Come closer
my father once told me
that between my *******,
between my lips,
between my thighs,
lies a power without mercy.
I have learned to wield it like a blade.
My mind is the theatre,
my thoughts the stage where you are both
the hero and the sacrifice.
I will not simply kiss you
I will bind you,
thread your breath through mine
until you cannot remember
where you end and I begin.
I will lead you by the hand into velvet darkness,
make you believe it is safety,
then whisper the truth in your last moment of doubt:
I am the enchantress they warned you about,
the poison they served in a crystal glass.
They call me femme fatale,
but I am older than the name,
more ancient than fear.
I do not ****
I make you walk willingly
into your own beautiful ruin.
I blow a kiss, goodbye.

They asked me about the human soul.
I smiled,
and leaned close enough for them to feel my breath.
They say man is a microcosm
and the heavens the vast world.
But, love, they have never wandered your inner night.
The outer sky is a candle’s flame
fragile, flickering
while inside you,
I have sailed an endless sea of dark honey,
its tides made of dreams and pulse and breath.
The true vastness is in the chambers beneath your ribs,
where my hands have learned the maps
no star could chart.

She came to me beneath a crescent moon,
her hair perfumed with night jasmine,
her eyes heavy with the knowledge
that I was born of spells and dark milk.
I laid her down on the silk of my shadow.
The stars leaned close,
each one a witness to my mother’s prophecy
that my touch would burn without flame.
Her breath caught in the hollow of my throat.
I kissed her as the desert drinks rain:
slow at first,
then with the hunger of a century without water.
The witch’s blood sang in me,
chanting words no priest would dare to hear.
Her body opened like a forbidden garden,
and I,
its serpent and its angel,
entered with reverence and ruin.
When she cried out,
the night shivered.
Owls turned their heads,
the wind held its breath,
and the moon closed one eye in envy.

O She who rises from the womb of the sea,
crowned with foam and crowned with flame,
whose breath stirs the tides
and whose glance births blossoms from barren stone
Bearer of the golden girdle,
keeper of the wine of longing,
mother to the song that awakens the flesh,
and the dream that burns in the marrow.
Aphrodite, hear me.
Pour into my heart the wine of its desire,
and in the cup of that union,
let there be peace.

I like my labneh
full-fat, whole-milk
heavy with promise,
soft as surrender.
Flaky sea salt
melts on its skin,
olive oil glistens
like desire in the sun.
A breath of za’atar,
a trace of mint,
a brush of thyme
and I am undone.
That’s how I like my lover
ripe,
reckless,
and impossible to leave.
Yummy…

For their ink is not ink, but the distilled venom of memory.
They will etch your name upon the black tablets of time,
where even the rain cannot wash it away
and the centuries will taste it like iron on the tongue.
This is no mere revenge
it is the curse of the storyteller,
and I, child of the witch,
have mastered it.

The passing of people is a wound,
but the passing of trust is a death.
When people go,
they leave their shadows in the rooms of memory.
When trust goes,
it steals the light from those shadows,
and sets fire to the bridges
that could have carried them home.
Trust, once broken,
is a mirror in ruins
even if you mend it,
the crack still hides in the glass,
waiting in your reflection.

Forgive the rough edge of my words
they were born in the heat of a breaking heart.
I don’t need you to tell me it’s done;
I’ve seen the cracks widening,
heard the silence growing louder than our laughter.
The fire has been dimming for a long while,
the touch between us turning to stone,
the moments of wild devotion
fading like old paint in the rain.
Now I wear the emptiness like a badge,
my hands remembering
what they can no longer hold,
my body locked in rust,
my soul aching for the ways you once
turned me into a living flame.
And I miss you
not only your mouth,
but the magic it spoke
in the language only lovers know.

While your soul writhes in unrest.
Cursed be he who walks away,
forgetting the bond, never once looking back.
Should he return, trust him not
for hearts that dared the darkness
will return clad in masks not their own.

Cursed in the religion of the Most Gracious
is he who imprisons a people,
who strangles a thought in its cradle,
who lifts the whip over flesh,
who silences the tongue of truth,
who builds walls to cage the living,
who raises high the banners of tyranny.

