We dismiss the requirements
Because of certain sentiments
So we misrepresent
Our own augmented faults
They canter and Ill banter
Is no more than a moment's slander
The wealthy want us to pander
For less than a grain off salt
They keep us confused when to stand
To keep broken humanity's band
So when the answer is close at hand
We will stay all stand alone
But if we ever find our way
And not step blindly into the fray
We may finally see a day
That we are unified and atoned
This look in my eyes is all i have sometimes.
The fact they see my soul and I'm grateful.
Those times they see a revealing fear
that turns into a fearless drive.
Those i love will see what i have is theirs
They'll see a want for greatness that i don't
really need.
I challenge myself to stay challenged
As the sun slips behind the horizon
my mind slips behind my courage
With all hope and good will
I will not submit to the simple
but press on with faith
Their love of our fear will be starved
We will transcend their want of our complacency
We have a need to be unified
All we must do is broaden our definition of acceptance
It is not our desire to stay uninformed for long
Nor to willingly stay blind to our path
No sides of any faction deserves our shadowed devotion
There is a need to be a light to the people that sets us free from all tyranny
They want our thoughts and actions to mimic their own
They want us to react with hatred as they do
But we will not give in to their whims
We will seek our own thoughts
And come to our own conclusions
By information not sanctioned or filtered
Only then shall we start to know what it's like to be free
I do not fan the fires that were sparked by hate,
But fuel the ones that light the true path
No matter what has failed in the past
We stand on the intentions of unity and prosperity
We have issues of love and faith that proceed thoughts of
wasteful and useless acts
We will not grieve for fights we've lost
But we will plan for victorys of battles to come
What thou shalt be wasted?
With the ship of sorrow harboured.
Like it gives thee an unexpected explosion,
And the heart of trauma and darkness is implanted.
It clouds into a season of bloodshed and pain,
But all thy life seems to be bludgeoned.
Tumbled into a canvas of time,
As thou shalt find a euphoric heart abused.
No description of fear was given,
With thy face bashed and muddied.
It shalt not be a publicized cry for help,
Nor shalt it be a dark horse murmured.
As a hard and stone-cold sadness torments thee,
And thy emotional feelings go unnoticed.
Memories would put thee in a chokehold,
And thy mutual senses are blurred.
Thou would find that thy pride is thy worst nightmare,
In thy skull is a slug that is slightly planted.
That, my friend, is a trauma that can drown in thy sorrows,
And it can get thee wasted.
Tonight, the dark sky again
only slept a short while;
no longer eager to cheat
its sun’s awakening joy
over the horizon’s realm;
Bulky white yawning clouds
hovered over the night-shaded
ground below as small nocturnal
creatures seemingly scurried into
and out of the dawning day;
A dawning day during which
we shall seek to see justice
and peace become realities
in a world wrought with chilled
fear and misery:
May new spreading sunshine
sweeps away waning darkness of winter as
flowering hope again welcomes a new spring
toward resurrected liberation and equity:-
With no regret do i believe
I will hope that all will stand
In one voice we show our strength
In one moment we could heal the land
They'll have us believe
in our desires and wants
They try to conceive
A birth of their own vaunts
As long as truth remains
As long as hope is in our sights
We'll never bow to conformity
And press forward with the people's might
I refuse to stand alone
I call on my bothers and sisters in faith
We will not be suade by misguided trends
We will be focused and staunch in our charity and kindness
We may bend but we will not shatter
We love all and wish all good fortune
And desire all the best of life
Uprightness and kindness stands
They speak to your heart
Your heart clouded by anger
Anger and kindness
Separate paths to virtue
I'm older now, older than most expect
and looking back I must confess
there are some things I do regret.
These senior years suddenly become
life's intermission,
the chance for last admissions.
The busyness of youth and wanting to grow up
filled the years with so much unnecessary stuff,
now, I can say - enough.
Before the years take hold
and our age gets for too old
my mind and heart must reveal the truths be told.
You were and are still
the love of my life, my soulmate that thrilled
every battle we shared up and down hill.
