Accept Me As I Am [a prayer for the profane]

Accept me as I am.

A liar, a fool, a pretender.

A profane obnoxiousness full of venom

and lies.

A soul refracted into many --

all reflections mere imposters --

pining for one.

Accept this.

See me

who I am.

See me.

See the filth, the lie, the shining heart

that yearns and yearns and yearns

even in its maddening forgetfulness.

This mad woman

with a tattered robe

and a mouth full of lies --

lies and venom.

Lies and venom.

Accept me as I am.

For I am a serpent,

I am a lie,

I am a masterful delusion

that children can see through for a laugh.

A cauldron bubbling, toads croaking in the silence

while some angels double over in laughter at the drama that this is.

Yes, it's a drama.

It's an expulsion.

It's a spitting of words jumbled, uncouth, unrelated that do not belong to my mouth.

I have drank venom

and I spit it,

I spit it,

I spit it.

Such a cad of a woman.

I am in tatters

but proud.

I am mad

but vain.

I have no reason,

no notion,

no not even bewilderment.

Just a load of hateful lies to spit out. Out and out.

I spit.

I spit out that I am other than who I am.

I am me.

I spit out that I must not will to live.

I live.

I spit out that another but You is the master of my faith.

I say, "No!"

I say no, no, no, no!

None of you fake imposters,

you oblivious beings

who do not find meaning within your wondrous existence, you!

You!

You whose eyes are glued inwards,

looking into the back of their abysmal skulls,

watching your endless plays of misery or trivial happiness

are my masters.

You are liars.

You are liars.

You do not even know your fate.

You do not know what raced you to conception,

and what is guiding you swiftly towards your death

you self-serving dolls!

You are not my masters.

Alas! Alas! Master! They have held my soul by the throat.

They have held my soul by the throat and poured in me their vials of lies

suggesting that You are forgetful, that You do not love,

that we are not together, You & I,

living and breathing one another in one breath of

Al-

Lah.

Al-

Lah!

Breathe me.

Breathe me my Master.

I have become profane.

And You are Sacred.

I am a lie.

And You are the Truth.

I am a delusion, a whiff of dust.

And I take three spaces when I have but one for me.

Therefore You Are! You Are! You Are!

You Are.

Lead me.

~

.ramla

12:48 am

Sitting in the lawn

legs folded

on the grass

under the moonlight, and the warming rays of a street-lamp

Karachi, Pakistan

Triangulation -- a poem

Triangulation

You hear

What I say

You say

And I hear

You are

And I see

You see

Who I am

You know

And I know.

I know.

I know.

When I know

And I know,

Why

this triangulation?

Why

When I say

You hear

You repeat

So they hear

What you say

Why

When I see

Who you are

Then you show

So they see

Will they see?

If they could

hear and see

then they would

hear and see

Why speak?

I am

And You are.

Let this be.

Let this be.

~ ramla

January 07, 2010

At the writer's desk

Prayer for Today, March 28th, 2009

Liberate the human who lives within my heart! 

You Are Laughing!

Dear Allah!

I am feeling terribly sad at the moment. OK, the word terrible overdoes it, not that sad really, but enough to have forced out a tear.

Yes, yes, alllllllll I want is to get your affectionate attention. I mean my only passing solace is this that I have at least started feeling closer to You again, and not as distant and cast outside as I had thought myself out to be.

I talk too much.

So. How do I make fun of my situation? I mean there's this urge in my heart to petition You, to communicate with you in my human wordy language. to draw Your attention, even though it's already there. And somehow, not to do it such that it is ungrateful.

You are You, You change not, the only one who changes is I with respect to you! I am the only one really learning to dance here, for You are already in Your pre-determined glory!

Well.

So I feel like a mouse, who has been caught stealing stale cheese. And while the cheese was being whisked away, I manage to stuff a bite so big in my mouth that I can't swallow nor would spit. It's too big to let go, and too much to digest. This bit of stolen stale cheese! This desire that is stuck in my throat, that I am not spitting out! You know it's stuck in the mouth of this hapless mouse. You are laughing, for Your benevolence always plans something far more interesting and rewarding than a stale piece of cheese. But I am a mouse with a limited capacity for intelligence, and I think I better hold on to my ill-benefiting loot!

You have turned me out empty like a wallet full of forgotten knick-knacks, but there is a coin still stuck in.

I am astounded at the tenacity of my own desires! How absurd!

So this is my situation currently. Are You laughing? For I am near tears! I believe In You, and I am in tears.

I cannot laugh at this any longer Allah! You have created me and Your knowledge of my being is subtle and all-pervasive. You have known me.

I know You too. It could not be that You give me an improbable stone and I can hammer it into shape. This is an improbable stone. Because it is Desire, and I am not meant to have it.

You alone are privy to the pain that I have felt for my plans. Those perfect, fixed plans. Those ideas, notions, concepts. It all seems so right, but it all goes so wrong. I am not going to blame the whole scheme of things. I am going to accept that what I put my heart after is not what is meant to be achieved this way.

I am going to accept that You have an infinitely better idea for this mouse, dangling as of now from Your fingers by the tail, wailing in misery. Laugh! Humor Yourself! I am a clever enough mouse to smell the abundance I haven't yet seen.

Yes, I am miserable at the thought of giving up, but it's momentary. I want to share something with You. My heart is in considerable sadness, but I am thinking, I should trust You.

After all, for all the other things that I have given up, I have always found that which is far more permanent and indestructible, right in the middle of the chaos of this world. I have found security, depth, and joy.

I am really miserable Allah. I am miserable for my desire. I thank You for the growth You have given me through this trial, but I am thoroughly done with this. My heart tells me that it is time for me to have learned enough.

You know I have decided to dedicate these next few days entirely to myself. (Well, this has not happened quite the way I imagined, but I am content that I am following an emerging plan.) I have decided to let go of both physical materials and the desires of my heart. This could be temporary insanity, but it's something I am going to do to lighten myself enough to be ready for the massive transitions You have set in motion.

And so, I had started giving things up - things that I love, but things that I wanted to give away to enrich the lives of another. Yet there is this thing that remains: my plan for human love.

This is hard for me, and then again, not so completely. I am hapless in or out of love. I have had to speedily transform so many of my relationships - transforming them into something benevolent, something that allowed my growth also.

Yet there is this one that remains.

I am helpless, I am truly tired. I am blessed, and in gratitude. I am floating, and I am not alive.

I will, in short, to hand over to You. To let go. To give up. Utterly. Completely.

I want to empty myself out to You. Fully empty.

Where I am empty, You are Filling - and I will not even ask for this fulfillment. Have with me as You may Your way. I am not frightened of You anymore. I trust You. May be I pretend it is hard for me to give up, but my heart is so full of grief for withholding from You, that I wish, at some level, for this emptiness... for this Surrender.

Take me! Take everything I possess! Turn it to dust, and blow it all away! Free me from my enslavement! Grant me the freedom of complete surrender, of annihilation, of death before I die!

Release me from my desire!

Take my eyes, mouth, hands, feet! Finish the I off, and Be You! In all Your glory!

Amen!

You

Ya Allah!

Give my heart the strength I need, and wary me not with distraction.

_Prophecy