Is Dying Like Waking?

Abu Mahmoud Luther Clark

Text. design, and author's photo ©2009 Luther R. Clark Jr.

Cover Illustration: “Eye to Eye” ©2009 Tahura Huda Turabi

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

The author can be contacted at abumahmoud786@gmail.com . If you would like to use this material in a derivative work or would like to publish it in print or on-line, please drop me a line. I'll probably say yes.

“In Season,” “The Sun,” and “Penance” first appeared in Amaranth. Vol. XVII

“Miniatures” first appeared in Bartleby Vol. XXVII

“Humanism,” “Debris,” and “Spider Webs” first appeared in Hidden City Quarterly Vol. I No. 2

“I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings:

it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”

-Willam Wordsworth

Table of Contents

ToS 4

Is Dying like Waking 5

Landscape #1 6

Reflections on my 22nd Birthday 7

Signs 8

Gaza 9

Miniatures 10

San Juan 11

Palm 12

Humanism 13

Chains 14

Spider Webs 15

Zekr 16

Debris 17

Memory 18

'Is' does not imply 'Ought' 19

Silence 20

Stone 21

Al-Andalus 22

The Horrors of a False Spring 23

Winter Resumes 24

Ravana 25

In Secret Reverie 26

Alphabet of Loss 27

Naked 28

In Season 29

The Oath 30

The Fool 31

The Sun 32

Penance 33

About the Author 34

ToS

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Is Dying like Waking

Is dying like waking

to the light of another life?

Will I wipe the sleep from my eyes

and wonder at my fading dream?

Would I be the dream or the dreamer?

If memory fades with waking,

then I evaporate into the cool air.

If it endures, I endure

through an endless stream of lives,

each waking into the other.

What hope is there in life everlasting?

I shall either change and die

or endure to no end.

Sleep is best then:

Joy is perfected in passing.

Landscape #1

Flying in the confident breeze,

the flags overstep their bounds

and tile the path to-

Where?

A future where blood and tears

briefly mingle before subsiding

into the sickly-pale void?

Perhaps they form a platform

for the contest of giants,

each easily assured of victory,

each blow making the other bold,

until the spectators are drawn in

and hurled like boulders.

Or they are a vast and composite shroud,

the covering of some slain God,

whom the mourners conduct to the shores of Lethe,

before abandoning their charge to the slow, silent waters.

Reflections on my 22nd Birthday

It's raining manna as I drive through

the broad road to the north

memory burning in my mind

groaning wheel turning in stained hands.

In reflection my life becomes a trembling

mummers dance; movement with a deadly

certainty, a frantic pace and no purpose.

No religion, no philosophy can alleviate

my suspicions, suspicions without form,

inchoate and rooted deep in my heart.

Faith in saviour gods, submission to empty

rituals and the laws of the dead and damned,

indifference sprinkled with pity...

No solution, no solace, not even sincerity,

no salvation as the manna turns to blood

and the traffic moves on.

Signs

Cacophany rings from the trees

as amorous birds roost.

Startled, they take flight,

higher,higher,

striving to break gravity's

adamantine bonds.

But soon Death calls,

the Decree takes wing,

and like slain Angels

they plummet

to a lonely grave

among the stones of Earth.

There are signs

for those who think.

Gaza

Steel angels rain down fire

upon women, children.

Glittering in the madding sun,

they return to Zion.

Are they conscious of what they do?

Do they knowingly purchase death with death?

Death visited upon school children.

Death visited upon the disabled.

Death visited upon the sinner and the righteous.

No. Cold steel and hot chemicals

are only tools,

monuments to the malefic of the

Western mind.

And so the curse rains down upon

the unfortunate,

before blowing across the green line

and engulfing Zion itself.

Miniatures

Miniatures, I shape miniatures;

like a Moghul chess board

on a table

carved with flowers.

An autonomous universe,

it's own law

it's own perfection.

Possibility playing itself out

in the corner of a room.

San Juan

Shrouded in green articulations,

stucco exploding like a rainbow,

the house at once establishes it's

hegemony over the guarded street.

Formed by bits of Al-Andalus,

shaped by necessity,

cruel necessity of the Caribbean,

it is an ersatz life-raft for

the silent watching shapes inside.

Palm

Oh my beautiful palm,

oh sweet Lazarus

in green tones

shedding khaki.

How can you thrive in abuse?

How can I become like you?

Humanism

I too will die.

Sinuous cracks,

creeping into my heart;

shimmering panic.