Cursed in every creed and scripture
is he who squanders the rights of humankind,
even if his lips murmur prayers,
even if his hands scatter alms,
even if he walks the earth
clutching the Bible in one hand
and the Qur’an in the other.

The first gift you take from this world is a breath,
and the last you give back is a sigh.
Between that drawing in and that letting go
lies but a brief caravan of days.

So be merciful to your heart,
tender with your soul,
and do not weigh it down
with the dust of what bears no fruit.

The good is the mirror of mercy upon the earth
forgiving as the sky forgives its clouds.
Yet when he turns away,
he returns to the silence from which he came.

No road reaches him except through the heart’s light.
And he who has never known that light
will wander forever among the shadows.

where the last coal of creation still glows.
If you reach in with moonlit fingers,
hunting for the soft vein of my weakness,
the fire will climb your veins
and crown your limbs in smoke.
Beloved
I told you: my heart is poetry,
and poetry is the heart of the witch’s son.
Do not wound it,
lest it choose the hour to wound you.
And when it does,
its betrayal will taste
like pomegranate in the dark
sweet, and red, and endless.

I am not a poet.
I am only a wanderer in the marketplace of words,
a fool who follows the glimmer of syllables
as others follow the scent of bread.
Poetry is not ink on paper.
It is the pulse beneath the page
a breath moving through the hollow reed of the poet,
a secret that leans close to the ear of the heart.
When I meet a poem, I bow.
I circle it once,
then twice,
then again,
as though it were a shrine whose mystery
can never be entered in a single step.
Each reading strips away a veil.
Sometimes the veil is my own blindness,
sometimes the poet’s mercy in hiding the flame
until I am ready.
There are nights I leap from sleep crying, I have it!
and mornings when the truth laughs,
gently reminding me:
Child, that was only the shadow of the meaning
come back, and drink deeper.
Poetry is a journey without map or return.
It is the caravan of joy
that passes through my heart again and again.

You came without footsteps.
I did not hear the door
only felt you
arrive
beneath my ribs,
like smoke curling into a sealed jar.
I was praying,
but you were the breath I used to say your name.
Now I live
in a room without walls.
No ceiling, no floor
only your nearness,
pressing me open
from within.
I am not asking for paradise.
I am asking
for the warmth of your palm
on the small of my back
when I am weary of seeking.
I am asking
to lean into you
as a tree leans into wind it trusts.
Let the world do what it wants
let time collapse,
let stars fall into rivers
but let me keep
the wine of your presence
on my tongue
a moment longer.
There are days I am nothing but hunger.
Days I mistake your silence
for absence.
But then a bird lands on the windowsill
and it is you.
Then my spine tingles
for no reason
and it is you.
And when I weep without knowing why,
it is because you are
too close to name.
You are the touch I can’t return.
The kiss I give inward.
The home I carry
in the hollows of my being.

Oh devil,
play your crooked song.
My cup was born empty
not for lack,
but for the thrill of being filled
by hands unclean.
You danced,
not in shadows,
but in candlelight and clinking glass.
You sang not sorrow,
but sweet sugar lies
dipped in honeyed brass.
I did not fall.
I followed.
The path was perfumed,
the rhythm too rich to refuse.
Sin, in satin slippers.
Wickedness, with wine on its lips.
Yahoo for me
I did not burn.
I became the fire.
I outshone the flame.

I drink to forget
my keys,
my pain,
the clatter of bees in my head.
But the French cognac tastes of door handles
and old brass prayers.
Each swallow lights another hallway
in this crumbling hotel I call me.
Pain sharpens
not like a knife,
but like a mirror
with too many faces.
And then
cold metal teeth in my palm.
A familiar bite.
Yes.
Of course.
The keys.
They were conducting an orchestra
of forgotten errands
in the soft cage of my hand.
Stupid French cognac.
Stupid hand.
Always holding the answer
like a riddle too proud to speak.

And the fool said quietly:
Look at the man carrying the words of God,
and still, he has no idea how heavy they are.
He cared too much
more than his heart could hold.
It spilled over,
like a cup with no rim.
He pushed his soul
past what it was built to bear.
And over time,
his face changed.
People didn’t call him by the same name.
His words sounded strange
in places he used to belong.
His trust dried up
like grass under a burning sun.
His strength faded
like the last inch of candlelight before dawn.
Because everything has a limit
the stars in their paths,
a widow’s tears,
a man’s time,
even him.
Even me.

