You would not be,
You could not be,
Without drawing me
Into you 'mood,' on anything yours,
******* me around just for the heck to
see!
And carry me close--your 'loved' son
For whom you wanted to be the one
In charge and in your seat after you're
gone;
And so I laid all else aside, faithful to your
call,
So heard your word alone, and only at
your nod had it done!
Then you were nightly fed with evil
misunderstanding,
As loving hearts too often are prone to
slipping
On malicious dice cast by envious others,
like 'echoes travelling
From the center like horses' wildly let
loose--
Ah, and the brother who so wept to you
over my sorrowing!
I was mistaken---
As one of them days I had to awaken
Just to learn that you were taken
In death, and left a denial of my little
rightful due:
'A will' contradicting the Qur'an, with
father's love proven false and
forsaken!
How night and day I stood by you and
more, a willing sacrifise
At your fingertips, no question devoted
without lies,
Deferential, tireless---surest among your
ties,
I lived entire years suffering, accepting
Blame for anything that came to your
mind without asking 'whys .'
They who put false love in token arms
Around your deluded dying head with
seeming charms,
And falsely called whatever words you
uttered 'perfect and wise'--
Who led you to deviate from Allah's Holy
Word
And thus corrupt your love as a father,
and so die in foresaken esteem--
Came 'round your coffin the day you
died, perchance
To lift their heads up boldly, and with
your 'will' in hand trace
Every bit of everything that ever
belonged to you--at once
A final heartbreak showing that
together we didn't belong in spirit,
And that love, like me, was to you a mere
pastime albeit parental disguise!
-by
Hakim H. Kassim.
(December 18, 2021)
/-Jigjiga.
NOTE: The quotation in the 13th and 14th lines ('echoes . . .horse') is borrowed from Sylvia Plath's poem "Words" (dated February 01, 1963--just ten days before her death by suicide at age 30.)
(-personal note: In light of evident emotional weight that I borne while preparing this poem, in particular, I only wish to remark that 'hindsight,' while helping me
if only generally (i.e. as a writer), did nothing to ease genuine disappointment or ******-emotional trauma in actual event thereof, or at any rate distance experience of parental abuse into intellectual categorization whatsoever.)