So now at last you know
the something I forgot to tell you as time flows
I love you so.
“Oh people of this temporary world..
May you enjoy the abundance of its trivial offerings..
You have no clue of what I see and yearn for..
And, how could you, as the death is the end of the road..
But, for the lover, it’s the union with the beloved.. the end of waiting and suffering..
To light up the world one must first burn a little..
Burn in the love of the ONE till the temporary curtains fall..
To reveal the divine elevator to the beginning of peace and permanent grace..
And an eternal pleasure and a never fading Joy!
So, let the lover cry more and laugh only but little…
For his yearning is not for the Temporary…”
~UK
PS: Dedicated to the utmost faith and resistance of the brave people of Gaza and Palestine
#FreePalestine
Let the eagles soar above the hills
Displaying remarkable flying skills,
Symbols of our nation’s strength
And intrepid patriotic feeling instills
Our anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner,
The heart of an impassioned patriot fills,
When hearing about our spacious skies
Our hearts do tremble with gusty thrills,
And give us deep satisfaction to cheer
While dancing those old-fashioned rills,
They crawl up our arms in tiny bumps
Cause us to shudder with the chills.
Let the eagles soar above the hills
Displaying remarkable flying skills,
The grasslands, deserts, and seashore
From majestic mountains to tiny rills,
To live in a land of freedom and might
Covers up many of our frustrating ills
With thanksgiving each day for bounty
Our hearts with gratitude over spills,
Let the eagles soar above the hills
Displaying remarkable flying skills.
written October 14, 2021
Believe me ……
Poetic Form :: Qasida
When I wished to live my life with you;
I was very young yet loved to do
anything for you, but was ignored
every time, reason best known to you;
Someone said, even the love gets dried
in extreme desert heat; may be true.
For your acts felt humiliated
yet I didn't reciprocate to you.
Those days suffered alone, hoped you'll change;
never tried to make it known to you.
And you continue to remain same
I felt discarded, unwanted too.
Now, after decades you came back, lost
charm of lush life; You're lonely and blue.
You wish to be with me, really
from my heart I do wish to help you.
But, fact is over years the cruel
world has damaged my soul and health too.
This desert has sucked my energy;
I don't have strength for new work to do .
Yes, I can't start a new life gaily;
it is too late both for me and you.
See how destiny plays with our lives.
Believe me, God knows, still I love you.
~X~X~X~
Such a glorious grace of diva
Limitless is her divine aura
Poets compete to verse on her
For she is a presiding Lord of flora
A beauty with brains in tons
Besides being Lord Goddess Arora
Blue gets fixed precisely such
As her drape is like anaphora
Who is she-the enchanting one!
Of course it’s hypophora
Is she a seductress or temptress!
I am sure not less than Tamara
Winsome mien and gorgeous grin
Looks just stunning in coat angora
Wherever she is my lady luck
May she’s all laurels like Laura
A super woman so beautiful
And enamouring in this era..!!
Introduction
The pleasure-and the risk-of reading a qasida lies in hearing a pattern return while the poem keeps enlarging its argument. A recurring end sound can feel ceremonial, insistent, playful, accusatory, or haunting, depending on the voice that summons it. Because the poem has room to accumulate images and claims, the reader listens not only for what each passage says, but also for how the poet sustains attention across an extended address.
As you read the community poems, compare the kinds of presence each speaker creates. One poet may adopt the confidence of a public orator; another may turn praise into intimate devotion, moral reflection, comic exaggeration, or veiled criticism. Some writers may foreground sonic regularity, while others may treat the inherited pattern more flexibly. A refrain can become an emotional anchor, an ironic echo, or a phrase whose meaning changes with every return. Even poems addressing similar subjects may differ sharply in scale, pace, imagery, and degree of ceremony.
Reading beyond the first example is especially valuable here. An isolated qasida may make its choices seem inevitable, but several examples reveal how much interpretation the form permits. Notice which poets build by escalation, which proceed through linked meditations, and which create tension between elevated language and ordinary detail. Browse the poems in this collection as individual performances rather than interchangeable demonstrations. Each offers a different answer to the central creative challenge: how can recurrence provide continuity without preventing discovery?
