Song of Silence

Lying in the lyrics of silence
Are many words left unsaid.
Many truths left hidden.

Yet the strongest words
The loudest answers;
Lie here in simple silence.

The deepest yearnings,
The heaviest hopes,
This fortress of broken hearts
Hides many emotions.

If only you would listen
To the whispers that no one heard,
Where so many stories lie buried.

Yearning to be sung aloud.

By Khushbo

Copright Lifealight @2017.

My Hero

As I rise from the musk of hardships,
Of days gone by in hopes of brighter dawns.
I am told to wait on a hero.

Who will gather my tears,
Hold my dreams up high,
Learn the sensitivities of my heart.

Swear upon a million stars to keep my heart,
Sacred and unscathed.
Through all the grinding days to come.

It’s just, there is no hero.
No Knight in shinning Armour
headed my way.

I am just a tiered warrior,
Who has taken off her Armour to breathe;
And follow a mirage.

Rest is over, the mirage vanishes.
I ride out once again at first light,
My sword aimed ahead as I charge.

I am my one and only hero.

By Khushbo.
Copyright @Lifealight 2016.

Oh Wise Tree

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

-Hermann Hesse, Baume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

The Illusion of Yesterday

In this Illusion
Of a day gone by
I hide a chest full
Of pearls and ashes.

Pearls of wisdom,
Earned with toil;
Ashes of fears
Gathered with every tear.

Everyday I add to my treasure
Often adding to my ashes
Elating fears I forgot to
Overcome.

Faced with a decision,
I pry open this box full of the past.
Rummage through for answers
Only to wonder…

What if my ashes are my pearls
My pearls my ashes
And all that I fear
Is all that I should wish

Perhaps
This gift of yesterday
Is not but a distraction
From the new scents
Of another day.

Maybe
I imagined every single day
Before today.

-Khushbo
Lifealight.com
@ Copyright 2015

My Dearest Life

Life is dear
In its sincerity
Cruel and painful,
Joyous and merry

The pain that sets in
Shines my joys ever
Brighter, making them
Seem like an incomparable
Treasure.

Vexed I may be at the sight
Of fate’s sharp twists and turns,
Surprised am I at my laughter
Despite the ever changing
Destiny

Yet here I stand
Again ready and willing
To fight another day
Per chance I may find
A smile..

For this single muscle flex
I risk it all, I risk my day
Try again per chance
That day may come
Where I can feel

My heart beat again…

– Khushbo
@Lifealight
Copyright 2014

I Just Know

© Photo By: Khushbo

Where there is silence
Symphony will soon follow
Light will only shine
In the blinding darkness

The sweet scent of Jasmine
Fills the air as the wind blows
In a new direction
hearts that follow, see it

Rosy pink and majestic
A new dawn is begun again
To celebrate a new arrival
A beautiful new beginning

A turn in destiny
bejeweled with a newness
A blissful ambiguity
A skip in your heart beat

Fingers dance gracefully
over the piano in honor
Of a hope set to arrive
late yet long awaited

It’s here and
I just know it.

-Khushbo
©lifealight.com, 2013.

 

Your One Shot

The world holds you in place
Like a place marker ready for play
Earmarked for the shot into the abyss

Quivering in the chilly wind
On display for all to see
As tribute to those that lost

A symbol of what once was,
An avarice of derogatory defamation
Now all that remains: a single shot

Where will you land, in the field
A far, wide and forgotten hit,
Or a winning symbol of dignity?

Swings there may be many,
But where you land,
That’s up to you.

be the Goal!

– Khushbo

Could be

A world of possibilities lies before me
Counting hours, minutes, seconds
Life churns on one step at a time.

Everything is imagined and created
for a tomorrow unknown to me
A place that: will be.

I lie awake wondering at the life
that seems so long ago, almost a dream
and everything it taught me

Narrowing pathways lie ahead
waiting for me to decide my fate
Every step a turn, a mistake, a victory.

I do wonder at all that lies ahead.
All that will be.
That could be.

-Khushbo

It Felt Love

Photo by: Khushbo

How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart

And give to this world
All its
Beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,

Otherwise,
We all remain

Too

Frightened.

– Hafez