Wednesday Poem

Grace

Eyes open in the womb. The struggle arrives to turn darkness into light. Dangling on the wings of
the Phoenix. The creative process begins to turn ugly. Vandalizing and robbing graves of
child prodigies turning into serious discussions of Mass Murder and the therapeutic value of
saturday morning shopping sprees. The betrayal of geniuses burning at the stake. The spider
descends. The violence is always there. The web embraces us all. More insidious than
drugs. More pleasurable than sex. Slightly entangled. Slightly confused. That possible
criminal element awakens you to the terror and lonliness of running into the silent pain of
someone else looking to you for answers. Glamorous and well financed pools of blood
profiling on neighborhood corners while smiling at and tempting the boldest gangsta rap.

The wealth we squandered on poor excuses and starving lines of poetry inspired by the
tenderness of your smile healed me, cleansed me of my indifference to the Holy Scriptures
should have told us something about being chidren of God in all this Madness, against all
these odds of too intense and too delicate to be real lovers in real times. The wind, the water,
the waves so natural in our hands. Falling on notes and images forever caressing the Full
Moon and laughter too strong to be forgotten on opening nights and wanting to be a big hit.
Run... Run... Run... to the birth, to the growth, to the experience of harmony so wise and
peaceful desires to go back to the beginning and try to be good to yourself and others... are
searching too!
.

by Umar Bin Hassan
Poetry International, 2006

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