Reading Guide
A qasida rewards two kinds of attention at once: close listening to individual couplets and patient awareness of the larger movement. Its repeated sonic destination establishes an expectation, but expectation alone does not create momentum. As you read the community poems, follow how each writer renews the pattern through changing images, arguments, tonal pressures, and degrees of direct address. The most revealing comparisons often concern not whether a feature is present, but what expressive work that feature performs.
- Listen to the recurring end sound. Notice whether it arrives naturally, with emphatic force, or through strained syntax. Its return may reassure the ear, intensify obsession, sharpen satire, or give praise a ceremonial glow. When comparing poems, ask: does the sound deepen the statement, or merely announce that another unit has ended?
- Track the development between couplets. A qasida can accumulate rather than narrate straightforwardly, yet its parts still need a felt relationship. Look for progression through association, escalation, contrast, or argument. Ask: what has changed in the speaker's thought or emotional position by the time several couplets have passed?
- Examine the speaking posture. Because the form can carry the energy of public address, voice matters intensely. Is the speaker praising, petitioning, boasting, mourning, admonishing, teasing, or accusing? Ask: who seems to be addressed, and how does that imagined audience influence diction and confidence?
- Notice the work of a refrain, when used. The same phrase can acquire new meanings as its context changes. It may sound sincere in one passage and ironic in another. Ask: does each recurrence merely repeat an idea, or does the preceding language make the familiar phrase feel newly charged?
- Follow shifts in scale and imagery. A poet may move from landscape to private memory, from a named addressee to an ethical claim, or from grandeur to comic detail. Such shifts keep an extended ode alive. Ask: which image opens a fresh dimension of the subject rather than offering another version of what is already known?
- Hear the pace beneath the regularity. Similar rhythmic expectations do not require a uniform speaking speed. Syntax, punctuation, sentence length, and enjambment can create urgency or deliberation. Ask: where does the poem accelerate, pause, or become ceremonially slow, and why?
- Study the ending as a release or culmination. After sustained recurrence, closure carries unusual pressure. The final passage may summarize, reverse, bless, condemn, or leave the address resonating. Ask: has the ending been prepared by the poem's development, or does it feel attached after the pattern has run its course?
Compare several poets' approaches aloud as well as silently. The ear often detects authority, fatigue, surprise, and tonal change before the analytical mind can name them.
Writing Tips
Begin a qasida by identifying a subject that can withstand sustained attention. A passing impression may not provide enough pressure, whereas praise complicated by doubt, grievance mixed with admiration, public concern grounded in concrete experience, or a landscape carrying ethical meaning can keep unfolding. Before drafting, decide what the speaker wants from the addressee or audience. That desire will give the poem direction when sonic recurrence alone cannot.
- Choose material with several facets. List possible images, memories, claims, contradictions, and tonal shifts associated with the subject. If every note says essentially the same thing, the draft may become padded. Productive material allows each couplet to approach the central concern from a genuinely different angle.
- Build a generous sound bank before committing. Gather words and phrases that can meet the recurring sonic expectation without distorting your meaning. Include different parts of speech and emotional registers. A narrow bank often causes beginner drafts to rely on awkward inversions, vague filler, or the same grammatical construction repeatedly.
- Make recurrence serve thought. Do not treat the returning sound or refrain as decoration added after the sentence is written. Place language there that deserves emphasis. The reader will anticipate that position, so use it for revelation, reversal, wit, accusation, or an image capable of lingering.
- Give the poem an architecture. Sketch a sequence of movements: invocation, description, complication, intensification, reflection, and closure, for example. This is not a mandatory template. It is a way to prevent an extended qasida from becoming a catalogue whose entries could be rearranged without consequence.
- Vary the route, not the underlying pulse. Rhythmic continuity can create authority, but sentence shape should remain alive. Alternate declarative force with questions, pauses, subordinate clauses, or moments of direct appeal. Variety in syntax lets the voice breathe without weakening the poem's ceremonial coherence.
