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Is love
Can be found softly resting
Intertwined in the arms
Of an embrace
Heartfelt
Or the small space
That sits between the shake of two hands
That come to each other with nothing
But peace

Is familiar territory
And sometimes not
For the character within
Those four walls
Can turn any dwelling homely
But is most at home
At home

I have done neither
Love
Nor home justice
My words tremble
At the thought
Of their reality

Layla

That mystery
That spoke to me
In interrupted silence
A language so clear
And polluted
There's something about her
She comes alive in herself
Serene and superficial
Silent and deafening
Starry eyed when she appears clearly
Sheltering and exposing
Its as if sometimes
The rules don't apply to her
But still after dusk
She's at it again
What a sight in the city
She competes with it
For light
You know her name
At times I feel insane
Majnoon if you will
But I join a hundred others
Necks strained
And she has the time
For the lovers
Whisperers, screamers
And the ones barely breathing
The prayers
None prey after her
But many pray after her
Some cannot love her in her absence
And forget their odes to her later
And when she arrives again
She'll be the same Layla

Candlelit River

It is as if he threw
A thousand candles
From himself
And aligned them so
They drifted
Of many, one
Out of place in the day
But perfectly put
For my naked eye
As I watched them glimmer
And shine and simmer
Calm down Jamal,
Its only sunlight on the river

Reflection

We may live in a balance

The more grief I see

The more love I feel

Sometimes It Snows In May (In Memory of Yen Soh)

As I saw
The tiny cluster of clouds
That held some light
It made me hope
You might be safe again
Sound and found
But the sound of silence
Still pierces our ears
The world just feels a little harsher
Now that you’ve left it
And left us
I have run out of words
To match what we feel
And that screen of memories
Has been playing today
And all of them great
This bittersweet fateful taste
We will never forget your way
Cars like that don’t pass us every day,
And sometimes, it snows in May

Paradise Beneath Your Feet

Mother, Mother
Not even Marvin could sing your worth
No poetic flourish, no Wordsworth
No prose could be so perfect
No writer so competent
No painter so skilled
Why am I still writing?

The arms of a mother
Irreplaceable by the charms of another
No Shakespeare could create a fitting ode
To depict that heavenly abode
Resting beneath your exhausted feet
That earn you a warrior’s reward
For a warrior’s resolve

Pray I feed you one day like I was once fed
And keep me in your prayers
So I walk untouched through the forest of naysayers
Pray I never break away from the warm clasp of your hand
Meditation, the deepest contemplation, I will never understand...
Your worth.

Nano

Still seated
Hand clasps wrist
And that beautiful face
Calm, collected
Although pain may brew
In every vein
It even shows at times
Even as light beams reflect
Off the gold rimmed frames
And glowing skin
Glistening juxta-
Posed to a beneath
That silently screams sorrow
To the avid listener
Myself, this time.