like graduating cadets
The name of that beast hidden in Latin
like a mystery from the Revelation
yet I had seen it
eating without distraction
without looking up
no interruption
a lion on a dying calf
eyes wide and realizing
I had seen your light dim
and die
and closed your lids with a moist thumb
Now words say nothing
of the ravages and the wild
the predators or the prey
I'll forward that lifeless paper to the bank
and you'll simply disappear back
into quiet emptiness and shadow
Al Fatiha
He read two poems and placed the book
on her coffin before it vanished
into the depths of that ugly hole
Each poem curled into the air
as the smoke of a wizard's pipe
but faded like her life without a miracle
With a wizard's power he spoke
again and cast his words
as a moist mist across three hundred graves
Ancient words formed a prayer
in a language unknown to the minds of family
but familiar somewhere deep within
In the unpainted east of a city
named after the risen messiah
Arabic words curled around her
suspended body and all angels bowed
"Bismillah ar rahman ar rahim ..."
The first verses of a sacred text
the opening of a door between worlds
the echo of creation's sixth day
The words drove devils back into shadows
and birds on barren branches bowed
The words drew judgement day a second closer
and the Lord enjoyed His words aloud where they hadn't been before
in the quake-broken east of a city named after the risen messiah
Diagnosis
His office shrank as he
played the Lord of the Worlds
This pretender couldn't say
"Be!" and it would
He couldn't ask a whale
to swallow a prophet
He couldn't create a dry path
through the sea of reeds
He couldn't say "Come forth"
to a cold friend in Bethany
But he announced a death sentence
and time obeyed
She fell into the darkness
that reigned upon the deep
She fell into the mouth of the leviathan
into an empty universe
into our crowded melancholy
the mystery of a decision
the embrace of the decider
Worlds apart
You are nowhere here
and cannot see me
or the life I'll make that you wouldn't like
You are not in the hope of a new day, the song of the wind,
the glint of snow or the sun's sigh as it lays beneath the horizon
You are not around me
I am suffocating in empty air and I know you're not in a starlit stream
or the lapping waves that deceitfully kiss the shore near our old home
We are in different rooms in dissimilar dwellings
in worlds that never converge
except for those forced through the ugly door that's as thin as
the thumbed pages of sacred text
I struggle in a cacophony of thoughts and busy people
You rest in the shade of a date palm
within the quieting walls of the eternal mosque
You cannot see that I ache
and lurch and gulp with grief
My regrets are an avalanche
a rockslide
a burial
Yet I live and you are gone
and the river between us
is the Amazon
I cannot see you
and I cannot swim
It's with her still
The greatest part of the universe
that my youth could afford
To her it remained the morning star
the cross on the spire
the crescent on the dome
the meaning of all things
She never took it off
to wash dishes
while soaking in the bubbles she loved
while groaning during childbirth
while sleeping under anaesthetic
as they tried to cut out that damned clawing thing
or while they burned her scarred throat with radiation
but when her hand swelled like an inflated glove
a week before she fell into the past
I soaped it and forced it off
while she floated
somewhere unknown and insensible
and rushed it to a jeweller to enlarge
like my distress
my hopelessness
her helplessness
to give her back her glory
and meaning
She surrendered her soul
before he'd finished
and lay in death with a pale indent
revealing how she'd always seen herself
It came back in a velvet bag
and I wore it myself for a needy moment
kissed it like I had her cold lips
and slipped it back on her finger
where it rejoiced at being home
Heartbreak
Without a coat I'm drenched in the grief
that falls as a winter downpour
It drips from my nose and chin
and I shiver beneath stars that play deaf when I plead
I beg them to share the secret of where
the Angel of Death took her sweet soul
Their silence kills me
They know! They must!