Once, the word was a whisper
carved into a cave wall
by a man who saw lightning
and wanted to marry it.
He did not know grammar,
but he knew:
****.
It is the sound a soul makes
when it remembers it left the stove on
in a past life.
It is a sneeze of truth,
a hiccup of the cosmos,
a four-letter eclipse
of reason and restraint.
“****,” says the poet,
when words betray him.
“****,” says the scientist,
when atoms refuse to behave.
It is the punctuation of panic,
the jazz note in an otherwise silent scream,
the laugh-track of God.
It means everything
when you don’t mean anything,
and it means nothing
when you feel everything.
It is both
the crime
and the confession.
The knock, the door, the absence of door.
So how do you write it?
You don’t.
You exhale it through clenched teeth
as you fall in love with a mistake.
You etch it into the back of a napkin
after three whiskeys and a revelation.
You scream it into a pillow
until the pillow understands.
Then you kiss it.
And never speak of it again.

It hurts
like trying to hug a cloud
that owes you money.
You live in my heart
rent-free,
but my arms?
Evicted.
You are emotionally Airbnb
booked out,
but the photos were misleading.
Pain is elegant.
It wears a tuxedo to breakfast.
It sighs like a French poet
watching their croissant float down the Seine.
And elegance is everywhere
especially in the unseen.
Like your *******.
Yes, those
the hidden diplomats of heartbreak,
curled like sleeping cats
at the bottom of your laundry basket,
smelling faintly of rebellion and lavender-scented denial.
Keep them fresh.
Not for me
I’ve joined a monastery made of memes
but for the next poor soul
who mistakes your playlist for a spirit.
Let him be dazzled.
Let him be devoured.
Let him know, too late,
that lace is a trapdoor.

Love…
a powerful, complicated thing.
It lifts us. Shapes us.
And sometimes, quietly…
it breaks us.
It colours our days with joy,
gives meaning to our silence,
and turns the ordinary into something sacred.
But when it leaves
when love is absent
it doesn’t just fade.
It echoes.
We feel it in the cold space beside us,
in unanswered messages,
in glances that once lingered...
but now pass right through.
The lack of love
it’s not just loneliness.
It’s a weight.
A reminder of our need to be seen,
held,
understood.
So, we turn to words
to the poets, the broken hearted prophets,
to those who have tasted the silence
and made music of it.
They speak for us,
those who have felt unloved,
unappreciated,
or have struggled with the hardest kind of love
the one we owe ourselves.
“Love is the absence of judgment.”
Such a simple phrase,
yet it speaks volumes.
True love does not correct or condemn
it welcomes,
without a checklist.
And sometimes
it’s not the person we miss.
It’s how we felt beside them.
The way our laughter filled the room,
or how our soul exhaled in their presence.
We crave the feeling,
not the face.
Love is…
when you shed a tear,
and still want him.
When he ignores you,
and still… you love him.
When he chooses another
and you smile, and whisper,
“I’m happy for you,”
though your heart cracks with grace.
From the absence of intimacy,
a truth emerges:
We don’t seek perfection.
We seek presence.
Not fireworks
but a hand that stays.
And even in the deepest absence…
there is something that never leaves:
Hope.
That love true, fearless,
and whole
will return.
Until then,
we listen.
We feel.
We heal.
And we love
quietly,
bravely,
still.

Step right up for a whirlwind tour through the wild, wordy world of poetry and where creativity runs free, metaphors get dramatic, and commas have emotional breakdowns.

We’ll dig through the dusty scrolls of history (don’t worry, no Latin quizzes), sip some cultural tea, and find psychological comfort in realizing that poets have been just as confused and emotional as we are for centuries!

Join us for laughs, deep thoughts, and possibly a few dramatic sighs.

