IN THE WOMEN'S DHIKR TODAY

In the women’s dhikr today
there were
birds circling overhead
darting between us as we sat
huddled in animal skins
then voices struck up the rhythm
footbeats
baby’s feet stretching out and sliding
happily against my viscera
voices taking different paths at first
through the woods but soon
finding a well-worn track
low ones close to the ground
listening for approaching presences
high ones soaring to get a better view

now the footbeats fall faster as
lights are seen from a clearing ahead
a shaker starts up
– that was the shopping
the frisson of excitement at two for one
washing powder –
and a lolloping, skipping drumbeat
– this was the trundle of a car with
a rattly exhaust and water in the fan –
the la ilaha ill’Allah is the water in our
cells, my uterus, the bottle in the
centre of the circle
moving in imperceptible waves
new notes falling in
bright circles of coloured paper
lit from behind, overlapping

The hadra starts
slowly, first mere breaths
Hayy, Hayy, Living, Living
my eyes shut, unborn baby’s
perhaps open and intrigued
seeing the words in my
membranes and singing
with water for its air
feet warming up at last

Now we stand
the togetherness surges
one baby falls asleep
another wakes up and mews for milk
a Hayy runs through our linked
hand circuit, undulating
as each woman takes her rhythm
bouncing
swinging almost
shivering with delight
the ones caught in between
dancing wonky
the birds are punching holes
in the forest canopy now
we are panting because we run
feet levitating
legs still working
coloured circles falling
snow-like
on the threshold of the clearing
welcoming us to the garden
and the Gardener is there

OPENING

The only way to know it is to know what it is not.

Weightless footfalls on your shoulders, weighing what the soul has got

laid out before it. Formless creatures, peeling away night from day

and day from night, and lie from truth, for what is lying, anyway,

but an ill-fitting garment, sleeves too short, that makes the wearer sweat,

while the guilty body checks itself: we won’t be found out yet.

And the image you were made in, from a single clot of blood,

is the only thing that can’t be imaged – Love’s limitless flood.

Can the universe, stretched out to where a bank of nothing starts,

be too little for the One, alive inside believers’ hearts?

We shudder. And remember that our journey has an end,

that the means has no real meaning, that our sisters and our friends

will one day find disillusionment, sweet Truth, at last, unveiled!

And the torture of our questions will, like vampires, shrink and pale;

and our bodies, and the numbers in our electronic vaults

will be eaten up by beasts and worms, and freak computer faults.

What is wax without its wick? Holy rituals, insincere

in their performance have no merit when your destination’s here.

But one instant of awareness might turn out to be your boat,

your one ally in a drowning world; keep breathing, stay afloat.

And the One you knew was not your fickle brain, your perfect tan,

or your critics or your public, your employer or your plan,

comes running towards you faster than the ginger steps you trod,

and it’s clear the Vast could never fit in such a word as God.

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THAT PRIMORDIAL POEM

25/05/07

It was song,
the first breath
everything took.

A great, primordial, one-word poem,
particles held compressed inside
an Infinite Thinker’s Infinite Mind,
awaiting the right moment,
the right canvas, to
explode into existence.

No sketches, trial runs,
soundchecks:

This was pure virtuoso inspiration.

Chaos in all its glorious mess,
A shattered pot in the potting shed,
The volcanic urge to surge and spread,
Give vent to some Love so urgent it
had to express itself, its Heart,
in lava and rock and life’s green art,
twist star-strewn fabric into days,
get drunk on its own seductive gaze
amaze the living daylights out of me,
who gasps:

’Now that’s creativity.’

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IN THE RUBBISH HEAP

(25/04/07)

There is a special kind of grace reserved
for the technological age.
The more machinery proliferates
and eats into our relationship
with God and Earth,
The more angelic aid we have,
Swerving us out of car smashes,
nuclear meltdowns,
electrical fires.
Those that do happen – how
many more were
narrowly missed?
A thousand each?
A millions, even?

