Tag: love

I wrote you a love letter

She makes me cross-eyed

My dearest,

Do you want to know what hiding anxiety and depression look like?

Try an erattic pulse, forgetting to breathe, anticipating the worst and soothing that only comes through the reassurance of intimate connection.

Try looking at the relentless gym goer, the man obsessed with providing the best life he can to  his family, or even extend an eye of empathy to the war mongers who see no healing except through expressing how much they want to kill themselves, by curating outwardly creative, yet deceitful ways to justify killing others.

And on the topic of suicide, how do they hide, those suicidals?

We hide in prayer, in worship, in devotion to something larger than ourselves. 

You may think strangely of the above, but if you allowed yourself deeper reflection, you’d realise, that we have to stop pathologising these things, and rather see them as symptoms of not extending every last fibre of our being to a cause.

Not expressing the immense tapestry of our abilities onto the world and releasing it in creative and artistic splendour.

It’s the soul taking you to account, the inner knowing, that voice that speaks to you and again is not a stigmatic label like schizophrenia nor a disorder of any fashion, it’s that buzzing, that noise that won’t go away, urging you into action.

Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and a whole host of concocted psychological disorders are just by-products of unfulfilled potential incessantly knocking on your door. It’s the gnawing consciousness ear bashing you, soul crushing you, so that like cardamon, you release a fragrance.

Don’t be sold on these ideas that are hell bent on categorising you and lulling you into inaction and the comfort of a diagnoses (read: excuse). Rather, understand them as cues to spring into action because your soul knows you are capable of more.

So see all my efforts and exasperation as just answering the call, as a reluctance to procrastination, as a fulfilling of a Godly command, to realise our fullest potential in total and utter gratitude.

Wesam El dahabi

Washing sins away

I had a shower this morning.
These days showers are more metaphorical than anything else,  
water beads that pelt me,  
and wash sins away,
or so I assume.
 
Unseen things, unknown things – I thought were my own –
are now on full display like a merchandised window,
 
and the people always do a double take as they go past.
 
That’s just it,
knowing people will take a second look,
isn’t too different than them second guessing you,
and sometimes you just don’t want anyone’s prying eyes,
their curious nose,
nor their wondering minds.
 
What is this mess of a man,
scars, and bruises and well-worn hands,
words thrown up with the same well wishes as rice on a wedding day,
carefully curated,
that no one understands.
 
And at that point,
when no one gets the point,
when you scream down into your marrow,
‘what’s the point?’
words may as well just disappear.
 
If it takes the pit to be spat out for people to see that you have something in your mouth,
if it takes muting your voice to tell the world you’re not without a whirlwind of words,
then so be it, 
let them taste the shrill of your silence,
and only read you when you’re dead.
 
Sometimes our sins keep us mute and other times they make us shake violently like an epileptic who has to sweat
involuntary spasms into thoughts,
or thoughtlessness,
inconsideration and worthlessness.

The punishment for the sin, is the sin itself,
and that’s why showers don’t work anymore.

Even throwing myself into the ocean leaves me in a tesseract of inability,
of timeless timelessness looking into time with longing and distance like I can reach it at the end of my fingertips and change it,
the elusive fuck!

If you haven’t let life beat the shit out of you for all that you are,
you haven’t told the truth to yourself,
and your sins still hold you hostage,
and that shower will always be a bandaid.

Wesam El dahabi

Artistic purpose

There is but one singular purpose for the artist, and that’s to purify their art to one ode, one rhythm, one harmony, one line of prose, one sentence. To the magic elixir of our art, the final opus, as clean and pure as it can be.

I don’t think you’re an artist if through all your work, all your searching, all the things you produce, you aren’t driven by the chase of finding that one thing that exemplifies everything you’re trying to achieve.

This extends into the scientific world as well, perhaps even more-so, for what is science if it is driven only by a robotic, lifeless and mostly monetised objective, by a narrative enslaved to restricted paradigms and formulae, how impure a pursuit is science if the scientist isn’t driven by a romantic ideal of discovery and rewriting otherwise dogmatic beliefs? The purity under their microscope, the precision of the one cut of the scalpel, all of it, driven madly by purity of pursuit.

The silver lining is the purpose, as minimal as possible, untainted.

This chase, this desire is but a longing for our origin. We were born pure, and we spend our lives chasing it. Chasing down the reminder of what we once were.

In our innermost core, we’re utterly and magnetically attracted to it. We linger, we pang, we ache, we feign for it.

The addiction can be so overwhelming that we lose our way, much like a madman searching through the forest looking down for their treasure for so long that when they look up, the world seems so disoriented and your location in it all is unknown.

Some people pop, they have enough and cannot contain themselves, either their outer appearance changes to resemble that of a derelict, for what is a homeless person except someone without a place to return to for safeguarding from the elements? Nay, perhaps those people become the elements.

They’ve lost their home or way back to it that they become the elements they’re surrounded by, is it with this subconscious thought that we so numbingly ignore them as we walk past, they, vanish into the environment, into their surroundings?

That’s not how we understand the outer appearance to resemble, and so we label them mad, homeless, worthless because we attach worth to orientation, to a direction, to a purpose. What if their purpose all along was finding that purity and in the method, have become the purity, outward semblance like thorns on a rose, unkempt to keep people away, so they can guard their secret.

The secret in the Sufi path was never to look down on a vagabond, a darwish, a person humbled before God.

