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VIRGIN EARTH
She lies before me, featureless and freshAs the savannah on the first dawn.My white salt, her blood-red ironMeet there on the restless landscape.She is my blessing, and I am her glory,I rejoice, or rather whisper to myself.This before me is the one true object,The actual event, and I am her witness.At that her strata quake…
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ALLAHU CIPHER SONG
To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavensAnd all the beings there are upon the earthLike my arms and each hair and finger on themAnd my two eyes and all the worlds they seeAll they’ve seen wherever my feet have beenEach and all belong to me and I to all of themEvery blessed and profane…
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PAGODA
I returnto this peakand seed its soil,my fathermother,with the dustof a thousand landsso that this templemight becomethe blessed Kaabaof a new order.
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MODERNITY
The crowds rush forthlike mad berserker pilgrims,with visions of Paradise before their eyes. But the plain narrows,and closes in like a vise,until it comes to a point. The hordes do not quit their push.No — they only grow densertoward the convergence. The numbers swell and clamoreven as the noses of those in frontare ground into…
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DOGMA
The sheikh took a drag from the unfiltered cigarette, then pushed the smoke through his pursed lips like a steam train. Then he replied: “This diversionary world branched from the real world 15 thousand years ago. It began as just a tiny aberration, a wall constructed around a garden in Mesopotamia, in order to conceal…
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JOURNEY TO THE CENTER
Around and around the pilgrims marchIn narrowing circles around the sacred cube(Any old object will do, all of them sacred cubes)Tunneling down from the mundane surfaceThe face that masks the multitudesTeeming and restless in the hidden depthsThe hujjaj spiral down, down, and downAnd down, down, down, and down a seventh timeUntil they’re standing eyeball to…
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EPIPHANY OF THE MAP
It found me unexpectedOne day standing in qiyamUnfurled there before my eyesI spy the eternal sketchThe map I’ve been searching forThey said it marked out treasuresCherished by all human heartsAll the sages testifiedFind that map, the world is yoursI sailed all the seven seasTraversed every continentOpened so many volumesAnd raided so many gravesTo find that…
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THE MIRACULOUS LETTER
There is a letter in the Qur’anA centuries-old secret,Passed down from mouth to earAnd day to century, and againRemaining a secret now, foreverI won’t reveal, can’t revealWhich one it is, don’t knowThe arcane mix of letters or whatConstellation of moods and starsUnlocked that hidden gateThe sages thought it would openA window to the real worldBeyond…
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NO PILLARS
Exegesis of the Qur’anic verse, {He created the heavens without pillars}, Chapter of Luqman, verse 10. The He of this verse is allah, or the gathering, and the creation established by this gathering is the assembly, which is not a fixed entity, but rather a continuous process of confluence and contention among the multitudes of…
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MUHANNAD & THE DARK CAVE
Muhannad cowered in the darkness of the cave, pulling the woolen blanket closer to his face. It was the only sensory impression available for him to hold onto, other than the damp, cold, amorphous nothingness that pushed inward through his nostrils and in through the holes of his ears, and soaking into the pores in…
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