Poetic License:
Amexem Times and Seasons Poets Corner
Poem One: Come All Ye Asiatics!
Poem Two: Bismillah (Sheikh El-Husary at I.I.T.)
Poem Three: The sleeper has awakened
Poem Four: From here and there (for an ASIATIC girl)
Poem Five: Alas! The goal is set
Poem Six: The Middle Ages
Poem One:
786 Bismillah
Come All Ye Asiatics!
Come All Ye Asiatics!
Learn your nationality and divine birth rights.
The Moorish Mahdi has proclaimed that the time for half-stepping has ended.
Brothers and sisters pickup your pen,
pickup your sword.
Heed the call, you all!
Star and Crescent in the Sky --
Signs for you and I.
Don�t wish on a star --
Pray to Allah.
Don�t wait for Jesus to turn swords into plows.
We�re an Eastern people traveling West
Building kingdoms as we go.
We built the pyramids.
We wear our crowns.
Prophet gave us all we need.
No more time to be mentally enslaved.
Let your mind and body be free.
Never again let yourself be ignorant,
naked, hungry, out-of-doors!
Demand your forty acres and a mule.
Go to city hall.
Don�t fall for the same old tired lines.
Demand your rights.
Demand your forty acres and a mule.
Stand on the square.
Between righteous and parody are the five pillars squared. 732
Seven prophets called
Heed the call, you all!
66 La illaha illa Allah, Muhammad Rasul Allah.
Salvation, Allah, Unity, Islam, The Uniting of Asia
Muhammed Ahari El
Poem Two:
Bismillah
(Shaykh El -Husary at IIT)
Audhu billahi minashatani rajim.
Bismillahi Rahmani Rahim.
Shaykh El-Husary sits,
spits,
chants Qur�an.
Brothers surround him
softly murmuring amin.
Within the words
Sufi drums bump and shrug,
angel hips shudder tambourines,
shakers respond from 35th St.
Steam rises,
smoke curls,
the floor, unneeded, falls away.
Softly rocking,
Allah�s d-flat song.
J.B. Figi
1994
Poem Three:
THE SLEEPER HAS AWAKENED
"Until the dawn and peace...Say, I seek protection in the Lord of the Dawn."
1) The darkness upon the earth fell to such a thick impenetrable level that only divine light could even attempt to pierce the darkness. A despair that displaced hope was throughout the land. The source of truth, light and reawakening of the land still existed.
2) Man, true man, was chained in a strong, dark prison safely held unaware of his true role. Prophets and messengers came and went but true man heard the message and later returned to his former state. Man would not recognize either messenger or message.
3) The next stage to awaken the sleeping giant came. Chains no longer bound his limbs yet the perfect man, the ancient one failed to realize. Even when Yeshua aroused visions in his sleeping mind, he failed to awaken from his slumber. The savage slaughter of Mani and his Sons of Light by the followers of Paul a/k/a Saul did not awaken the sleeping giant from his slumber.
4) The cries of death pangs of Yassar and Sumarah failed to awaken him. Bilal's cries of, "Ahad, ahad!," scarcely disturbed his sleep.
5) The sleeper must awaken from his slumber for the world to finish this cycle and the tree of Yssidrag to drop its fruit for the blooming of the next level of existence.
6) Fake Messiahs with false miracles have not awakened the giant. Old rules, new rules, old tyrants, new tyrants have not awakened the sleeping giant.
7) Ancient dreams, myths, legends are all we know of the sleeping giant. The true man sleeps in divine bliss, consciousness in bare brief fleeting moments.
8) The giant sleeps. Wind blows as it always has blown and seasons come and go. The giant sleeps.
9) Reality evaporates at its tenuous borders and chaos, sweet chaos and Mother Night's march ends. Reclaiming the night. Casting the day and the light bringer aside. The light bringer is now evil and darkness- light. And yet the sleeper has not awakened.
10) Poison in the air, thoughts and patterns of existence. And yet the sleeper sleeps.
11) Poison in the mind- thoughts are not only of corruption but are now fully corrupted and yet the sleeper sleeps.