It was to treat the faqir, the spiritually impoverished, sometimes appearing as the materially impoverished with the same dignity owed to a sultan.

And so we return to the artist engrossed in their search for purity, perhaps by God’s bounty and generosity He allows beauty or remnants of it to extend to all humanity through their fingers, through their states as a sign for us to be reminded of our purity, without losing our minds.

Perhaps by His largesse He grants the artist temporary sanity to pursue their goal or at least enjoy the process whilst they are alive.

Wesam El dahabi

Love has a breath

Drink from loves wine,
so that divinity may be on your breath.

I told myself this when I first learned of a divinity so pure, you could carve yourself to pieces with it and not feel a thing.

I imagine myself to be that person,
only in a perfect world.

Alas I am not,
a lofty aspiration nonetheless is better than drifting away without sails into the obscurity of wallowing.

There is a truth in the most wretched of people.

Most don’t like to get their hands dirty though and that’s okay.

But if you like clean hands,
please don’t pretend to understand.

There’s musk and agar,
frankincense and amber,
a waft of patchouli and rose waiting for everyone,

there’s a breath in us all yet.

W.E.

introversion – seventy eight

No one gets to go there,
these walls are not scalable, not saleable.

You can’t claw your way in,
you cannot pierce past this skin,

this pilgrimage is reserved for the hermit,
for the inwardly inward, for the withdrawn & within.

I’ve seen your eyes pan,
I’ve seen your desperation for man,
and this whole time you missed the essence of his span.

Wretched carnality, devoid of spirituality,
you’d eat my flesh and spit it out without so much a thought.

I’ve squandered women like you and all their triviality,
I’ve toyed with their insincerity like a sport.

The stench of the ulterior motived precedes them,
their actions are seen in advance by men, real men.

Foresight and experienced in the sinisterism of  hucksters,
gypsy travellers settling on whatever soul lines their sack,
they’ll sell you a love story and break your back.

Burning at the stake is too swift and merciful a punishment,
it’s far easier to immortalise them with rhyme and meter,
and leave them to their ways in banishment.

They ask, “Where does it hurt?”
The reply comes gushing, “the place you couldn’t reach”.

W.E.

The hue of desperation

 

Desperation is such an ugly dress,

beneath it is the reality of disloyalty,

gnash the silence with the opioid of your fetish,

oh what an incredible appetite you have my dear,

incisors and nails,

acting all frail,

your ego needs to set sail,

and there you are,

in the thick of men’s hands,

ever on demand,

and all it took,

was a rejection of,

a painting you,

a showing of,

a man,

telling you where you stand.

Be well with your dress,

or take it off,

you’re naked anyway,

why on earth would the pit of your fire burn with such rage,

if indeed you want this veil,

if after all, you indeed are frail.

Perhaps the frailty you express,

is a need to undress,

perhaps it’s nothing more,

than feeling the hands of your father hold you like you exist.

W.E.

Vulnerability

 

In an ideal world, if we weren’t so impatient, if we slowed down to at least be able to appreciate the lather of people as they come to maturation,
perhaps we’d equally be as mature to accept their vulnerability.

HOWEVER, we’re not mature or developed enough.
It’s sexy, it’s trendy, it makes for good conversation fodder, but the reality is that dealing with a fuck up and loving them in all their insecurities, their vileness, and more so than loving them, but nailing an idea of loyalty into their soul, that you’re always going to be around is not something you find that easily.

In a world where flickering between connection and disconnection has never been easier, vulnerability remains taboo and I won’t believe anyone who says otherwise.

I’m abandoned more than ten times a day and that’s merely in basic exchanges, it’s no wonder I and others like me shut the world out to our innermost realities.
W.E.

 

The virtuous wolf


Where is my prose snarled a hungry witch,
of crimson cheek and skin of lavender,
ego unfulfilled and hips that bare,
oblivious to the lurking scavenger.

The remnants of rib and soil,
pheromone for severed souls,
a waft, a zephyr, myrtle and sage,
and lustful pangs that she can’t control.

With whisk and ease came the wolf,
hearing her plea for excavation,
with a lifetime of ravage and hurt did he answer,
aloof with misery and devastation.

We perform best where our habits  reconcile,
where we return to our defaults,
I ravage because I’ve been ravaged.
I do to others what’s been done to me,
it’s how I love, how I hate.

I eat away until I reach the pit,
by then, I’ve become my prey,
or they’ve become me.
It’s hard to tell the difference.

This attachment is beyond the pull of gravity,
this attraction more like blissful insanity.

A man  waltzing with prose between his teeth,
ever an incisor for a willing player,
blood covered hands, nails and underneath,
content only as a soul slayer.

This grief, this wail, this mourning and shrill,
this distance and indifference, and reality pill,
this noise, and orchestra, and blunt tip quill,
this rapture, sin and Frankenstein will.

It’s grotesque and tender and poetry at once,
a culmination, an opus and the crescendo waiting for a home,
a bare skin canvas waiting for the cut,
in the end a wandering sail boat,
taken by winds, a storm and white wash foam.

And there resides that scavenging wolf,
torn between hunger and the thrill,
ever the demons, a wrestle till death,
hell with every pant, a battle of will.

This carnality for the pulse,
the race for fulfilment and satisfaction,
the lure of the woman, the dance with the devil,
the lustful glance of distraction.

-Wesam El dahabi

There is no prison worse than the one of being trapped to base desires.
The wolf is the carnal ego leading us down the path of destruction.