Will it dissipate,

an illusion?

Am I the animal, man,

destined to strive,

for a time,

slave to passions

determined eons ago?

Or has something new

been tossed up

upon this shore of heaven?

Can I look up from earth

and see myself,

a reflection of a reflection

proceeding into infinity?

That which I am

when I am human,

ideal, eternal

survives.

Chains

The atmosphere takes on a chill,

it seems as if the stars are dying,

a lonely universe has lost its heart.

The cold bites at me as I consider

what lies inside a prophet’s grave,

bones or just dust?

I am afraid to leave my prison cell,

terrified of nothing,

terrified of something;

but isn’t the prisoner’s duty to escape?

The agony of impermanence weighs on me.

my self-made chains chafe and sting,

yet I tremble before the prospect of removing them.

Once ‘when I heard the name of the Prophet,

the chains fell off’ but now this name is simply another link,

making the chains stronger.

Spider Webs

My God, my God,

Why have I forsaken thee?

Permanence shed for illusion,

chasing the phantom of my own desire,

through a mutating maze,

an organic living thing,

a prison spun from my own being.

I, the spider at the heart of it,

seeking what prey I can lure

with sweet words and false face

pounce

when they realize, with horror,

that there is no center.

Zekr

Zekr is like a fire
kindled by two sticks.
Nothing at first
but the hollow
call of emptiness.
But then a spark
then a flame,
and then a blazing fire,
consuming my being,
consuming all of creation,
with the love of Allah.

Debris

That nightmare feeling

that I’m about to wake up

tas returned

but I never will wake up

and I am trapped in a world

with its own frightful necessity,

grinding onwards

until I am trapped in the gears.

I found our wedding album

amid the detritus of our love.

My mind is clouded, heavy

with knowledge of you

that I no longer have a

right to possess.

Memory

Memory is like a broken record,

each repetition failing,

succeeding, failing,

sketching the outlines

of decaying order.

The record breaks-

spontaneous, creative

static.

'Is' does not imply 'Ought'

Science slew the gods of metal and stone

and replaced them with words and numbers,

an empire of reason spread across the oceans.

Juxtaposed:

The shadow of a word, its traceable echo.

the word left unsaid in all sensible conversation,

that unspeakable, unforgivable word: ‘ought.’

Silence

The silence of you

expecting more,

my tongue still

aching to move

as the tension cuts in,

eating at me like a legion

of locusts devouring a field.

Stone

I watch my children play by the garden sandstone

seeking bliss among blossoms and scraping rough stone

The young immortals play with all sincerity,

their blessing will disappear like a water-loved stone.

Even now I try to recall the first embrace

of their warm hands. Memory is a failing shew-stone.

Each line once cast is slowly erased, the decay

defining an image in relief on wearing stone.

Sweeping the world up within his scrying mind

'Bu Mahmoud keeps his silence like a brooding stone.

Al-Andalus

The song of al-Andalus is carried on the wind in silence.

Only silence can be loved because it is silence.

The echo of Arabia carried in the blood of moriscos

and in the language of the conqueror, defying this silence.

The cities of light are extinguished and the gardens

of Medinat az-Zahra cry out in anguish. The answer is silence.

Letters loosened from the page cascade from soaked leaves,

a river of ink drowning the words in bookish silence.

'Bu Mahmoud meditates on loss and survival. His grief and his joy

vie within him for mastery in undermining his silence.

The Horrors of a False Spring

The horrors of a false spring:

Green shoots wither in ice,

a spontaneous abortion.

Green emblems of hope

gripped in cold jagged hands

blossoms blasted black.

Nature's joke on her subjects

flesh of trees

cracking like laughter.

The teeth of a false smile

shining like a row of tombstones

over a mass grave.

Winter Resumes

Withered stalks fall to earth,

branches laid bare like bones

jut shockingly against the sky.

The stirring wind provides

a semblence of life,

an illusion strengthened

by the subtle chime of a bell.

Carried on the wind,

a voice from no where

is calling to forgiveness.

Ravana

The flood gates have opened on

Kubera's island.

Ravana discovered

the bomb and the jet,

and the blood of Tamil and Sinhela

mingle in death.

Parading images of human form,

grey like an ancient photograph,

absorbing the heat they should give off,

march like marionettes,

quick to crush and to exult.

On the street, bodies made rigid by

the cold steel of hate

form silent prayers as they

stare up at the sky.