- Complicate praise and sharpen satire. Unqualified admiration can flatten into a list of virtues, while satire can become blunt insult. Use telling particulars, controlled exaggeration, irony, and contrasts between appearance and consequence. A convincing speaker reveals an attitude through selection and phrasing rather than repeatedly naming that attitude.
- Let imagery carry development. Return to a central image only when it can change. A garden first presented as abundance might later suggest neglect, transience, or political display. Such transformation gives unity without mere repetition and helps abstract ethical or devotional material remain sensuous.
- Test the ending against accumulated pressure. Avoid stopping simply because the sound bank is exhausted. Consider whether the close should heighten the public address, turn inward, expose an irony, or grant the recurring language its final altered meaning. The ending should answer the poem's movement, even if it does not resolve its subject.
During revision, read the entire draft aloud in more than one sitting. Mark every place where rhythm becomes laborious, rhyme dictates syntax, the refrain loses energy, or an image repeats without developing. Then read only the ends of the couplets to test their sonic integrity, and only the opening phrases to test forward movement. Finally, remove any passage whose sole function is extending the poem. Formal compliance may make a draft recognizable; purposeful accumulation makes it compelling.
Interesting Facts
- Predictability can become suspense. Once the ear anticipates a recurring sonic arrival, the real question becomes how the poet will reach it. A graceful approach feels inevitable only after it occurs; an unexpected but apt word can produce both surprise and satisfaction.
- Length magnifies small weaknesses. A slightly strained rhyme, empty refrain, or monotonous sentence shape may pass unnoticed once, but recurrence exposes it. This makes the qasida demanding: every local choice participates in a pattern the reader learns to evaluate.
- The same recurrence can support opposite emotions. A repeated sound may create grandeur in praise, relentlessness in accusation, tenderness in devotion, or comic inevitability in satire. Its effect depends on diction, pace, imagery, and the speaker's relation to the addressee.
- Couplet autonomy need not mean fragmentation. Individual units may feel polished and memorable while still contributing to a larger arc. Experienced poets create links through evolving images, strategic contrasts, or an argument that gathers force rather than through explicit transitions alone.
- A refrain can behave like a changing witness. Although its words remain stable, surrounding contexts can alter what readers hear in it. A phrase introduced confidently may later sound doubtful, grieving, ironic, or accusatory, allowing repetition to register emotional change.
- Performance reveals hidden structure. Read aloud, the qasida's sustained rhythm can clarify where the voice commands attention and where it merely complies with pattern. Pauses before anticipated endings, changes of volume, and tonal pivots can make the poem's public-speaking dimension more apparent.
- Variation becomes clearest through comparison. Browse the poems in this collection to see how writers prioritize address, meditation, story, praise, satire, or sonic display differently. No single example can demonstrate the full expressive range available within the shared expectations.
Popular Themes
Subject matter in a qasida is not merely placed inside a pattern; it is transformed by sustained address and recurrence. Themes work especially well when they can gather layers, tolerate amplification, and change under repeated scrutiny. The possibilities below are literary affinities rather than measured rankings of what community poets write most often.
- Praise complicated by knowledge. A person, place, community, or ideal can be celebrated through accumulating particulars. Praise becomes more convincing when the speaker also recognizes limitation, distance, sacrifice, or the cost behind the admired quality.
- Satire and public criticism. Recurring sound can give accusation memorable force, while irony and exaggeration let a poet expose vanity or contradiction. The extended address provides room to move beyond ridicule toward consequence, motive, or ethical judgment.
- Devotion and spiritual longing. Repetition can resemble petition, remembrance, or disciplined contemplation. A refrain may remain verbally constant while the speaker passes through confidence, doubt, surrender, gratitude, and renewed desire.
- Nature as an ethical mirror. Landscapes, seasons, animals, and weather can support more than description. Across an extended poem, natural images may become ways of thinking about transience, stewardship, power, beauty, or the limits of human control.
