My 1st Post on Steempeak -- a peek at a forthcoming book with my poems :)

Naturally, is well beyond
what we ever dreamed
we could afford

We give our lives for such
shuddering intimacies

And hope and pray
our lives will be enough,
the balance cancelled

The guardian of the riddle
must only speak in riddles.

from "Bargaining with Whom?"
-by Yahia Lababidi

in A KALEIDOSCOPE OF STORIES
Muslim Voices in Contemporary Poetry

Coming soon from Lote Tree Press

I Ran

I ran hard and far
to outdistance my pain
But, when I got lost
my pain found me -
caressed me, wordlessly
and carried me Home.

Desert Revisited

under a whirling skirt of sky
streaming light and stars
groping for that tremendous hem
gingerly over quicksand

as though steadied
beneath some tongue and dissolving
not the absence of sound
but the presence of silence

or, as if transfixed
by a gaze, stern-serene
surveying a dream
foreign-familiar

incorruptible starting point
inviolable horizon
where eye and mind are free
to meditate perfection

there, begin to uncover
buried in dust and disinterest
the immutable letter
(first of the Arabic alphabet) Alif

The upcoming anthology, A KALEIDOSCOPE OF STORIES, brings together the voices of over fifty Muslim poets from diverse backgrounds to powerfully articulate what it means to be Muslim in the modern world.

It provides a platform for marginalized voices to be heard, speaking about their experiences in their own words, and offers an antidote to the stereotyped, one-dimensional portrayal of Muslims we see so often in the media.

The anthology gives the reader a glimpse of the thoughts, hopes and challenges of those who see the world through two or more cultural lenses, and provides a needed space for the expression of spiritual, social and personal lives.

Bringing together the verses of multi-generational voices, it explores themes including love and loss, identity and belonging, as well as Islamic spirituality.