I would paint her, my dancer
not in pigments, but in flame,
the fire that devours prophets,
the thirst that undoes saints.
She is lust and lawless mercy,
a chalice of sin kissed by angels.
No heart beats in her breast,
only a temple of mirrors,
each one reflecting your hunger.
She kneels not to worship
but to undo.
She makes men weep
in the tongues of old gods.
She makes them beg
not for heaven,
but for her ruin.
Her father a shadow of Solomon
taught her the craft of wisdom
laced with whoredom,
of speaking riddles in silk,
of binding empires
with the sway of her hips.
And I
I hate her as I hate Iblis,
for the pride she wears like perfume.
Yet I love her
as the mystic loves his wound,
as the moon loves the tide
that breaks her in pieces.
O sons of dust
you who bear the names of kings,
you who drink from the well of power
why were you given love
like the sting of a hidden thorn?
To burn,
to ache,
to be calmed but never healed,
to haunt the soul long after flesh forgets.
You were offered wisdom, joy,
beauty, and vision
but before all else,
you were cast into the furnace
of desire.

To “read” a painting is to listen with the eyes.
Begin with silence. Stand before it not as a judge, but as a guest and a stranger in a land of symbols and hues.
Describe what you see, as if describing a dream, you’re not sure you had: the colours, the lines, the tension, the flow. Is there chaos? Stillness? Invitation? Resistance?
Then ask the questions the paint does not answer:
Who made this, and when?
What storm or serenity shaped the artist’s hand?
What did the world look like when this pigment first touched canvas?
This is the visual pilgrimage:
from surface to structure, from brushstroke to breath.
You trace the grammar of form and the logic of light
how shadows fall, how space unfolds.
You seek the why beneath the what.
But to read a poem
Ah... to read a poem is to let it read you.
You bring all that you bring to painting attention, analysis, context.
But then you must offer something more:
your ache, your longing, your bruises, your silences.
You must bleed a little.
You must taste the honeyed poison of words too true to ignore.
Where a painting might say, “See me,”
a poem whispers, “Feel me and dare to be changed.”
In poetry, time distils.
A single line may carry a century.
A single word may resurrect a forgotten wound.
And so, the witch’s son says:
To read a painting is to walk through a doorway.
To read a poem is to fall through it, willingly
drunk on the sweet wine of beauty,
cut by the edge of truth.

My Lord,
pluck out my eyes
for now I see.
Listen,
I have sinned.
I loved the lie
and spat upon the truth.
She came
beautiful,
a marvel of flesh and voice,
and sang,
"I am the devil."
And I,
a fool,
did not believe.
Now I love the sinner.
Now I hate the good.
Now I worship power.
Now I bow to injustice.
She was the devil
or her shadow.
Evil, with a honeyed tongue,
converted me
into a rewound soul,
a God-hating ghost
wearing the rags of flesh.
O God
bless me with Your power
and
**** me
now.

Didn’t I tell you, baby
No one could ever love you like I do?
Didn’t I tell you, baby
You were my world, my sky so blue?
Didn’t I tell you, baby
A million times, I love you?
Didn’t I tell you, baby
You reigned in my heart, my queen so true?
Didn’t I tell you, baby…
But still, you chose to walk away
To chase what they now call self-love.
It didn’t bloom like you hoped, did it?
And now, after breaking my heart,
You turn to come back.
Forgive me…
For taking back my vulnerabilities.
They were too sacred to leave unguarded.
And now, I think I’ll keep them.
True.

"Behind every successful man, there is a woman."
To which George Bernard Shaw, with his cutting wit, replied:
"Yes—but the man would be greater without her."
And I?
I say this:
"I do not conquer her
I submit…
like a sinner to the sweetness
of sin,
drenched in its lust,
lost in its pleasure."

They didn’t say goodbye to me,
They never saw the pleading in my eyes.
They left… they left…
And left me cradling silence, my dear.

They walked away to distant lands,
And I was left, a soul unmanned.

My love was still so young,
It hadn't bloomed or sung.
It never had its chance to breathe,
To kiss, to laugh, or to believe.

Yet they’re the ones who frown and cry,
Though I’m the one left wondering why.

How lucky are the envious and they slept,
While we, the broken-hearted, wept.
They slept in peace the night they tore us apart,
While my tears baptized my hollow heart.

No matter how the days may stretch or bend,
Their image in my mind won’t end.
They remain, more precious than the precious,
A weight more aching than the relentless.

Love sold me out,
And the cheap ones bought me.

