askiabilal

[askiabilal]

Take a minute with me in this short video and remember your immense potential. There’s so much going on in the world and as we deal with it, we can’t let the chaos and uncertainty consume us. Finding balance in the self to take the world head on. You have a vital role to play. Video and score by Ismaeel Bilal  Words and delivery by Askia 

#poetry #inspirational words #motivational words #meditation #soothing words #spoken word

[askiabilal]

spirit over matter

acrylic on canvas

#art #fine art #still life #acrylic #painting #canvas #colorful #askia bilal

[askiabilal]

Still life. Acrylic on canvas, 24′’x 36′’ by askia.  $400.

www.askianasirbilal.com

#art #still life #painting #original paintings #bananas #plants #fine art

[askiabilal]

[askiabilal]

this heart starved.

before you, this heart starved. stumbled in and out of a maze of destitute feelings dazed and was always whole but was always hole, cup without a drink to hold and then your eyes opened on me and opened my chest and planted a river of poems that flows fierce and carries two souls off the edge of the earth and under the look of a moon of bronze I hand you this heart and you planted a feast of poems that grows more entangled every time your mouth says my name in a way that dresses my wounds and makes the letters buckle you planted an itch I resist scratching I want it to grow before you my heart starves and drown my cup in you

#heart #love #spilled ink #poetry #askia bilal

[askiabilal]

untitled

never turn your eyes sour on an American fable "keep pitchin till u sink one cross the plate" let your eyes flicker in the dim we never could really get a grip of letting ghosts whisper to our only fountain of hope drowning in radio never take your eyes off the trap peepers fail in a blink of an eye close and don’t open back detoxing off that oxygen we stopped praying again lord bring me back after I fled

#america #poetry #spilled ink #askia bilal

[askiabilal]

desert conscience

the fire that wanders us

desert conscience searching for a burning bushel

in the lost words of prophets

in a broken promised land jamming myself to rags

over lost false profits

pondering the cost of coffins of infants sitting upon a pile of em

hand wrapped around 17 serpentine concubines

reality’s a porcupine acupuncture set

and if you don’t insert the accurate needle in the back

you’re just another golden strand of hay trapped in a stack of needles

intoxicated off a whiff of the petri dish —lost sons of Prometheus

the right amount of poison is medicine

and the wrong amount of medicine is poison-

can’t ignore this burning sensation

This dry scorching climate is perfect for cynical laughing at slow dying

Stomach churning like an ancient furnace

thirsty for something to burn

but finding nothing but itself

#spilled ink #poetry #free verse #desert #spirit #spiritual

[askiabilal]

Above is a picture of Omar Khadr, abducted at 15, now 25 years old, he has spent a third of his life at Guantánamo Bay for a crime he never committed.

“Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in 2002 and conspiring with Al Qaeda. There is no credible evidence to substantiate the charges, some of which date to when he was 11 years old. Charges were not even brought against him until 2007. If convicted, the Obama administration will seek a life sentence for Khadr, prosecutor David Iglesias indicated. Army Col. Pat Parrish, the tribunal’s presiding judge, on Monday denied defense appeals to bar confessions Khadr made under torture. In hearings held in May an unnamed U.S. military officer admitted that his interrogation unit threatened to gang rape and kill Khadr if he did not cooperate with an interrogation session at Afghanistan’s notorious Bagram air base in 2002. A U.S. military psychiatrist has said that Khadr, who has now spent a third of his life at Guantánamo, is under extreme psychological stress after years of living through torture, abuse and appalling conditions. He has been subjected to stress positions, beatings, humiliations—including being used as a “human mop” to clean up urine, threatened attack with dogs, long periods of extreme isolation and sensory as well as sleep deprivation. (Read more here)

How come we barely hear about cases like these in the news? If it happend to a white christian male, we would constantly hear about it, but when it happens to a muslim from Afghanistan, silence.

Omar Khadr has himself said:

Khadr wrote to his Canadian attorney Dennis Edney, on May 27. “And if the world doesn’t see all this, to what world am I being released to? A world of hate … and discrimination.”

