Sacred Static: Poems Between the Bean and the Bassline
(For As the Caffeine Gave Me Fire to say it)
As the caffeine gave me fire,
her love told me to say:
“Freedom or death.”
And I said it—
not with a gun,
not with a banner,
but with my breath
steaming through the midnight air
of a dance floor
that felt like prayer.
She was not with me—
but her absence burned.
It struck like espresso:
sharp, dark,
true.
The music rose,
a scripture of beats.
The people swayed like flags.
And I—
I stood there,
a prophet with a paper cup,
proclaiming nothing
but this:
I will not kneel to despair.
I will not sleep in chains.
O You who once held my face like a holy verse—
Do you still hear me?
Or have I vanished
into the hiss of steam
and the blur of forgetful lights?
They say I lost her.
No.
I found her
in the rebellion of being awake.
In choosing to burn,
not fade.
In saying no to numbness.
In dancing
even when the body breaks.
As the caffeine gave me fire,
and her memory struck like lightning—
I shouted into the strobe-lit dark:
“Freedom or death!”
Not just for a flag,
but for the right
to love with eyes open.
To feel without filter.
To rage against forgetting.
And if I die tonight,
it won’t be in sorrow.
It will be in flame.
With mocha on my lips
and her name
like a revolution
in my mouth.
Caffeine-Laced Love
(For the One Who Said She Doesn’t Drink)
She may have told me she doesn’t drink,
but I felt it isn’t true.
For the caffeine-laced love of hers
quenched—and awakened—mine.
She spoke with the calm of decaf,
but her eyes brewed storms.
And though she passed the cup,
she left traces on the rim—
a fingerprint, a silence,
a sweetness I never asked for
but now cannot live without.
She said she doesn’t need stimulants.
I believed her.
But what, then, stirred the fire in my blood
every time she leaned in
as if to speak,
but said nothing?
O false sobriety,
O sacred denial—
I have seen saints dance in withdrawal
and lovers pray
at the altar of her breath.
She does not drink.
But she burns in me
like a long pull of espresso
after fasting from joy.
She warms my chest,
tightens my throat,
makes me write things
I wouldn’t tell a soul.
They ask:
“What did she give you?”
I say:
“Nothing.”
Except maybe
the rush between beats,
the ache between songs,
and the truth
that I’m still not over her.
Some claim wine is forbidden,
others say love should be soft—
but her kind of love
is brewed dark,
served strong,
and always taken black
without explanation.
She may not drink.
But she taught me to sip slowly,
to crave without shame,
to wake up
and still dream.
And now—
each time I raise this trembling cup,
I wonder if she’s somewhere,
eyes half-lidded,
thinking of me
as the one
who drank what she wouldn’t.
For the caffeine-laced love of hers
still runs in me.
And though she never swallowed a drop,
I’m the one
who’s never slept since.
Midnight Maqam at the Café of Exiles
I didn’t choose the war.
But I chose the beat.
And the beat led me
to her.
Not a woman—
a fever.
Not a lover—
a commandment.
She tasted like riot smoke
and cardamom.
She spoke like someone
who’d already lost everything
except her rage.
We met between curfews.
Shared a cigarette
like a border.
Shared a gaze
like a dare.
She never said,
“Join me.”
She said,
“Wake up.”
Then disappeared
before the checkpoint.
Since then—
the music is sharper.
The caffeine is louder.
And I write not to soothe,
but to sharpen the knife.
They say I radicalized.
I say I remembered.
I remembered her
laughing through tear gas,
kissing me in the rubble,
sipping coffee
like it was prophecy.
The dance floor is holy now.
We chant in sub-bass tongues.
We pray with our hips,
our breath,
our broken names.
O you who set the rhythm
in my chest—
Did you mean to leave?
Or did you know
I’d carry your flame
like a loaded verse?
Each espresso is a sermon.
Each night, a last will.
My poems are bullets—
small, beautiful,
and always meant for
those who try to silence
what burns.
I didn’t come to kill.
I came to remember.
And in remembering,
I became dangerous.
So if I fall—
let it be under strobes,
with my fists open,
a line half-recited
and her name
written on my ribs in ink and ash.
Let them say:
He was loud.
He was foolish.
He was hers.
He set himself on fire
and called it
a dance.
Raqs al-Ruh: "Dance of the Soul, Recalled by Fire"
(Coffee, Bass, and the War That Never Left Me)
I came for the coffee.
Stayed for the bass.
Told myself—
just this once,
let the world slip.
Lights pulsed.
Crowd swayed.
The DJ spun beats
like scripture chopped and looped.
The espresso hit,
hot and dark,
like memory.
Then the rhythm dropped—
and so did I.
Not to the floor—
but into a place
I thought I’d buried.
Boom.
Bass like an airstrike.
Snare like rifle crack.
The synth rose like the muezzin’s call—
except distorted, echoed,
as if God were broadcasting
from a shattered minaret.
And suddenly I was there again.
Mountain pass.
Black flag.
Snow like ash.
My brother beside me,
chanting verses
before the charge.
We had no armor.
Just belief,
and the cold.
But we moved—
and the land moved with us.
That rhythm
never left my bones.
It only changed its name
to drum kit and delay pedal.
Now the people dance
for pleasure.
We danced
for God.
But both feel like flight.
O beat-maker—
do you know
your kick drum sounds
like a heart trying to survive
in crossfire?