The Dream, frozen inside them

waits to be reclaimed.

In Secret Reverie

In secret reverie
I pipe away,
bouncing, raucous music
in sharp keys.

Nubile youths dance,
forgetting that
they, too, are mortal.

The music draws me out
and now it seems that
I am the audience
to a song from a world
a shadow away.

It stops- I stop,
listening attentively
as it reverberates through
my memory, passes,
and is gone.

Alphabet of Loss

How can I write with

an alphabet of loss,

A letter disapearing

each day since you left?

I am left increasingly mute,

my vocabulary of ideas

diminishing page by page.

The words that would have formed

evaporate and collect,

huddling together

in my inner recesses.

Owning my deeds is like

owning the moon.

Yet they both light

the prison yard

where my thoughts are

locked up.

Naked

I am naked like a child

before her eyes,

all escape blocked,

every defense overcome.

It is as if she can read my heart

and in my shame I cannot look away.

Does she know?

The question broods,

a shadow cast by no object,

greying the sunlight

and chilling its warmth.

Again her glance meets mine,

her lips perk slightly.

she reaches out…

In Season

Tag--- You're it!

And so it goes.

Confined each to

our seperate circles,

communicating via

verbal daggers

lobbed in haste.

It's strange how

enemies without

touching become

more familiar

than friends.

So now from year to year

I slowly uncover more

from you than any

friend could teach me

and there are times when

my only desire is to break

the circles and hold you.

The Oath

I speak the words I am given and

I am made custodian of every enigma.

I become the cauldron of all mystery,

the blackness on which a universe is painted.

Stars have their birth and death within me

and I do not shake before the fury of a nova.

I am borne in secret and so die

but come to life when I am called.

I am the Amaranth in winter

and the cardinal in summer

and the watcher at all points in between.

I am the Whisperer and the Shadow and the Other.

I am more ancient than a name,

free from every stroke of the pen

and turn of the tongue.

I am rising to claim my own.

The Fool

Heir to infinite space,

a legacy claimed by the wll,

by the decisive act.

The decided habit of self

gnaws at you,

itself heir to the legacy of aeons,

to the forces of inertia,

to misguidance on the verge of collapse.

What can you carry with you but humility?

Diminishing before the act,

diminishing after,

dispersed through the elements,

you become their master.

The Sun

Simultaneous incarnation

of destruction and life,

observed through the final,

rattling haze of a dying planet,

what can I offer you?

You are the last idol,

the beginning and the end,

yet you are silent,

silent as the grave.

Are you an eye,

scanning our iniquity?

Are you a door,

a portal opening on

a world of poisonous

crimson light?

And if you turn away?

A second death for the Earth,

eternal night ruling over

crystal palaces.

No, you will not turn away.

You will watch, waiting

for the ripeness of our disease.

Then you will come to meet

your children with a

final annihilating embrace.

Penance

There is an evil in the human heart

which delights in destroying the beautiful

and in unmaking with clumsy hooves

the work of delicate fingers.

Husbands beat their wives,

one friend betrays the other,

and little boys stone rabbits

because they are accused

by the sight of innocence.

All subjects of beauty are odious

to those who have none

and in the sinner's eye

every saint is damned.

Darkness begets darkness,

the victim is corrupted,

and humanity drowns

in a sea of tears.

What can drain the sea?

What can grapple with shadows?

Only that divine nature

which can look beyond suffering

towards hope and repay pain

with kindness.

Only forgiveness can transform

a loathsome beast into a person.

About the Author

Abu Mahmoud Luther Clark is a teacher, political activist, and journalist from Baltimore, MD. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he received the Alumni Association's Award for Outstanding Undergraduate in Philosophy and had his poetic work published in Bartleby. His journalistic work has been featured in the Muslim Link. His poetry has been featured in Amaranth, Hidden City Quarterly, and the Ghazal Page. He currently teaches Social Studies at an area middle school and is working on a collection of short stories exploring the theme of change and transformation.

Table of Contents

ToS

Is Dying like Waking

Landscape #1

Reflections on my 22nd Birthday

Signs

Gaza

Miniatures

San Juan

Palm

Humanism

Chains

Spider Webs

Zekr

Debris

Memory

'Is' does not imply 'Ought'

Silence

Stone

Al-Andalus

The Horrors of a False Spring

Winter Resumes

Ravana

In Secret Reverie

Alphabet of Loss

Naked

In Season

The Oath

The Fool

The Sun

Penance

About the Author