12) Twelve princes died. The true man only a dream. No savior only half-baked fables to placate the oppressed that realized they were oppressed.
13) The Messiah betrayed for a handful of silver and yet the sleeper sleeps. And yet the sleeper sleeps.
14) Venus is no longer beautiful. Apollo is old. Jupiter has been dethroned. And yet the sleeper sleeps.
15) Black skin burnt in the sun. Chains on ankles. Pierced virginity. Mind raped, chained. Soul on ice. Four hundred and more years away from the true land and yet the sleeper sleeps.
16) One Arabian youth, pure of spirit, true of speech called the sons of the Rebel Ishmael back to God and yet the sleeper sleeps.
17) The Lion of God fought with his two headed sword and conquered the land for God and fought till the true faith greened the sands. And yet the sleeper sleeps.
18) A Persian Prince forsake the world. Nuamen fought to have the true law established. Yesevi and Sari Saqati and al-Junayd all called to the light with the true man and yet the sleeper sleeps.
19) Smoke from Yemen, the Sun rises in the West. The Sleeper has awakened, the change has come.
Muhammed Ahari El
Poem Four:
From Here and There
For an Asiatic Girl
When at evening our mother Earth lay down
And on her breasts that are hills there came
A shadow like that dusk the ages have
Spread softly on your forehead and pale arms,
Then always at eve-hour I visioned you
Always as if through some pale sheet of dusk
That grew between us, I could barely see
Your olive-skinned limbed people aching up the years
And I could dream your bosom only through
That film -- hear your sweet laugh only to know
My folks can never share its sweetness, nor
Your crooning words, your fragrant wit they�ve thrust
You from their temples where some carved mock god
Leers at his bigot-children and priests
And sick with knowing how my people, and
Your people have played crassly with frail things,
(Leaving us here to weep among the shards)
I kissed our Mother Earth -- This we can have
In common, anyway -- and then I cried
"Thy children are not perfect yet,
Oh Allah."
Juanita M. Richardson Bey
from Moorish Guide National Edition
Vol. 1, No. 9, Page 4.
November 30, 1928.
Poem Five:
Alas! The Goal is Set
We have sat by the side of a low rugged road,
On a chest filled with shining gold
With our arms uplifted towards the drowsing horde,
And with a prayer from the depths of our soul.
We have begged for the comforts of all other man
At the cost of a great race pride
When all we get, we give to them
But for ourselves we refuse to provide.
We have opened the vaults that contain all the wealth,
And have borne it till our frames now bend,
We have delivered the burden at the cost of our health,
While laboring for all other men.
As we worked in fields they taught us a way,
For a time we refused to leave it
Up from the earth we brought wealth day by day
Which was ours but we did not receive it.
They taught us to ASK and all would be given,
We were beggars but still we could give,
They say that�s the course which leads to heaven,
But it is finished when we cease to live.
Our life�s blood�s pier in the country�s foundation,
We have died that other�s might live,
Our sisters go begging in the fields of damnation,
Because their brothers have nothing to give.
Alas! Nay, not alas, but yet --
There is time and we must atone,
Our vision is clear and the prophet has come,
If it is death let it be for our own.
Richard H. Ross Bey
from the Moorish Guide National Edition
Vol. 1, No. 4, Page 4.
September 21, 1928.
Poem Six:
The Middle Ages
The Middle Ages which they say were dark
Like me, were lit with Thy grace, Oh Lord!
And rare with music like a singing lark
Rising with notes of Thy divinest word!
Averrhoes, Aquinas and Maimonides,
Muhammadan and Christian and Jew,
Interpreted the richness of their creeds,
Thy Church brooding over all points of view.
Like a grand tree, rooted in faith supreme,
Its glory and its strength protecting all,
Illuminating Earth with Heaven�s beam
Of Brotherhood of Man without the Fall!
Hermits and princes; men with wisdom�s rods
With which they walked abroad and talked to gods.
Claude McKay
Catholic Worker
Vol. 13, No. 4, May 1946, page 5.
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