Ooh, man
the cheating woman plays with fire,
but it is only smoke she leaves behind.

The maiden dreams of a knight on a white steed,
riding to crown her longing.

The widow weeps for dreams
she lost too soon
or never dared to chase.

But the married woman...
She is a flame kept quiet too long.
She burns to fulfil her hidden dreams,
and she will give you
much
without shame,
without measure.

So choose wisely, man.
And if you must sin
at least enjoy it.

Love in its fullness comes but twice: first, in the mirror of desire; second, in the ruin of illusion.

Why won’t you stop
shut up,
or even die?
Why must you speak
in words just as cruel,
just as useless
as the old path I swore to leave?
Oh God
**** my hand,
**** my mind,
or please...
**** my pen.
I’ve thrown you a thousand times,
but like a phoenix
you always return,
refusing to burn,
refusing to die.
I’m done with you, Pen.
Your ink is endless pain.
No more of you
in my realm.
We’re finished.
Today.
My pen looked at me with a snaky eye,
and whispered
I only speak
because you never could.

Death is nothing—no endless divide,
I’ve only strode to the other side.
I am still I, and you are still you;
Our love remains, unwavering, true.
Speak my name as you did before,
Soft and sure, as in days of yore.
No need for silence, tears, or guise
Let laughter rise, as in brighter skies.
Remember every shared delight,
The tender jokes, the sparks of light.
Sing my name, let it softly ring,
A living breath, an endless thing.
I linger near, not lost, not gone,
Just past the dawn, beyond the lawn.
No need to yearn—I’ll wait right here,
Until you round life’s bending sphere.
So smile, and dance, and let love show,
For though you cannot see me so,
Our bond still holds, our light won’t fade
I’m just around the bend, delayed.
Delayed.

Beneath the brick, a crumpled note
ink blurred by rain:
No ******* milk tomorrow.

Signed,
in silence.

They asked him,
"How does one become a poet?"

He answered,
with the weight of stars in his voice:

"If you can read
the lines etched on your mother’s hands,
and the furrows folded between her eyes
then you are already a poet.

Go now
and savor the journey into madness."

They said: Be like us.
I said: Sorry my mother is a witch,
and I am the son of a delicious sin.
I'm not built for statues or titles.

As long as I’ve stolen nothing but hearts,
and wasted nothing but time
in the arms of beautiful women,
leave me as I am:
a blueprint for a postponed scandal.

As for the sheikh
he paused, cracked his back,
then said with a smirk:
“The world, my son, is three things:
A ***** that confuses logic,
A glass that makes logic forget,
And a cigarette... that burns logic altogether.”

We all laughed
then returned to lying,
as always:
In the name of morality.

I was born of soil, raised by sun,
and still, I love like a farmer does
with hands that plant, with hope that waits,
watering love in rosewater grace,
shading it beneath the aching heart.

But the harvest came too young, too bright
too soft to bear the fire of time.
And yesterday, it vanished
no grain to hold,
no word, no gold, no compensation.

have a cup of coffee,
or play the fool for a while.

Either way,
you stay true to yourself and your knowing.
And that’s what really matters.

So stir your mood
like you stir your coffee
just the way you like it.

Enjoy.

We met on the sea’s edge,
where moonlight kissed the tide.
We danced through the salt-heavy night,
drank sweet wine as you spoke
of a million myriads
stars, souls, or stories, I never knew.

Tipsy, tipsy,
till the dawn broke us apart.
And then you were gone.

Sailor, where are you now?
Do you whisper my name to your myriads,
the way you once whispered theirs to me?

Who wrote to you that night,
when I wrote you into my heart?

Tonight, I raise a glass to the sea,
and to you,
wherever the tides have taken you.

Cheers 🥂

Though the captain falls to fate or flame,
the ship shall not yield, nor drown in shame.
For the crew, bound by oath and star,
shall steer her true, no matter how far.

Storms may howl and shadows creep,
but loyal hands the course shall keep.
And evermore, through night and scar,
they sail her home, led by the gods afar.

"The hardest fight is the one inside you."
Not the blade nor the beast,
not the curse in the woods,
but the voice that whispers
when all else is still.

The night is loud with silence,
and the mirror knows your name.
He carries his mother’s magic,
but it’s his shadow he cannot tame.

