Posted on by EAT

Blast

As destruction was rained down upon Iraq during America’s invasion and occupation the region, I couldn’t help but wonder how many utterly innocent lives were completely destroyed by the carnage.

Blast

Misguided angels struck them on their beauteous heights,
Then rotting frames collapsed in flames from carious heights.

Demons vie for rights to control and destroy the masses,
Commanding herds to slaughter from their devious heights.

Sheets of fire consume in the name of good intention;
A rain of steel tears homes apart from dubious heights.

Huddled against fierce wind and cold on the mountain slopes
Refugees watch their cities burn from various heights.

A wide-eyed child points toward flares and thunderous sounds;
His blood-caked mother cries beneath the furious heights.

Seekers of emptiness fall into abysmal depths;
Seekers of fullness fall flailing from hideous heights.

The simple answer stares the world in the face each day;
Seek neither deep and fetid pits nor glorious heights.

With half the world besieged, Zahhar, by war and famine,
How did you come to live amid such bounteous heights?

This is my 116th ghazal.

Publication History:

Muse Apprentice Guild (web-based) — Fall 2003

Posted on by EAT

Phrases

Here’s another old ghazal from the archives, slightly modified for flow and imagery. I’m starting to wonder how many of these I’ll end up resurrecting as I go through them. Note that this post is backlogged to the date the ghazal was actually written.

Phrases

Teens drive by in rides that thump out caustic phrases,
And yet nearby brown robins chirp out lyric phrases.

Calling from the minaret, a scowling prophet
Feigns to see with empty words in vatic phrases.

Winding, rippling in the wood and through the meadow,
Streams converge and weave to town with rustic phrases.

Shattered concrete, fallen bridges, broken towers:
Ravaged structures heard the call of seismic phrases.

Pooled in valleys, morning mists floats up the canyons—
Water rising from a lake of magic phrases.

Hiding deep in yellowed fabrics, cracked and tearing,
Wisdom fades into a scrap of relic phrases.

Bald eccentric maples stand by bony poplars;
Autumn shadows speak with dark and mystic phrases.

Shielding life, a veil of blue shuts out the heavens,
Then at night the curtain parts to cosmic phrases.

Call them pearls or gems or beads or what you fancy;
Still, the necklace forms a string of strophic phrases.

Relax, Zahhar, and just write ghazals till your done;
Countless thoughts can still be formed in distich phrases.

This is my 112th ghazal.

Posted on by EAT

Dancelight

My very first girlfriend studied ethnic dance at UCLA, amongst other things. She was born in Taiwan, but raised in Southern California. Although we were only an item for about a year and a half, she had a tremendous impact on my life in general.

I owe her a lot, actually, for she inspired me to better myself in multiple ways—Everything from the way I talked and carried myself to the way I perceived the world and my place within it. If we never met, I’m sure that I would still be an irrepressible, delinquent teenager, or worse. She was a catalyst for self-improvement, so it seemed fitting to dedicate a ghazal to her even though many years have passed and we have both long since moved on.

Dancelight

For Wennifer

Though countless twirling wonders dance before to bait my heart,
Her dance splits night asunder—brilliance holds elate my heart.

When first her dark eyes opened, all the bashful heavens blushed;
The full moon danced out singing, “Let her gaze gyrate my heart!”

I saw her lightly dancing midst a grove of cherry trees,
Their blossoms rained upon her; scenes as such translate my heart.

A weeping porcelain rose cried, “Once with dancing step she passed;
She picked me up and kissed me; now what love can sate my heart?”

Her midnight jasmine fragrance dances playful on the wind,
And drifts across the rooftops on to stimulate my heart.

She walked down by the ocean where the waves danced at her feet,
The sea said, “Though I fall back, this does not abate my heart.”

One day I heard Zahhar say, “I did not know how to dance,
And though she tried to teach me, I could not locate my heart.”

This is my 111th ghazal.

Publication History:

Muse Apprentice Guild (web-based) — Fall 2003