Lt. Col. Frakt has said:

“It is appalling that the Obama administration is allowing charges to go forward in the military commissions against Omar Khadr. Clearly, Omar Khadr, as a juvenile of 15 at the time of his alleged offences, could not be tried as an adult in federal court, so they are allowing him to be tried as an adult in the military commissions, potentially making him the first child soldier to be tried and convicted as a war criminal in world history.” (Read more here)

[askiabilal]

when

when Your health fails priorities crystallize— “Get well” no more pin ball machine life wandering through day mazes the latest craze You could care less now You pay attention to minutia: how easily people suck air in how they climb stairs tie shoes lift forks and stuff their faces in between their list of complaints You reminisce on the time when that was You it’s the simple things now You see ants in a new light You count the number of heartbeats in between random events You marvel at Your veins pushing quarts of blood through You You wonder how it’s possible that You think without even thinking about it You don’t feel like saying much because much of what You say isn’t much You've decided You laugh at how oblivious You are at how weak You are how fortunate You think about all the things that could have possibly gone wrong at Your conception Your birth and You can’t for the life of You figure out how so few things actually did and You weep from the sheer weight of it.

#poetry #poem #Askia Bilal

[askiabilal]

When the heavy dark leather wings of inspiration draws open over me I go looting for phrases

garbed in a cloak of daggers I’ve collected

From the bones of extinct pages

Torn quote for quote out of quote on quote “classic literature” condensed conveniently into cliff notes and

then I drift into smoke

I peer over the edges of bad romances and shudder and laugh like a voyeur and jot it all down on my clipboard

I’m a scavenger with an ear for the hypnotic cadence that the mundane holds in its deepest folds

I fine-comb the follies of my past like a forensic scientist looking for follicles of truth

I billy goats gruff the riff raff-- that makes great fodder

I grip the tuft of hair on the back of the scalp of despair and yank its sullen mug out of the abyss it floats in

all while nodding my head slowly saying “mmhmm”

I charade as a doctor and examine x rays to get a clearer idea of the underpinnings humans

Rubbing my chin with a furrowed brow

And when I submit my report to the committees they ask

“what is the meaning of this gibberish”

I sink into the polished marble floors

Slam my books close and storm off

And return with the great severed wings of phoenix stitched to the leather socks on my feet

#poetry #poem #Askia Nasir Bilal

[askiabilal]

yes.

[askiabilal]

when

When passion turns poison when love corrodes when the wounds salted tears rust when hands can’t hold and gold goes copper and Cupid gone fallen Icarus from his own arrow awry and the illusions stripped armour scraps when you know but don’t want to say when the weeds grip the last rose when we are foam and dust and you take your crown off bow and drown softly in what was then when we are ready to begin.

#poetry #poem #words #spilled ink #askia bilal

[askiabilal]

Thuluth (Arabic)

Source

[askiabilal]

See if you were the wolves

I would feed myself to you

I can see myself through you in a better light.

#poetry #wolves #poet

[askiabilal]

the other thing

Last night I was out of myself. If I were that way again, I could finish this poem, but I'm not. Rumi

#Rumi #poet #quotes

[askiabilal]

I’ll be your kill.

spill my shimmering guts to you

drag me dangling between clenched teeth

into the still of your trance

Your voice, the Trojan Horse whispers gifts

amplified inside me

tempos in my temples

it mushroom-clouds showers of

you Sistine Chapeled me into pristine colors

ran each other down scaffolding

you vertigoed my vertebrae

stared my spine into a rollercoaster accordion

misshapen and alive wailing hymns of henna of

showers of pins needles that tattoo your gaze to my phrases

you fogged up the panes of the windows of my soul

and in your breath on the glass with one index finger

you wrote riddles in reverse

#askia bilal #poetry #poem #spilled ink #words #madness

[askiabilal]

And then it’ll hit you, amidst the snot and acid and involuntary saltwater on your chin. You’re the mattress that fell off (again.) You’re a set of swollen glands (again.) a book with pages bloodied (again.) Time to remember what you fought hard to repress (again.) Whoops, nobody ever told you...