I want to taste the sweetness of your lips again
again, and again
'til sweetness turns to ache,
and ache becomes need.
Old wood is best to burn,
old wine to rot in the blood,
old friends to betray,
old books to whisper truths too heavy for the day.
But your lips
they are the darkest wine,
fermented in silence,
laced with lust,
dripping the sins saints dare not name.
Fill my cup.
Let me be drunk.
Let me forget the light.

I dwell now at a nameless address
Where words no longer visit.
I no longer write
Nor do I wish to mesmerize.
Yesterday,
My home was your heart.
Now I echo through absence.
They say,
“’Tis better to have loved and lost…”
But they forget
Lost time
Is never found again.

I’m the one now
sitting in the old chair,
saying all the silly,
mischievous things
to my grandchildren
and somehow,
they love it.
They laugh and call it Grandpa Wisdom.
I just call it joy.
And oh, how I love it.
Thank you
for that joy.

*******.
I don’t need your flowers.
Then I ran to the hill
screaming, dancing your name
into the sky.
“Follow me, *******!”
A teenage heart
with a woman’s craving for love
yielding, radiant,
beautiful,
****,
full of lust, honey.
Come, fill your cup.
Come, warm your blood.
I am your dream, teen.
I am your soul’s dare.
Come to rest,
come to burn.
My wine was stored in animal skin
aged in darkness,
waiting to be broken.
Sweet, sweet me.
Come and have me.
I dare you to my madness.
I dare you to be brave.
I dare you
to enjoy my wine.

I’m weary of your winds,
soft whispers that promise fire,
then vanish in the hush of “just friends.”

You speak like a lover in the moonlight,
then vanish at dawn with your walls drawn high.
Yet when I smile at another flame,
your silence burns louder than words.

What is this dance you lead me in?
One step forward, two steps back,
your heart a maze I cannot read.

Am I a passing breeze in your garden,
or a root you dare not let grow?

Speak, Lily
not in riddles, not in sighs.
Tell me where I stand in your sky,
before I drift too far to return.

Me

My friend, take hence a letter to my dear,
Perchance he sees the weeping written clear.
Between the lines, let silent tears confess
A love that words alone could not express.

Tell him I’m lost, by longing overthrown,
My heart, from parting’s fire, is cracked to stone.
What good is distance? Shall we choose to part,
When all that’s good is living heart to heart?

I asked the night: “Have you not felt him near?
Did not his shadow stir your silence here?”
The night replied with tears upon his face:
“My patience, too, has waned in love’s embrace.”

The moon declared: “I basked in all you said,
But when you cease, my light itself is shed.”
O you who poured sweet love in every vein,
How shall I live in mask and cold refrain?

So when you reach him, let this message shine:
I am in love with his name is etched in mine.
My life was penned with hope and passion true,
And every breath I take still longs for you.

Sometimes, to spare your soul from fire,
you must walk away, not out of anger
but to keep love from curdling into hate.

Don’t cling to those who see you
as shadow, not light,
who forget the gift of your presence.

There is a quiet power in leaving
with your head held high,
when your heart has been dragged low.

Dignity is not pride
it is the prayer you say
when love no longer says it back.

Amen.

Your dear one is like a lost hunter
blind to direction, unsure of his prey.
Content, it seems, to stir up chaos,
spreading trouble near and far.
I already see where this story leads.
All I can do is stay grounded.
But he’s not hunting to survive
he’s hunting to ****.
And he doesn’t care
who gets hurt along the way.
God, please
don’t let him find my way.

Pleasant to contemplate
Sweet,
Warm.
To share it,
or savor alone?
Maybe.
But more than likely,
a dream never to be realized.

One of the harshest things I have ever read! "And I have pardoned so that we will not meet again with God."

I have pardoned
not from love, nor grace,
but to unthread your name
from the fabric of my fate.

No thunderclap of anger,
no blaze of righteous flame,
just the quiet closing
of a door that once knew your name.

I set you free,
not to hold your hand again in light,
but so our shadows
will never cross in God’s sight.

No reckoning in heaven,
no parting words to send
I forgave you only
so this could truly end.

So if you seek me
on that final, sacred shore,
know that my forgiveness
was the lock upon the door.