That is Divine Generosity, that we
are still allowed to see only
the bad and blame it on God,
while ascribing the fortunate
escapes to chance.
That we are given the choice to
bury our heads in the rubbish heap
and ignore the garden all around.

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DROP BY AND SAY HELLO

(19/04/07)

My heart is an an empty well
when I'm not aware of You.
But with the call of Your Name,
it echoes with light and I
feel a cool ripple across
the surface of a depth
I never knew was there.

A thirsty pore gasps open in
my chest, parched and
desperate to be drowned.
Yet its veins are already soaked,
its jugular warmed by that
Presence it longs for – if
it only knew!

In my chest is a sleeping eye,
its lid drooped down in
blinding despair,

Unable to believe that my Beloved
will visit me in my own home.

But this Loved One, Lover,
reminds me with the
sweetness of what is
portably small and yet
infinitely vast;
’Do not think a bad thought
about Allah.’

If this unimaginable Universe
could come into being at
His word: ’Be!’
Then surely it is an easy matter
for Him to drop by
and say hello.

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DEAR HUMAN

(19/04/07)

Dear Human,

Beloved fool,
Tread lighter on my Face.
If you are not careful,
You will poke out my eye.

Love, The Earth.

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THE OUTLINE

(May 09)

The door swings open and almost closed
pivoting lazily like a child holding a doorhandle
thinking holiday thoughts

Your hair smells of heaven
the back of your neck
of almost-baked bread

Your breathing shudders
some unexplainable fear ebbing
to amnesia in your sleep.

I must get up, must get things done! I peel you away
as slowly as I can so as not to wake you
breaking the vacuum that loving you creates
and lever you back against a cushion where you
splay out, mouth open, unknowing

a stripe across your cheek from the seam of my shirt
the outline of your ear imprinted on my chest.

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THINGS I USED TO BELIEVE (and secretly still do)

A poem for children, illustrations underway by Hanna Sayyida Whiteman (2007)

I used to believe that cowboys rode cows,
That snowballs were made of icecream,

That earwigs caused earache and made you grow hair
In places that nobody's seen.

I used to think buttons were sweeties gone hard,
And all that they needed was chewing,

That cows spoke in rhyme about travelling through time
But all we could hear was them mooing.

When Mum cut up onions I thought that they cried,
That onion tears were what made soup thicker,

And bubbles were trails of invisible snails
Who wanted to move a bit quicker.

"They didn't have colour back then," I would say,
When we watched a black and white flick,

And men who fixed engines and robots and things?
All Scots from a clan called McAnnick.

My parents said "Heavens! She must be insane!"
When I said there was salt in the cellar,

And everyone laughed when I said that the moon
Was a hole in the planet's umbrella.

My brothers all teased me so mercilessly,
my sisters laughed 'til they were ill,

Because I let slip that kids grew from pips
In jamjars on God's windowsill.

"The tooth fairy's rubbish," I'd say to my friends.
"In my house there's a tooth crocodile."

And the bugs with six heads that lived under my bed
Turned to birds when I sang for a while.

When people grow up, they say that the things
they used to believe are untrue.

But what do they know? They think the sky's grey
When I know very well that it's blue.

MINE IS AN AVENUE

(2003)

Mine is not a castle.

I don’t fortify my walls with regrets and
stiff makeup and
uncomfortable tights.

High heels to change my gait
will only give me bunions,
or so my mother said.

And a cardboard cut-out for a personality
just isn’t enough.

Painted grins only get lipstick on their teeth.

Mine is an avenue.

Nothing but a space through which things pass,
like an artery, a gut, a birth canal even.
I fill it with the sweet smell of un-self-consciousness,
and retreat into it as often as I can.
My music filling the cracks in the pavement,
my favourite flowers growing through every gap.
The bluest sky, the most
butterscotch of leaves,
And the skin

of the city

close

enough

to reach out and touch