Posts tagged Poem

Where has my mind gone? Seems I’ve lost touch with my own sanity. It’s been quite some time since I last remember the tease of a lucid rationale. You see, I used to be a writer. At least, I used to call myself one. There was a time when the words would flow through my fingertips. Every letter inching its way onto a screen, one right after the other, forming words and making sense of some kind of emotion. Now these words are lost. Or maybe I’ve used them all up. Maybe I’ve overdosed. I used to get high off my own mental jargon, a soliloquy of inner turmoil so suffocating it made my heart bleed. I used to fiend off emotions that lay trapped between text and context, finding salvation in a written form of creed. Now these words are baited by the swift breeze of being, of living a life so tainted with busy, it becomes work. Writing has become a chore, an agonizing servitude. What once was passion has turned into a fading euphoria.

With age comes wisdom. Today, I am wise enough not to trust, prudent enough to embrace the wall I’ve spent my whole life building. I’ve learned to depend on my instincts and mask nervous butterflies with resilience. If I counted age by the number of friends at my side, I would be infantile. If these years were chapters, I’ve spent too much time writing of anger. Every year is a reminder that life is too short to dwell and just long enough to enjoy the moment. Today, I am wise enough to love more than hate, surrounding myself with others lucky enough to love as much as I do. To those who circle in and out, your time will come to stay. I’ve learned timing is everything and everyone is on their own schedule. If I counted age by the number of lovers I thought I had, I would be ancient. If I counted the ones that mattered, I would have only one birthday to celebrate. If these years were lyrics, I haven’t spent enough time listening to the love songs. With age… comes gratitude.

It’s been awhile since I last wrote something meaningful. I used to write almost everyday. Here and there, little notes just to keep the creative side of my mind in motion. But lately, it seems like I’ve lost the will to write. I’ve been so focused on fitting the pieces of my life together, I guess I’d rather act on it than write about it.

Today, on the other hand, I feel like I need to filter my soul just a little bit. Put my life down on paper (tumblr text), I guess you could say.

So let me update you on me:

I’m in a good place emotionally. Taking some chances, stepping out of my own boundaries. I’m in love with life, in a way, for the first time.

I’m starting a new job, a better one, with more opportunities and room for growth that is right up my ally: advocating for social justice. I have new ambitions, or rather revived ones, and I’m taking the necessary steps forward to achieve those goals.

I’m in a wonderful relationship with someone who adds meaning to my life. Someone who believes in me and knows my true self, inside and out. Someone I can be myself around and not feel scrutinized or judged. He sees right through my walls. Together, I know we will do great things.

There are down days, of course. Tis life. But they fail in comparison to all the good days, the happy days, the cup half full kind of days. And it’s nice to be able to appreciate that and not feel so apologetic.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” - George Eliot

Given the fact that Muslims, myself being one of them, are constantly upset over being grouped into a stereotype of “terrorists” and whatnot due to the actions of a select zealous few, it would do these same Muslims in the Middle East a favor to stop raging against American Embassy’s in an attempt to show their discontent with the select few Americans who made such a denigrating video. Anyone smell the bitter scent of hypocrisy? Come on people!

Have we forgotten how to be humane?

There’s something about writing that doesn’t feel honest anymore. I sit in front of a screen, fingers typing away on a keyboard, writing an infinite number of words and yet… they’re all meaningless. Maybe writing isn’t as pure as I used to think it was. With all this scrutiny, the fear of sounding vulnerable just turns these words into shallow holes devoid of any significance. I remember once listening to a song just to hear the lyrics, just to feel the tight grasp of the verses suffocating my soul with longing and relatablity. How simple words could capture an emotion so vividly, leaving me a sobbing mess of sentiment. In and out of the context of language came the taste of love and lust, the very essence of passion, all inscribed like scripture. Faith had a definition engraved in bereaving hearts and lifeless souls that found refuge in romanticized jargon and home amidst the chorus of colloquy. Our words have become so far removed from deity that we’ve grown accustomed to calling them politics, so formulated and barren, they could have no evocative expression but to assume the form of dogma.

I’m a mix of awe and fear at how complacent I’ve become by hunger. The act of thirst itself feels like too much of a chore. I have to wonder, is this how the underprivileged live, indifferent to their starvation, unmoved by their body’s longing? I can hear the bellowing cries of my stomach and the parched stillness of my breath as my eyes watch, carefully, every shadow of sunlight. But as it fades behind mountain canvases and sets the dawning of moon, these aches become like refuge. This hunger becomes home. The day’s aches are marked by resting survival, a sense of endurance and accomplishment. I can live tomorrow. I can be without sustenance, persisting on the mere essence of weakness alone. Hope. That I can make it minute by minute, hour by hour, and as the sun sets I find myself indulging only in the taste of satisfaction. I am a survivor. 

I treat creed like a drug, practicing sobriety and kneeling to religion like a failure in rehab. Every year I’m reminded of my addiction to faith, the way hunger creeps on me like habit or the cotton-mouth dryness of thirst. Somehow the meaning of Ramadan is lost on me. Thirty days of obvious conviction eluded by eleven months of oblivious principle. I’ve spent days of repentance on nights bursting with sin, yet the price of indignation doesn’t seem high enough. Religion weighs heavy on my soul but I’m tipsy on the words of a saint and acting on a sinner’s budget. How faithless this heart of mine can be amidst the yearning for salvation. God have mercy on my soul, Lord knows I haven’t.