A hollow quietness fills the space where we once walked
talking of a future that has become a beetle on its back
The conspiring earth holds her body
but offers no words of comfort
He has shaken down our city
yet now minds his business
I call down to my wife
knowing she can't hear
I ask that droopy moon if she's with God and happy
He just stares
I search inside myself
but I am as empty as my faith and prayers
for a while
Even God says nothing
that I can understand
I cannot find her and I cannot feel her
I trudge in winter rain and shiver
Buried within
I hate that I have become a cemetery
To visit your grave is to walk within me
and feel my pain
To find your headstone is to search the emptiness of my eyes
Desolate and wasted
I am a field of death
and you lie within
deep in the dark and stony earth that is my nature
My father's grave is overgrown
and no-one visits
but I met his love in a care home and
she ventured in
The Lord rewarded her
and pushed sunlight through the clouds
that day
There is enough death
I want no one else to lie inside
Lord chain the gates
Going in
We rushed to pack
before the ambulance came
I stuffed in a nightie, panties, t-shirts and makeup bag
Gasping on the bed
you pointed to the hairbrush
and when I grabbed your reading glasses
you said "I'll never need those again"
a tear fell
I didn't pack that book on positive thinking
or the one on foods to fight cancer
I left them near the bottles and packets full of promises
Now I've placed your glasses in a box
I'll never open in a room I'll seldom enter
and I gave your sister the sheepskin boots
I'd bought you to wear in winter
Sunset
I watch you sink inside
retreat from light
from sound
from me
I watch your chest rise
faster
shallower
less
To where have you withdrawn?
some vast cathedral of confusion?
a cell with a sentence?
a single memory of warm things?
Are you with devils or angels?
with God?
with me?
alone?
It is a wall
bricks
I search for a door
I cannot enter
I cannot pull you back
hold you here
you are falling
away
I am far already
and nothing I can do
can stop the depths
reaching up to swallow you
He came
She saw what I couldn't
In the corner near the door
where I'd hung her jacket
with no hope of its use
She pointed and asked
Who's that man?
I knew him from a black leather book
that spoke of his legend
He had swept over Egypt
and broken hearts and chains
God if only I could have shed
Passover blood for her
covered her
saved her
Stop coming, I said! Leave her!
although I knew he wouldn't
He just stood waiting
and she soon stopped pointing
Even after her eyelids became gravestones
and she slipped into night she felt him
I did too
When he stepped forward and leaned to embrace her
I didn't push him away
Take her! She's had enough!
He ended the murderous cruelty and
I breathed out
as she did
I felt them depart
Absence
I know you've left
but I can't find you
I search for you in my pain
in my clever theology
in my cleverer doubts
in my silent faith and swarming disbelief
in your lifeless hopes
and all I find are regrets
that pull my lips tighter
Sharp memories of you fading
and the cruelty of those last days
stab at me through the sheets
that wrap me in darkness
I cannot summon you
You cannot come
I stood with the toes of my shoes
in the soft soil of your grave
and my soul cried out
though you can't hear
All I wanted to say was sorry
for not always or often
being what you deserved
I said it anyway
to a filled hole
to the emptiness
to myself
So you've gone to the Lord
and that's good
but you are there
and I am here
and years may pass
So you've left me
My life is a desolation
The valley of the shadow
The Sahara
An empty house
I feel you beside me in the car
wanting the window down
I can't reach for your hand
I am alone
I returned the wheelchair
Its hope was only ever a compromise
It is now just a lump in my throat
Morphine and pill bottles on your dresser
Their power is a falsehood
Their failure my future
Your number's in my phone
I'll never delete it
I'll never call
Last Kiss
The Good Lord drowned you in dreams of our best times
I couldn't save you from that clutching thing that had stolen far too much
yet I am caught in the happy moment when you
bobbed on the surface for three sunlit seconds
saw me from eyes that had closed forever, I swear, and blew me a kiss
with a hand from your lips that had forgotten how to sound even the smallest words
before sinking back into the depths of the peace that enclosed you as a shroud
Dance Partner
Uselessly I watched you
glide with her
