99 names: as-Salam: the Source of Peace

in the name of ALLAH, the Most Beneficient, the Most Merciful.

islam, the Great Surrender, is the process of submission to the Source of Peace. islam, translates to Surrendering to the Source of Peace. the Source of Peace is Al-LAH, the name of which translates to number One.

peace to You. peace to your mother and father and sisters and brothers and aunties and uncles, and cousins and friends, and lineage…we share the same one…

so peace to you from the Source that we manifest from, the one that is peace, that has always been Peace, salam, even when the Arabic word for it becomes reprogrammed to fit bombs and ak’s.

somehow the hollow-hearted white, black, brown, yellow soldiers who drop bombs on mosques, drop their pants and grope, intrude, inseminate women (women with so much modesty that shaking hands would lead to a blush), are rewarded with pins and stripes and celebrated as heroes…

somehow…prayers for them…you have my prayers…you did what you did though…recognize…do something about it…find your peace…prayers for returning to Source…Peace

…all praise is due for this path of Peace that anchors the day, the body, the year, human relations into the mathematics of the Quiet humility of sun moon stars aligned in orbit with the Source of Peace..

peace to my grandfather, the medicine man, who prayed, who never gave up on me…even when i was gone, so gone that bottles, blunts, yoga-talking, dancing metaphysics to supercat…

…the Source of Peace has always been there, the redwoods told me…

but there is no peace my boy dani used to say, as we walked from subway car to subway car, four deep, paper-bag bottles in our hands, bronx our audience, our shell-tops and long curls our shine...the police confirmed this when they waited for us at the next stop, pulling us out, taking our id’s and handing us fines…for being brown, dani said, for being poor…yeah, I used to say..it’s a set up…but who was setting who up? who put the bottle in my hand, the sparkly-white kicks on my feet?

…at some point i set myself up, became that chick that my boy juan told me about, bloody eyed, with scuffs covering his face like tats. the maya was that siren, Juan’s potential fling, the one who was so fine, she was butter-fly, as my dudes and i used to say. the one who he met recently at the time, and who hollered at him that night, told him to meet him on 36^th and 21^st, by the afghani chicken spot, under the glare of ravenswoods pj’s. the chick who was ghost when juan got there, but a bunch of dudes with fists faster than blur materialized like the hard of the timbs they kicked him in with.

…set myself up, was part of the guys around the bend that came with smiles and questions before putting my brother in a chokehold, before jumping us…i was with them, kicking my brother in, keeping cold steel on my homeboy dre's face. i was them, laughing at me asking for help from men in cars that paused to see a spectacle but not do anything about it.

…I was behind the setup the whole time…i was the one who pulled on my Ammu’s sari and pleaded for nikes and walkman's and baggy cargos...i was the one that checked in paystubs for eighths, ounces, and bar-talk…i was the one who dressed words with the same material that disguised my body…and when i was older, well into my adulthood, i was the one who made indigenous a brand-name and claimed henna and yoga like moschino bags, i was the one who attracted women who valued the surface-rebel, and of course…candy corn attracts cavities, fried chicken invites heart attacks, potheads attract potheads, the hollow finds the empty, hurt looks for Real in hurt, Real recognizes Real..real surrenders move in Quiet...

...been trying to find peace…been trying…every so often i’m there…every so often when i am so Quiet that all i am doing is doing…when asana is a covenant between me and the crescent moon, when food is the mud my ancestors became clay in, when i forgo an exchange of info with potential lovers, for a prayers for your path...when most people i come across give up or avoid or say very little to me other than Peace…the Quiet filters…

the Quiet gets blurred into silence, a sinking ship in the middle of the day when i forget Purpose, when Biggie creeps into my head, when i swagger like drunken rockstars in the frequency of a maya-cool, when bills and rent and alienation grip me by the throat, when i forget that the only Purpose as the son of the medicine man, my Abbu, tells me, is to worship, to worship so deeply that…Peace.