Confessions

I will not admit I love you

Even though that is what I feel

For fear of feeling like every other

Who did feel something so real

I will not say I love you

Even though I truly do

For that is to speak a word too often spoken

to One I wish to offer something new

I will sing no more ballads

Though love drives me to verse

For every song tells the same

However long or however terse

So I will just keep silent

And revel in the quiet pleasure

That no one feels about you quite like me

That is both my gift and my treasure

My ocean and my sea

Recovery

I lose myself

Over and over again

How can I find out

Who I am

I’ve let myself slip so slowly

No longer knowing

Where I am or what I’m doing

Drowning in a world of confusion

Driven by the illusion

That I know where I’m going

I bow my head toward my heart

And feel that little spark

A shot of light

In the pitch of night

I do not know much

But this much I now do

I have fallen in love with you

That is how I found myself

And all that which

I hold as true

Coming Home

If love were a city

I would crawl through every alley

On hand and knee

Feeling every crevice

Caressing each contour

Of it’s aged pavement

Relishing each touch

Wondering at each turn

Lost on streets, with names long forgotten

Meandering past walls never named

It would trouble me little

The distance left to traverse

The steady, unrelenting passage of time unforgiving

No lament for perhaps never reaching my destination

For by now I know

I am already home

Leisurely ticks the second hand.
Making customary circuits and
Lazy rounds, within the perimeter of eternity.
While bounds, of anticipation set me free
Of time, allowing each moment to be a Meeting mine
Each longing sigh, a secret poem thine.

– Shaykh Omar Hussaini

Weeds

Sickened by disease; Taken root so deep
Whose tentacles seize; My soul’s infinite sweep

To every crevice and recess; It’s chilling fingers caress
Creeping further still; till I find no rest
Groping silently in night within, to rid what I detest
I find myself dying; In full view of my self no less

So simple it seems; to uproot this fiend
But every time I so deem; lay more before not seen
The hallow cycle of struggle followed by quick succumb
Has made loathesome to me what I’ve become

Just a remnant of days more humbly spent
With pious notions of simple bent
Godly aims bereft of worldly vice
Noble deeds without craft of show or artifice

Less owned and even less desired
Free to run with love’s sweet fire
But love of the world has brought such deep decay
That now I have left but to long and pray
To perhaps be healthy again one day

Dreamchaser

Turn where I may

Still engulfed by an emptiness

Without escape

However quickly I run
It outpaces me
Wherever I hide
I find, It has outstripped meI loathe that loneliness
That hallow abyss
Gnawing away at a soul
that has let go and lies helpless
As if to say: ‘do of me as you will’
I cannot evade thee

I know no other world than this bleak horizon
Under whose shadow I abide
Knowing well I have no recourse
For what engulfs me lies inside

I cannot run from myself
And to let go of who I am
Is to seek a tomorrow I do not know
Rather I curl up in the misery of what is familiar

My eyes set on so many a mirage
In the shifting desert of my heart
Chasing an endless saga of disappointment
Always unfulfilled, I crawl on

Walking dilligently down roads that lead nowhere

Forever Together

I let go of your hand
And feel the same visceral pain
That I have grown used to
Tears well in the throat
That I am too unwilling to set free

The wrenching hurt that only love can levy
Has become my lot, with and without you
Too familiar with its raw embrace
It has become for me
A closer mate than thee
When apart, your memory
Swells wide this yearning heave
When together, but silently

I anticipate the day that I must leave
Behind every smile hides another fear
And every laughter harbors but lament
Swift with ascension comes but descent

You asked me to stay another day
And still I turned and walked away
Knowing it will be no easier tomorrow
And that my joy must follow sorrow
Though everything inside me knows
I want to hold on as long as I may
A simple thought begins to glow
Allowing me to pull away

In life, every joining must meet separation
Each pleasure, pain in close succession
Both my clasp loosens and my resolve
And pain begins slowly to dissolve

Know this, that every departure separates
Less death, my friend, which liberates

Raising the Axe

Every idol that I hated
I found staring at me within
The house that You had created
To be fully free from sin

None the world’s waters
Can cleanse this impurity
None the mountain’s fires
Can burn away this infidelity

It needs not hesitant whispers
When one is to proclaim openly
It needs not the hand that falters
When one is to strike decisively

My arms are weak I say
Perhaps another day
And days bleed into years
Of drought yearning for a rain of tears

Of strength there is plenty
It is in resolve I am weak
I wish I had the will
To do that which i seek

I want your light to burn within
But can never light the spark
While wet darkness is pouring in
From these partners that I mark

You desire exclusivity
None else within the room
That should rightly be
Only for thee
But I give away too soon

– Shaykh Omar Hussaini

No Words

To beauty capture, no greater world did I find

Than the cadent word, the cantic rhyme

To give expression to the ineffable, depth to that unfathomed

All of beauty, great and small, thus embodied

I stand speechless

Unable to find the words for He who lies beyond my world

– Shaykh Omar Hussaini

Shadow of the Tsunami

So much to say, never spoken

Though even the blind can speak

From a dam, partially broken

A breaking trickle begins to leak

As concrete seams let out whimpers

And towering walls cast a sigh

The volley continues upon the rafters

Creaking under rain-like thunder

Yearning to be rent asunder

I never knew what solemn fate

Would this rusted dam befall

Or how endlessly vast

Laid waters behind their crusted walls

Never did I fathom how fast

Hanging tears could fall

Across a dry cheek, cracked lips

Barely able to whisper a prayer

Dark heart, cracked open

Shows me the tsunami

Soon to drown me

I live in its shadow

Waiting for death

By deluge

Gasping for breath

Nightly

– Shaykh Omar Hussaini