holding her tightly
while she sank into your embrace
You drew her breath
made her heart race
placed a hand upon her shoulder
It hurt
You cast me a you-can't-do-anything glance
and I winced at how light-footed you are
It was obvious
you have done this often
thief with a devilish grin
crusher of hopes
When you left with your arm around her
you looked back smugly
You're used to getting what you want
Your gloating broke me
I curse you cancer
brutal romancer
irresistible lover
damned good dancer
The moon is hiding in her pocket
She holds the sun in her right hand
and the deepest ocean pours
from her left as a Niagara of
dark expectations
flowing to me with words
that soar and swoop pecking
and clawing
O how I need the moon and
pull her close in a feigned kiss
while my hand creeps like a lizard
to set it free like that guy released after
thirteen years waiting for the chair
O how that embrace has wrecked me
as a car that followed too close
I pulled her tight to steal
what she had herself snatched
when the stars weren’t looking
Her breath was red wine and I drank
and the weight of her breast on my arm
crushed my resistance
and I loved her again O as a universe
and let her keep it tucked away
Healing
Knowing that I was torn, You
began pulling edges together
Stitching them
O God it hurt
Stitch by stitch You closed wounds
while I looked away with gritted teeth
but said, more more
The say pain is the well of wisdom
I have drunk a full bucket
and am quenched
but I want more … please
Great Healer most merciful
see my older brother
take Your needle and thread …
Ya Allah
My soul
Feels
The pull
Of gravity
My back
Strains
To straighten
And doesn’t
Why can’t it?
Ya Allah
I am older
Than
Yesterday's promise
I am older
Than my forgotten dreams
I ache
In prayer
My failure presses
Lift me oh Allah
The bond
We sit in cafes
Sipping
Slipping deeper
Concealed in corners
Chair backs
As walls
Averting all eyes
Ours locked
Hungry
The universe
In two chairs
Touching
These spaces
Our places
Yet ... anyone else’s
Later
The future
In two chairs
Pulled close
Knees joined
Sipping
Slipping
True love with coffee
In Black
In black
And small
A doll with
Eyes that seized
And held
Me
In thrall
And wonder
In black
Beside me
So close
This soul
And yet
My hand
Curled
Alone
In black
The dream
Of years
In tiny shoes
With a power
Unknown
Except to Allah
And me
In black
Somewhere
In the mosque
Away
Engulfing
My smiling prayer
With a clutching
Presence
A Matter of Time
Woollen tufts
Of undemanding hair
On your neck
Raised veins
Across the twist
Of your wrist
The curiosity of
Your lips smiling
When you swallow
And your eyes
Drowning close
To my nervous soul
Touch it
Warm it
Lift it
Love it
And the slip
Of fingers beneath
Your blue humility
The hushed moan
That’s too loud
On a bus
A whispered
Truth from
A locked room
Thanks you
Needs you
Calls you
And asks you
Not to leave
Sunlight of Joy
On a prayer mat
In a storeroom
We met
In love
And I groaned
With a yearning
And you reached
My soul
In a mind full of wonder
In that room
In the dark
I found you
Complete
And beautifully
Small
And alive
Sunlight of joy
In a windowless space
And a world
Without time
For a moment
Gave us
A flicker
Of our future
A Union
Alone
With fingertips and lips
The world thrown away
Allah above and inside
Our longing
As milk
A touch full of age
Ten thousand years
Found in heartbeats
The world unwanted
For a few minutes
Alone
A Sigh
I read of the Shadow
As a Muslim
In the Valley of Death
Comforted by Thy staff
Wishing I had written it
The truth of truth
I scan the surface of the Darkness
As a Muslim
Frightened of the Deep
In the Void
I sat wishing I could write
With God’s spirit
As a Muslim
I heard the crackling of a bush, burning
And marvel that
You are who You are!
I remove my sandals
As a Muslim
I know David picked up five stones
When one was enough
Allow me the gift ya Allah
That described the fall of a bronze sword
Across the croaking throat of a giant
And let truth flow as beauty
From this small Muslim
Call me Daniel
The Angel of Death
Grins for a second in eyes
Golden, pacing and snarling
While I crouch to run
And cry upon the Lord
Inside a heart that cannot
Push words forth for fear
I am Daniel
I ache with a failed gasp
While beasts
Breathe hell’s heat
On my neck as I await
The tearing darkness of
That lonely moment
Of a crushing journey
I am he
Dead in the minds of
Those who cast me down
To these great jaws and
Walked away without
Bothering to watch
The end of their evil
Which they had enjoyed
Who am I?
