وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ مِن سُلَٰلَةٍ مِّن طِينٍ
ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَٰهُ نُطْفَةً فِى قَرَارٍ مَّكِينٍ
ثُمَّ خَلَقْنَا ٱلنُّطْفَةَ عَلَقَةً فَخَلَقْنَا ٱلْعَلَقَةَ مُضْغَةً فَخَلَقْنَا ٱلْمُضْغَةَ عِظَٰمًا فَكَسَوْنَا ٱلْعِظَٰمَ لَحْمًا ثُمَّ أَنشَأْنَٰهُ خَلْقًا ءَاخَرَ ۚ فَتَبَارَكَ ٱللَّهُ أَحْسَنُ ٱلْخَٰلِقِين
Verily, We have created the human from a quintessence of clay; then We placed him as a drop in a fixed resting place. We then made the drop into a clot and that into a fetus. We then made bones and clothed the bones with flesh and from that brought forth another creation. Therefore, blessed is God, the very Best of those who create. (23:12−14)
The Qur’an presents a view of the human as a physical creature, a spiritual creature, a creature naturally disposed to worship, and an enlightened creature. Our body, our spirit, our predisposition to worship God, and our light are gifts sent directly from God to serve as critical means toward our attaining human perfection. That perfection lies in cultivating those aspects of the spirit that transcend its animating qualities, actualizing our disposition to worship, and refining our light. When this happens, the human is a beautiful creature, and as such, a fitting object of divine love, for as our Prophet ﷺ mentioned, “Verily, God is beautiful and loves beauty.”
We are all human beings
We all have our own lives
And different ways we live them
But each one of us is a writer
And this poem is for all of you
All of you who have virtues and use them in your writing
Beginning the story from the middle for that’s usually where your mind is at
Looking back then looking forward
Studying the past so you can be ready for what is to come
Recording catastrophes with a number two pencil
Tales and blurbs of tragedy
Caused by love or the lack thereof
Rewards and punishment
Self-reliance and self-fulfillment
We are mere narrators
Humble, may be unreliable
Equipped with numerous devices
Ironic Paradoxes
Red herrings
Fortuitous plot twists
Metaphors
Allegoric hyper-boles
Analogies
We’re visionary revolutionaries
Revolution of the mind, body, and soul
Changing ourselves and examining who and what we are
To become what we are destined to be
The best
Rejecting convention
Building our own paths
That lead to cliffhangers
Spiritual healing
Religious speculation
And the questioning of the way we, the people are being governed
We use the tools we are giving to sculpt new art that the world can stand in awe of
Personification, Symbolic imagery
Practicing pastiche with respect
Dionysian imitation, Surreal reality, Defying mortality, Reiteration, and retort
Using nature to express emotion and thought
Doubts and fear, Opposites, Morals and ethics, Satisfying curiosity
Parodying what we see
Embellishing just a little
We use wordplay to dive deep into the topic of conscious, subconscious, and unconscious thought.
Using satire to poke fun at the human condition, its senses, and perception of the universe to get readers thinking
Expressing our anger, our boundless joys
Desiring unknown pleasures
Seeing past the fallacies put before us
We write with great candor about war, personal conflicts, and self-abuse
With hinting undertones to give these ideas a second thought
We write of the supernatural, metaphysical mysteries
Outlandish, obscure mind-boggling theories
As the clock ticks too fast for us and the characters we’ve created
Demolishing the fourth wall with a sledgehammer of defamiliarization
Epiphanies in a parking lot
Speaking in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person
Using fun things like anagrams and palindromes
Candy for the lovers of such things
Spontaneity is an understatement
Nonsense is an insulting overstatement
Absurdity seems to fit just right
We are humans
We can write in various forms
Streams of gratifying brilliant consciousness
And chose to use or merely acknowledge the ways to achieve these forms
Rhetoric, rhythm, and rhyme
Conceit and consonance
Assonance
Intonation
Working with phonaesthetics
And accenting aesthetics
A poem can or could not be organized as such
If we want to get technical about it
We have a poem
With a number of verses
And in those verses
Are lines
And those lines might rhyme
And have a meter or rhythm
Stressed or unstressed syllables
In contrast to that, we may write
Without all of that and use emotion
Feeling and structure our work with what we feel is the best way
Line breaks
Pauses and puns
Ambiguous antonyms
Intonation, linguistics
Fight against the fascists of grammar and conservative correctness
So, in the end, we are writers of rainbow kaleidoscope forms, devices, ways, and ideas
But we alone are the ones who make the world think
Make it move, Revolt, Renew, Learn
Look back, Remember, Cry, Smile, Forget, Ease
Write our friends write until your mind explodes and your fingers bleed
Read, read and become inspired
Forget getting published it’s the writing that matters
Disregard the off-putting, critical chatter
And if you think no one reads
Then be the seed and sprout a tree of astounding artistry
And let’s begin a new movement composed of ideals that will hold true forever
I might be preaching to the choir but it must be said that; literature isn’t dead.
A little escape from the madness
This sociability is predicated, in part, on the upright stature of the human. His heart always points outwards. As a result, when he embraces another human, the hearts of two are joined, establishing a metaphysical connection between them. For this reason, the Prophet ﷺ has warned the believers, “Lā tadābarū (do not turn your backs to one another).” The Qur’an reminds us that the spirit is a distinct nonphysical creation breathed into the physical body.
