Within each breast a private kingdom stirs,
Where longing shapes its own uncharted law,
Where will asserts what no edict defers,
And selfhood stands on what the heart first saw.
Yet round us press the claims of kin and race,
The weight of custom and the voice of need,
The roles we’re asked to fill, the given space,
The common ground that asks our common seed.
Between these poles we live our numbered days,
Now servant, now the sovereign of our will,
Now lost in others’ roads, now our own ways,
Now bending to the world, now standing still.
This war within is life’s most sacred art —
The self made whole by what would break the heart.
#921 On Rage and Its Reckoning
What fury seizes me when fools hold sway,
When blunted minds preside and none protest,
When those who cannot see presume to say
Which path we take, and put our work to test.
I bite my tongue until the iron taste
Of silence bleeds — yet still I must defer
To those whose stewardship is nought but waste,
Whose word is law, whose vision is a blur.
Yet who am I to rail against the night?
I search my anger and am shamed to find
That pride, not justice, kindles all this light —
’Tis vanity that so inflames my mind.
The fault I name in others is my own:
A king of self, upon a rented throne.
#920 On The Duplicitous Dealer
They come with smiles rehearsed, their offers set,
A table dressed in false civility,
Who reads the room and corners you — and yet
They call it choice, this forced humility.
The terms arrive like verdicts, cold and sealed,
No room to breathe, no margin left to turn,
The hand extended only to be steeled —
Comply or watch the bridges start to burn.
How clean their conscience sleeps, how well they feed
On spoils dressed up as generosity,
Who profits most from someone else’s need
And calls the whole transaction victory.
But justice has a long and patient gait —
God help them when it finally finds their gate.
#915 On The Entrepreneurs
How bold the ones who conjure things from air,
Who stake their sleep and savings on a dream,
Who hire the hands to realise what they dare
And lift from nothing some audacious scheme.
I watched them move and marvelled at the sight,
Astonished at their chutzpah and their nerve —
To risk what comfort asks us to repay,
To bend the possible beyond its curve.
I know my blood runs cooler, and my heart
Inclines to patience, to the page, and thought;
I lack the gambler’s gift, the founder’s art,
The fire that will not rest till something’s wrought.
Yet I shall cheer the builders from my post,
And feed with quiet hands what I love most.
#911 On What Went Wrong
I watched another take a seat I craved,
And asked what flaw had dimmed my early light —
What forfeit left my gold so long engraved
With someone else’s name, some other’s right.
Was merit not enough, or did I stray
At some unmarked and unreturning turn?
The years grow short; what youth had meant to say
Now smoulders where ambition used to burn.
And yet to rage against the shape of things
Is but to break oneself upon the wheel —
Perhaps each life is measured not by rings
Of office, but by what the quiet feel.
What went wrong? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps all
Was always tending toward a different call.
#908 On The Morning Walk
To step outside before the world grows loud,
When air is clean and light is soft and new,
To walk beneath the white of drifting cloud,
And lift the eyes to unencumbered blue —
The neighbour nods, the stranger tips a smile,
Brief graces passed like coins along the street,
And something loosens, mile by easy mile,
The knot that sleep had failed to quite defeat.
The trees stand green and tall in morning light,
Indifferent to our burdens, blessedly so,
They ask for nothing, offer back the sight
Of something rooted, patient, set to grow.
So let the soul be walked back into bloom —
The morning sky, its ever-open room.
#906 On Tiredness and the Moral Self
The day has wrung me hollow, dry, and spent,
Yet still I press against the fading light,
While Junayd’s words pursue me where I went:
This dunya’s tribulations are our right.
Around me, souls rush headlong, chasing still
The gilded noise of this world’s passing show,
While I am worn by some ungrasped goodwill,
A gentler self I ache to come to know.
To purge the arrogance that clouds my sight,
To love more truly, humbly, than before —
Such is the labour of the moral night,
The quiet war no battlefield makes sure.
Today I am discouraged, tired, worn —
Yet from such soil is moral goodness born.
#905 On Losing the Role to Find the Self
I grieve the self that hid behind the part —
the careful voice, the grace rehearsed and sure,
the borrowed manner passed itself for art,
the mask so worn I took it for my core.
But shame runs deep beneath the gilded show;
the Void has whispered what I would not hear —
that all this competence conceals the woe
of wounds I dressed in praise year after year.
So let the coming months unmake the frame,
let unbecoming be the work I do;
perhaps I built my roles to dodge my shame,
and called that refuge something that was true.
For what the role withheld, the loss restores —
the self was never built for gilded floors.
#904 On The Blank Spaces in Prayer
At every prayer’s close there waits an empty space,
A line where one beloved name must go —
I write yours there, and try to draw your face,
Though what remains of it, I barely know.
The features blur; I reach for what I knew —
Only your eyes stay vivid, close and clear;
I wonder in the silence if I, too,
Still find a place in all you hold most dear.
Forgive me where I failed, as I forgive —
Though how the heart was shattered, I recall;
Today I gather up the shards and live,
And reassemble, odd-shaped pieces, all.
Perhaps my fears have made a liar of me —
And love endures, as steadfast as the sea.
#903 On The Weariness of Becoming
The day gave oxygen, my spirit soared,
I thrived amongst the crowd, alive, awake —
Then came the evening, emptied and ignored,
Too drained to think, too spent for thinking’s sake.
I am a creature made for voices, rooms,
For human warmth and questions, give and take —
Yet every dawn some other sorrow looms,
And every choice another self must break.
The future calls across an unknown sea,
The weekend beckons like a distant shore;
My very human fears I cannot flee,
Though grace and equanimity I swore.
Between the man I am and what’s to be,
The miles of tiredness stretch — and still, I see.