- Grief, remembrance, and tribute. The form's capacity for accumulation suits a subject that cannot be contained in one anecdote. Separate images can preserve different facets of a life or loss, while recurrence gives private memory a ceremonial frame.
- Exile, belonging, and cultural memory. A speaker may address a homeland, language, family tradition, or absent community. Repeated sonic returns can suggest the mind circling what it cannot physically recover, while changing scenes prevent nostalgia from becoming static.
- Moral counsel and self-examination. The public voice can advise an audience, yet the strongest counsel often implicates the speaker as well. A qasida can move from confident declaration toward humility, revealing that ethical authority must be tested rather than assumed.
As you read the community poems, compare writers who choose related subjects. Notice how one poet makes praise intimate while another makes it ceremonial, or how satire shifts when voiced with anger, wit, sorrow, or reluctant admiration. Shared themes become distinct through stance, image, pacing, and sound.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of the qasida is between recurrence and expansion. The reader expects a recognizable sonic return, yet the poem must continue discovering reasons to arrive there. If every passage merely confirms the opening attitude, formal persistence becomes emotional stasis. A memorable poem instead uses continuity as a measure of change: the sound remains available while the speaker's understanding, intensity, or relation to the addressee evolves.
Structure feels necessary when it embodies the poem's subject. In praise, repeated arrival can enact ceremonial affirmation; in grief, it can suggest a mind returning helplessly to loss; in satire, it can make each exposure land like a verdict. The effect is strongest when the anticipated ending does more than satisfy the ear. An exact image, decisive verb, or altered refrain can make sound and sense arrive together. Editors and attentive readers also look for larger design: sequences of couplets that deepen, challenge, or redirect one another rather than forming a stack of self-contained statements.
Technically recognizable drafts often reveal their weaknesses through excess compliance. Forced language appears when a rhyme has been chosen before the thought; mechanical patterning appears when every sentence takes the same route; over-explanation appears when the speaker states the praise, blame, or moral already conveyed by imagery. Another danger is insufficient development. The form's amplitude invites poets to mistake duration for depth, adding examples without changing the stakes. Predictable escalation can be equally limiting if every passage simply becomes louder. Contrast, silence, humor, sensory detail, and moments of inward hesitation can provide more persuasive intensification.
Individuality survives shared convention through the quality of attention. Two poets may address the same kind of subject and use similarly prominent recurrence, yet differ in what they notice, what they withhold, how openly they perform authority, and where they permit uncertainty. One voice may be stately, another conversational; one may build through panoramic images, another through precise domestic objects. Compare several community poems to refine your sense of these distinctions. Reading across interpretations teaches more than identifying compliance: it reveals when recurrence creates pressure, when length earns its space, when an ending transforms what preceded it, and when a speaker's voice remains audible beyond the form's powerful music.
Read, Write & Share
Read beyond the first qasida that catches your attention. Compare how several community poets handle sustained address, recurring sound, tonal change, and the difficult passage from ceremonial opening to earned conclusion. A thoughtful comment might identify an image that deepens through repetition, a turn that changes the refrain, or a moment when the speaker's public voice becomes unexpectedly intimate.
Then try composing your own qasida and publish it on PoetrySoup. Let the shared conventions create pressure, but allow your subject, ear, and speaking presence to determine what that pressure becomes. Participation adds another interpretation for future readers to consider and compare.
Collection Statistics
This collection currently contains 20 poems, providing multiple opportunities to compare how writers approach the qasida's sustained voice, recurring sound, thematic development, and closure. As you browse, remember that community poets may follow inherited conventions closely, adapt them to contemporary language and subjects, or challenge particular expectations while preserving a recognizable relationship to the form. The collection is therefore most useful when read comparatively rather than as a single fixed model.
Qasida Categories
Definition | What is Qasida in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.
Related Poetry Forms
arabic, fard, ghazal, hamd, hazal, hijv, madah, manqabat, marsiya, masnavi, munaajaat, musaddas, naat, nazm, qasida, qataa, rubaiyat, rubayi, salaam, seharaa, urdu, vaasokht