Joy overcomes

Joy comes

Now sweetened with a thing else.
But then I had no time

No time to feel the pain
No comparison to try to give it a name

No sight
Nor understanding
Of the sham.

Living the lie
Civiliesed
Drawn through Western mould

Thin, lacking substance
Not knowing the worth of small things
Precious things
Easily sold.

Born to work
Not to work to live.
Enslaved
Without even knowing

Family
Company
The time to acknowledge
A Shared time
To be just there

Cementing ties
Yasar, my br'er friend,
Faisal my friend from before
Arif Bhai a friend for the now.

The fair companion
Came
Changed
Educated me with tender loving care.

A gust of fresh air,
Monsoon of the east
Drenching my soul
That brought me home again.

From machine to man
Feeling
Helping
Connecting

For thank God, my Lord blessed
With a twinkle in my eye
That was her cheerful smile.
Making me both, and at once hot blooded, tempered and tame.

That still lightens my life
A not so heavy load to bear.

And a thing that I cannot bring to verse
That I cannot risk with terse words
That in this day and age people ridicule

And still others portray as cruel.
My LORD has blessed me with the greater.
A calm happiness that takes me when I stand,
at night.

Location:London

Borrowed Woe

Borrowed Woe

Sorrows line my brow
Alienation became my name

Swimming with my eyes
Near the tear filled rim

Nothing new this feeling of
Dread mixed in Disgust

Every decade sees in some new crisis
A new turn of events

That twists and turns my stomach
With malcontent

Never allowed to be put to rest
Always regurgitated up

Like a cow being fattened
On other people's hard luck

For these newspapers hail each new low
Like they take pleasure in other people's woe.

How their culture victimised me,
Alienated and converted me.

They called me Libyan,
Because I was Muslim and brown skinned.

Well I am.
Libyan, Saudi Arabian, Iraqi and Syrian.

And they?
They are the ones that condone evil.

Torture.
Who buy the lies of their corrupt masters.

Well they too,
Will be called to account on the day Day of decision.

Those who condone the torture of my
Mothers, brothers and sisters.

Of their children
my children

And no escape will they have.
From GOD's wrath.

END-
Shafees
Patience is the best of clothing,
That hides and shrouds what goes on inside.

My heart goes out to those that continue to suffer torture under the sway of the wicked regime.
And to my Gazan and Palestinian brothers, sisters and children...
I stand with you.

But even in our despair
My heart blooms and gladdens
With belief and trust that in all
Goodness will shine through.

Location:The US

Thatcher's Children- poem

Thatcher's Children... (posted 24/4/2008)
Thatcher's children, we did "our time".
But Rehab doesn't work,
When you're brought up in grime.

While you're behind prison bars,
Ever in your mind,
Never escaping to the stars.

Rehab don't work,
When you born, brought up.
With beliefs that leave you naked and stark.

You are- who you are,
Don't aspire to be.
No imagination, no history.

Thatcher's children, we've grown up,
Through times of uncertainty,
Fearing change. Becoming Thatcher's people.

Can't dare to hope,
Can't see a better way.
Better just forget and try to cope.

We're all Thatcher's children,
Where-ever we might be,
We live in a World of Uncertainty.

Shafees 

At a time of uncertainty, recession...
Our nature is to dare not to hope,
To buckle down all our aspirations,
To not VOTE for Change, Nor HOPE itself.
But to vote for what we know, however CRASS,
However BASE!

The Problem with Obama, 28th July 2009

The Problem with Obama, published 28/7/2009 on MySpace.

The relevance of this after so long appears after reading Chris Hedges... on truthdig

The greatest problem the World faces today is the resolution of the East-West divide.

I recall Tony Blairs congratulatory message that he sent to President George W. Bush on his re-election, Mr Blair lauded Mr Bush as a unifying force in a divided World. Off course the pair of them destroyed the credibility of the one organisation that was capable of really being seen as a unifying force for the World, the U.N. But irrespective of Mr Tony Blairs spin, his words underlie a sentiment that he must have keenly felt: a divided World.

At the root of our divided World, is not a Chinese Bird Cage but rather an unholy Jerusalem.

The Middle East is so vitally important for our divided World, not just because it straddles the East and the West, but because more importantly 1 in 4 of the World’s population are Muslims.

And then we had Obama.

Just today I am returning from staying 2 weeks in Mombasa with my in-laws. Blogging on a plane is off course one of my most beautiful past-times.

Obama is Kenya’s favourite son, precisely because his father was Kenyan. And so on his election to the office of the US Presidency, Kenya celebrated with a 2-day National Holiday. Mombasa has also honoured Obama by naming the important thoroughfare that connects Mombasa town to Moi International Airport after him: Barrack Obama Avenue. And yet there, I learned that Obama had vowed not to enter into Kenya until it puts an end to corruption. Laudable sentiments indeed.

Off course the seriousness of our divided World has attracted less laudable sentiments, and more telling actions from Obama.

The tragedy that was and is today’s Gaza has been forgotten by most of us. But Palestine and Gaza are more relevant to World Unity than ever before. Israel invaded and decimated Gaza on the pretext of stopping the Gazan rocket attacks into their territory. Gazan’s themselves began these token/ ineffectual attacks as a means of trying to the end the year long blockade that Israel had wantonly imposed on them because they sought to elect Hamas as their political broker and representative on the international scene. Off course time and again throughout the Muslim World the people, who represent the people that matter, are ignored, pressurized and demonized. Obama is no different; even he cannot swallow the bitter pill of democracy within the Middle East.

 

And while Gazans suffered innumerable war crimes, and continue to suffer under an illegal blockade that prevents them rebuilding let alone coming to terms with the great loss of civilian lives that they have been made to suffer, Obama turns a blind eye.

 

Worse still Obama then rubs salt into our still fresh wounds.

For complicit in the massacre that was Gaza, and in their continued suffering, is Egypt. And what better place to extend a hand of friendship, an olive branch of Peace to the Muslim World, than in the place through which Israel still continues to exert it’s most greatest oppression of the Palestinian people. 

 

That speech may have been well written and performed, but taking place in close proximity to the tragedy that is Gaza whilst seeking to ignore and belittle its significance says much, much more.

 

Kenyans should be happy with Obama’s, impossible but nevertheless laudable, insistence on it’s being corruption free. The World should be much less so with Obama’s misguided wish to heal a broken World by ignoring its most recent victims.