Monday, October 19, 2015

"Left Ajar" {poetry} by Arshia Qasim, Aisha Sharif and Susan Marie

First published on MOGUL  
On The Poet Community
 © Arshia Qasim



A door half shut
a door half open,
Mysteries to unfold
promises to hold.

A heart that thunders
a mind that ponders,
One-step travel bound
one-step firmly ground.


In-between go, stop and if,
Life shapes, bit by bit.

Left ajar,
my heart.
Much like keys that fit,
perfect,
like hips and curves
of notes and clefts,
and question marks and apostrophes,
hanging midair
in breath,
caught and held,
as sentences
never spoken,
yet felt.

The door left ajar
what does it mean to the air,
It can push it either way
as it goes from here to there.

Love waits on both sides
unhurried, calm and patient;
There is no room for despair
hope lies in what is vacant.

There is choice,
freewill,
like flight.
Hurry love!
Do not make haste,
the door is open,
this is now,
the ever fleeting moment,
glimpses
into past, present, future,
the making of lives and losses
the jump, the fall,
climbing vines into aether.

My dear, my love,
how shall you choose?

Skeleton keys that fit
like skullbones,
crying the most holy tears
to heaven.

So enchanted are we with the lock
so enamored our hearts to the door,
That oft our eyes cannot see
there’s more, and so much more.

The soul does not knock three times
the heart does not ring the bell,
The space does nothing to choose
who in there will come and dwell.

When it permeates through the walls
all locks and keys go astray,
It is said and known all along
that love will find a way.

Left ajar,
my heart.


Much like keys that fit,
perfect.


* * * 




Wednesday, October 14, 2015

One Hour With Celia White


Published on Medium 

What a beautiful conversation with Celia White, poet, writer, librarian, educator and she read "Kali Yuga" and I start crying. This is one hour of history about life, writing, art, music and writing. She reads from her book "Letter" and speaks about the artistic scene as a whole. www.celiathepoet.blogspot.com/






Monday, October 5, 2015

You Make Me Beautiful [For Sir Muhammad Iqbal in response to “I Desire”






First published on Jaggerty 
[South Asian Lit Journal]

 
Your voice is that of millions
wandering, lost,
bedraggled and confused,
seeking peace and enlightenment
everywhere,
but from within.

Yet you seamlessly describe
the pure beat of thunder in your veins,
indigenous drums,
ancestral circles,
of smoke
rising.


Your breath is my own.

Thoughts that scatter
inside my skull,
you have written of them,
reaching into my heart
with open palm
behind my sternum,
gently,
you take one tip of finger
and tell me
what my own soul
already knows.


Dear Sir, you make me beautiful.

I am lost in your words,
unable to do anything
but melt
within the beauty
of the divine.



– For Sir Muhammad Iqbal  
[Shair-e-Mushriq, Poet of the East]
in response to “I Desire