Dead in my pity
As decades of mistakes
Fill seconds of regret
And shame at failure
While I steady myself
For a meeting
With the All-seeing
Who has come?
They stretch and twitch
And lower their bellies
Upon the dust and rest
With tawny disinterest and
Closing eyes and yawns
And the pleasure of
The sun’s warmth
You are here
I fall upon my knees
And call Your name
And stretch my hands
Upon the earth that
Asks to meet my head
And heart and
I thank you
We are here
I look up at new life
And see tomorrow as
A wider world and
A place to walk with
A great friend who
Will stay as close as
The easy breath in my lungs
You Did Your Worst
You threw sludge in a bucket
Aiming specially at my name
You covered me from head to foot
Then jeered go hide your shame!
Ain’t no mud gonna stick to me, my friend
Ain’t no mud gonna stick to me, my friend
When I bow down where I ought
Your filth ain’t worth a thought
Ain’t no mud gonna stick right to the end
You hated that I feared the Lord
It sent loathing down your spine
Faith is a crutch for the weak you thought
Your spine far weaker than mine
Ain’t no mud gonna stick to me, my friend
Ain’t no mud gonna stick to me, my friend
When I step forward on that day
He’ll know what I have prayed
Ain’t no mud gonna stick right to the end
You lied and told them white was black
Turned goodness into something bad
Your rotten soul hell-bent on harm
Your hateful thoughts both sad and mad
Ain’t no smear gonna tarnish me, my friend
Ain’t no smear gonna tarnish me, my friend
When Allah calls me to his side
He’ll already know what’s clean inside
Ain’t no smear gonna last until the end
Tornado Alley
You roared inside a twist
That joined heaven, hell and fears
In a sucking tunnel of
Spinning death and fascination
You tore apart dreams and
Clawed them through air
That shrieked in pain
As all life flew
You carved Your Name
As the earth winced
While You strained
Life through a sieve
You spoke and death
Walked off without
A sound to rest
Until You called him next
You asked if we learned
And we moaned and our
Pity for ourselves sung
As a choir garbed in black
You placed a sparrow
On a wire in the rubble
And it blinked and called
Its thanks to You
It plucked a seed and
Swallowed and all things
But us smiled
At your message
Arab Spring
Hands clenched, passions wrenched
Hearts ablaze, these days of rage
Shouts in the air, pauses for prayer
Streets, squares, mosques, theirs
Hearts freed, knees bleed,
Proud, aloud, unbowed crowd
Freedom sought, its shape unthought
Unknown ideal, substance not real
Grass is greener, democracy leaner
Cigarette smoking, despots choking
Forgotten youth and unseen truth
Confused eyes, fleeing spies, sons’ lies
Streets, squares, no longer theirs
Ranting, railing, panting, flailing
Heads full of pain, nothing to gain
Power grasping, compromise asking
Opportunity lost, everything cost
Posterity crushing and the end fast rushing
Your Book
I read your words and hear whispered reminders
As my tired eyes struggle across dots and black curves
While I ponder and wonder and stare holding my chin
As wisdom tries to sneak inside crowds of thoughts on life
I read your words and hear my slow breathing deep
And know that on that day it will cease and I’ll sleep
And then blink inside your sun-drenched calmness
As I step forward to hear your thoughts on my life
I read your words and feel the tug of sad conscience
And know whom I’ve let down, helped and annoyed
When you wanted more and sigh I gave so little
And wasted time as I walked too quickly through life
I closed my eyes darkly and called back your words
And slid them silently from my tongue into my room
Where they’ll circle and swarm close to my pillow
As I ask for their meaning and the warmth of their life
I spoke your words quietly to friends and strangers
With the force of a hurricane unnoticed so soft
While I knew that the wind would tug later at thoughts
And poke hearts with gentle fingers on the hand of life