Michael Galli's blog

Only for you

Oh the horrors you have shown me,

On my journey through this place.

Pain and suffering rampant,

Ever so commonplace.

Everywhere I turn, just one more,

Injustice to be seen.

An ongoing nightmare,

Of moral casualty.

No light to seek out,

No hand to reach for.

Those that can help,

Refuse aid to the poor.

Hunger and disease,

Spread like wildfire.

Unconditional love converts,

Into lust and desire.

We were once driven by the prospect,

Of making life better.

But selfish goals and ideas

Do nothing but fetter.

Why must you insist,

On showing me all this?

Why can’t my existence,

Be nothing but bliss?

Do you seek to drive me mad,

Do you want to break me down?

And hope I can carry on,

Lift myself off the ground?

If that is your goal,

Accept it I will.

Weary though I am,

Tired, lonely, and ill.

I will fight through the day,

And never cease in the night.

I will bear your name Lord,

For all that is right.

Inspiration for this poem came from two places. The style of this entry was inspired by the readings from week 4, in particular Suleyman Celebi’s Turkish poem Mevlid-i Sharif and the poems in praise of the Prophet in “In praise of Muhammad: Sindhi and Urdu poems.”  I was very keen on keeping the tempo of poem, and so I spaced accordingly. The poem is in the rhyme scheme ABCB DEFE. The reason the lines are not in rhyming couplets AA BB is because I wanted to slow down the reader. Each line is not a statement to be read, but rather to be felt. The inspiration for the material within the poem comes from the one of the Ismailis seven pillars of Islam, Jihad. This concept is present in Islam in general, not just within the Shi’ah, but within this community of interpretation the presence of Jihad is much stronger.

A once close friend of mine had a sibling that passed away, and I felt frustrated the entire week with the world and how little people seemed to grasp that the world is bigger than them. This event happened to coincide with our class reading the poems, and so I decided that rather than a love poem, I would write a devotional poem. Here, the devotion is expressed through the fact that no matter what happens, the narrator of this poem will continue through the suffering because he believes that is what his God expects of him.

This poem is not similar in content to an Islamic poem, even though that was my main idea initially. After I began writing, however, I realized that I should not be trying to mimic that which I do not practice. Because of my backgrounds and beliefs, I could never hope to write a beautiful poem similar in any way to a true Islamic devotional poem. Once I took ownership of the poem, though, and let my background and thoughts be expressed fully, it really struck a resonating chord within me that I hope the reader can experience as well.