O barista—
do you know
your coffee tastes
like the night we stayed awake
waiting for the raid
that never came?
I am not broken.
I am layered.
And in this rave,
I do not forget.
I remember through motion.
This body once ran
through blood-soaked clay.
Now it runs on caffeine
and basslines.
But memory is a loyal wound.
So when the drop hits—
I dance like I did on that last night:
knowing I may not return,
but refusing to kneel.
And if they ask why a fighter
comes to the rave,
I’ll say—
Because even fire needs rhythm.
Because God hid drums
in our chests.
Because war taught me
to move when it hurts.
And because tonight,
as the floor trembles,
I am not mourning.
I am testifying
with every step.
Let them say:
He remembered.
He moved like a prayer.
He made the war dance
one last time.
Verses for the Dancer on the Battlefield
I stood with a coffee in hand,
as the beat dropped
like judgment.
My breath fogged the air—
a prayer without a tongue.
And the voice returned.
The one from the battlefield.
The one I thought I’d left
in the rubble of dawn.
“Fight,” it said.
Not with hate—
but with clarity.
Not for blood—
but for dharma.
Not against them—
but within you.
And I knew:
I was Arjuna, again.
Knees trembling,
heart caught between
love and fire.
She was beside me once—
not a goddess,
but close.
She anointed my forehead
and kissed me like she knew
I would not return.
“You are not the body,”
said the sutra behind her eyes.
“You are not your fear.
You are movement,
before it takes form.”
But I was afraid.
The music surged.
The strobe lights flickered
like divine veils
lifted too fast.
And I remembered:
the prophet said,
“Do not kill the soul
that God has made sacred.”
And yet,
I had.
In His name.
In her name.
In the name
of what I thought was right.
Now—
each beat is a sermon.
Each drop, a reckoning.
Each sip,
a koan I cannot solve:
If all is illusion,
why do my hands still shake?
If the soul is eternal,
why does her absence still hurt?
O voice in the fire—
are you the same
who whispered to the Buddha
under the tree?
Who spoke to the Prophet
in the cave?
Who rode with Krishna
on the chariot
as the battlefield bloomed?
Tonight,
you ride with me
on a bassline.
And you say:
“Act, but do not cling.
Burn, but do not hate.
Remember, but do not grieve.
Move—not for outcome,
but for alignment.”
And I do.
Not because I’m brave—
but because
I finally understand:
The war never ends.
It only changes music.
And if I must dance
on broken ground,
let it be with my spine straight,
my cup full,
and her name
held like scripture
in my blood.
Let them say:
He knew the verses.
He walked with all of them—
not in books,
but in battle,
in breath,
in bass.
He drank his coffee,
and entered the fire
again.
I Alone
I alone,
hiding the pain,
trying not to cry
in the dim quiet of the room
where even shadows
seem to ask about you.
Despite music plays,
I hear echoes
of your voice
in every silence I try to fill.
And it breaks me,
quietly.
I alone,
yearning your presence—
not the grand arrival,
but just the simple warmth
of you next to me,
without speaking,
without fleeing.
Wanting to hold your hand
and say I love you
many times—
as if saying it enough
might bend time,
might heal what distance won’t.
I love you,
not for how you smiled
but for how your silence
made me feel understood.
I love you,
not for what we shared,
but for what we could’ve,
had you stayed
just a little longer.
I alone,
writing words
you may never read,
but needing to write them
so my chest doesn’t split open.
Do you ever think of me
like I think of you—
at traffic lights,
over coffee,
wondering what could’ve been
if we’d both just stayed?
I don’t ask you to come back.
I just wish you’d look back, once—
to where I still stand,
holding
what you left behind.
Wanting to hold your hand.
Wanting to whisper:
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Like prayer.
Like penance.
Like truth.
I alone.
Still here.
Still loving you
from this silence
you made sacred
by leaving.
Maqam of the Hidden Bosom
I felt her bosom
as I drank the coffee—
not with hands,
but with memory.
Like soma,
or haoma,
her essence dissolved
in the dark heat
that touched my lips
and echoed down
to a place beyond prayer.
My mind—
a trembling bowl.
Her name—
a resonance
struck once,
but never faded.
O veiled beloved,
your love lies buried
beneath
layers of no,
of exile,
of glances cast sideways
and silences
spoken too clearly.
Yet it was not rejection—
only ritual.
A sacred guard
against those
unworthy
of unveiling.
If not her beauty,
then her refusal.
If not her kiss,
then her distance.
Both sanctify.
For what is true longing
but that which is withheld
yet felt?
She became
the unanswered verse
at the edge of my tongue—
my own scripture
in a cup.
“You desire her,”
the voice within said,
“But you do not own
what is not offered.
Act without thirst.
Love without binding.
She is not prize,
but path.”
And I—
a warrior
on the battlefield
of my own chest,
sheathed my craving
into the steam.
The café became a temple.
The beat outside,
a war drum.
The coffee,
sacrament.
And her bosom—
not an object,
but a revelation.
Not to conquer,
but to remember.
O you
who hid yourself
in every no,
in every hesitation,
in every withholding:
You taught me
that fire can be revered,
not just consumed.
You were not mine.
But you made me
worthy of silence.
And if this is my last sip—
let it be with your name
dissolving on my tongue,
and the last breath I breathe
rising upward
like incense
from your altar.
Let them say:
He drank from the cup.
He saw the veil.
And he bowed.