Who am I?

Am I another cover of a magazine?

Am I an enlarged and edited pristine figurine

Waiting to be picked up off a shelf?

Will I reduce myself to being fueled by the greedy views of bigtime CEOs

When who knows what the rest of me could be?

Who am I?

I am beautiful.

I don’t need to bury myself in order to rise above the rest

Nor do I need to “make up” a so-called best version of me.

One with no originality

Missing chunks of morality

Bringing myself to the point of fatality in order to mush into the masses.

Who am I?

I am a beacon of intelligence

And a growing judge of relevance

In an age where wasting time is praised

And useless drone-like habits have made their way to center-stage,

I am a symbol of ever-ambitious youth

With plans to change anticipated outcomes

By showing others that the crevices from which doubt comes

Are only opened by our loss of focus.

I am prescription glasses meant to alleviate the near-blindness of a generation

Through kindness and dedication,

Time is only moving forward and is never going to stop.

And wait.

For us.

To catch.

Our breaths.

I am the depths and ridges and smudges and smidges

Of a poem whose words are written faster than they’re conceived.

Who am I?

I’ll give you hints and you give me guesses.

I am not someone that presses against the better interests of society.

I am not someone that fences in the dispense of creativity in its rarest form.

I am not anyone but myself,

I am not looking for fame or wealth,

I am not part of a game of stealth,

Rather, I am a soldier fighting my way through the most unusual of battles,

Because no matter what happens,

This fight is only fought by me.

No one can take my place to win the race

Against the increased disgraces of today’s society.

No one can hold me back as I attack stereotypes

Or type and write to dispel hype

About the things that take away from who we are.

When faced with the stark, dark realities of society,

I find that I can’t turn away.

I can’t turn and say that things will be okay.

And how could I when this life is a game people play?

I need to be one to step up and fess up to the crimes of our generation,

To preach and reach out with speech, with spoken word

And to make my voice heard when I say

That the token of sincerity is an intention that cannot be broken.

And so, when I ask myself who I am

I think that I am a being that fears being insincere.

Terrified of being a sham

I am a creation with a heart that weeps as it keeps trying to let all its doubt seep out

A heart that starts crying if it feels any truth creep out

A heart that shouts that it never wants to feel that it beats in a heap of flesh and meat

A heart that for a time held a deeply ingrained belief that it had died…

Until it heard that beep…beep…beep…

And remembered that it was still alive.

Much worse than death itself is feeling dead on the inside

Having your emotions subside

While your life is deprived of devotion

Living in confusion

Abused by your illusion of this life and all it holds.

So ask yourself, who am I

And will I ever try to be different?

Will I ever stand up and demand the disruption of this oppressive system,

The destruction of this regressive day and age

In which we are the victims,

Having our spirituality ripped away from us as we put up no fuss

Because our eyes were blinded by marquees and big screens and HD TVs,

And our ears couldn’t hear unless they were streaming music on a 4G LTE network with lightning speed.

So, who am I?

I am the last, empty page of a journal…

Reserved for only the best of stories,

Preserved once I am covered,

Free of worries since I am meant to be seen by only those who are pure and clean from any judgment.

I will not chastise you or tongue tie you and leave you speechless

Since I am meant to bring together all the pages of what makes a life, a life.

Contrary to what may be believed, it isn’t food or drink, or young or old,

It is the soul.

The soul that watches everything unfold,

No arms or legs of its own.

In fact, the only way to prove a good soul exists is to make sure its good work is shown.

And so, maybe my teeth aren’t the whitest

And I’m not the brightest

And my clothes aren’t the tightest

Maybe I like to sit inside and read about my deen*

Instead of watch shows or buy clothes that I don’t need

Maybe I’m not your picture-perfect, standard definition of a teen girl in 2015 CE.

But I know where I’m at, and I know where I’m going

And I keep my path clear, and make sure it’s always showing

I try my hardest not to get my feet in a twist or my hand in a fist

Try my best not to get my mind in a jumble or my legs in a fumble

Sometimes I may fall and stumble but that doesn’t mean your point’s been proven

That a girl like me existing and being happy is an illusion!

I am me!

And free!

Just cause I’m not out every night

Or I bite back my tongue when it’s right

Or avoid fights and unnecessary frights

Just cause I don’t overcome plights with spite,

But prefer to reunite instead of taking disagreements to different heights

Just cause I don’t bicker

Or flicker the lights on the goals I’ve put into sight

Just cause I’m content

Doesn’t mean that I’m displeased

Or that my mind needs to be appeased

Which to others means getting coated with sleaze

And doing wrong with ease

Yes, I’m different!

It was said there’d come a time when being on the right path would return to become as strange as it was when the path was first unveiled.

But glad tidings were promised to the strangers.

So I don’t fear the so-called danger that comes from being too reserved

Or the anger that stirs in those who see me and attempt to discern why exactly I am the way I am.

I might do things that are weird nowadays,

Like speak the truth,

And you might call be uncouth,

But I’m not worried.

As long as God is pleased with me,

Then I see no need to disguise myself for the people.

After all, if He really loves me, they’ll really love me too.

The ones who were guided to,

And written to feel love towards me

Before any of us even existed.

Isn’t that fact more satisfactory than love that can be twisted?

…who am I?

We are all one body, comprised of many different parts.

We are different, but the same

In that all of us are different.

We share that.

So, I am you, I am she

I am two, I am three,

I am four, I am more!

I am all that there is

And that ever will be.

So are you. So is he.

Who am I?

…you tell me.

 

 

*deen is the Arabic word for religion