In every Breath,
He keeps me calm.
At his presence,
"My worries are lost in dark"
As he lights me up,
I'm blessed in all.
Kid naps here, daycare!
Sick babies...About those
Kidnaps are there! Out there!
I wish I could, evocation, dowry!
For an already invested $275 nuptial Tyler Mowrey!
Gaza wall and Tel-Aviv- a , embracing in Jackson Church
Sameeha Azra- eel A and a PEER in peer pressure for air fryer
Is your oxygen an EIN? Bargaining overseas? Playing diplomacy? Daunts in ranting ramps where models stood?
Sometimes, data cable is not that a bad idea, where "inna lillah" is also a cliched Hinda call!
Long she served Holly Wood, May she come true among converts and traveler (pilgrims)
further in optimism in selfless "Sufism" not "Sophism or Hedonism",
Sin and Boon are all stamped with the sense of Shame, where the guilt is sensed after all!
Not a river dredging and to make a parable to river shifting, as no longer helpful!
Helpful and no longer! For once, try in Pickthall!
For the end of the time and the beginning, too
Time impeccable is Timeless Allah (SWT) and the all-knowing and all!
In time He begets not,
In Time He is free from the need of an obgyn,
of that specialty, departmental.
OBSERVE.
Observe what you have never
Observed before..
Observe the water flowing..
Observe the sun rising..
Observe the sun setting..
Observe the colors of rainbow
Scatter in the sky..
Observe the plant
Growing from a seed..
Observe the due drops
Shining like crystals on leaves..
Observe the organs and
The organ systems inside you.
Observe the strength
Of mountains..
The softness of
The clouds..
Observe the comforts
Of earth..
Observe the
Miraculous signs
In the universe..
Mimetic mimicry mimicked the mime.
More than furlong, the entire belonging day long.
Prophet, the proper property, pope prophecy.
Hardhearted harshness tied a fair harness.
Shepherd herding sheep, harder in a herder way.
(A Regretful Mistake)
Aren’t I doing a mistake intentionally,
By living my life as if I were to live eternally,
When death would take place eventually?
Indeed, I am doing a mistake intentionally,
By deceiving myself mentally and spiritually,
When death is a part of reality.
How foolish can I be,
For not accepting death as a part of actuality?
So, when I reach my grave unpreparedly,
Then who would be there to shelter me?
Now tell me, what can be a more regretful mistake than this,
This life is the only chance we’ve got and no sensible person would want to miss this.
It’d be better if we would ask Allaah for forgiveness repeatedly,
And Allaah is Merciful and Forgiving, exceedingly.
...commands a trance,
pulls you into the dance,
he'll sing for the enhances-
playmore fanatics!
He's the sutures and calamity's Casper,
and endemic more than even plasma...
I have the needs,
he the commander,
I have to feed...
Do more than land her.
knock knock
its me who chase your greatest enemies
i am the one with no rival
i am the one that pushes you to Ar-rahaman
you can find me anywhere in the mosque and the Islamic center
from sha'aban to Ramadan
i unite the Muslim ummah
i am your best friend Ramadan
marhaban! marhaban! O Ramadan with joy we welcome you as our guest
the month of fasting, Qur'an and taraweeh
doors of jannah are open wide
the devil is chained up
evil forces are disposed
the hell is closed
you feed my iman
you can see the vastness of the ummah
teaching us to grow from
our spiritual adolescence
battling with our souls
you mend our hearts and give us tranquillity
solidifying our bonds with our creator
the night we spend in taraweeh prayers prepares the soul for redemption
let's not forget our less fortunate brothers and sisters
the devil losses and we win
some don't have food for suhoor and iftar
we have to ignore the devilish whispers
when they are in pains we're in pains regardless of the distance
let's give our assistance to the Muslim ummah
we're asking for your mercy upon us
to be admitted into your kingdom Ya Allah
@bint__abdolrahman
A Peace Poem for Jim Link and Word Hobo:
This close to CHRISTmas what may I say
You two have seen so much, fought so well ...
And for the underdog, Prof. Jim Link, you and I
Travelled the Maryland trails of poetry and "News"
As in Greenbelt News Review (OLDest community paper,
in the Grand Old United States. An honor I wrote with Thee)
And now, you are both uttering "So Long, Adios, Alvida"
I could cry, and hold onto your hand; but the pain
Is what you know intimately, almost as Jesus did
On THAT Cross at Calvary to reconcile rebellious,
Ingrates, and egregious law-breakers (me) with Abba Father -
As in John 14, or even in John 8: "You cannot come with me!"
Echoes of Jesus --- in the good times, foretelling & teaching
As only He could do. I must go so better things will come:
THE HOLY SPIRIT: parakletos, a Helper of the Same Kind!
May the Spirit heal Thee in Jesus' Name, or take over
The driving ... with the celestial wings. Or is it Holy Breath?
Much Love this and EVERY CHRISTMAS I will celebrate without Thy wishes
As a path of fear
leads to fundamental fragmentation,
left-hemisphere industrial-strength domination of Earth,
universally egalitarian
and interdependently unitarian
only in its final lap toward death,
A path of compassion
leads to radical left/right bicameral solidarity,
equivalent in our positive energetic integrity;
sometimes experienced as sacred communion.
In darkest hours rises the purest realization
As perhaps
Nature also loves symmetry.
I STAND-AS I CELEBRATE THE HOLY PROPHET-Salaam
Graciously, I call upon the Father
Series praises I shout out, I stand
Salaam
The joys of the Prophet Messiah
Jesus
O a praise,
I salute, and holy greetings and offer you, I shall stand
I celebration the deities of you the holy prophet.
Selah
I admonish you;
I adorn you;
I greet you with thanksgiving as I stand
Salaam
I praise, a salute, a greeting and a celebration of the holy prophet.
Essentially holy salutary
Words in praise and celebration of the prophet.
I honor you recited, standing up.
Holy Prophet I’m aware, that your mercies are here
Graciously, I call upon the Father, while I stand
Series praises I shout out, so I stand
I salute, and holy greetings and offer you, I stand
I celebration the deities of you the holy prophet.
Selah
I admonish you;
I adorn you;
I greet you with thanksgiving
Praises be worthy, you’re Holy
I praise and celebrate your life, yes I stand, while calling on your name
This I offer, as I stand
Unto you I salute, holy greetings I offer true to you holy prophet, I shall stand
Salaam
8/7/19
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2019©
(fact contest poem)
The ten commandments are easily broken
By those who should of known them well
It's been broken like bunch a broken wings
Like thieves and devil's and demons and malpractioners
They play they games like scorns and home weckers
Like miserable sinners who assume they way to happiness is by ruin another.
The ten commandments are easily broken
By those who should of known them well
For they do ,that's why the world is at it's hell.
TUNU ISOKIFANI
Kwa fahari najigamba, mataifa natangaza,
Mahari kote natamba, penye nuru hatagiza,
Mnene hata mwembamba, sifa zote namaliza,
Ni tunu isokifani, kuzaliwa Afrika.
Chakula changu asili, matunda tele nachuma,
Chastahili kimwili, cha wengine ntalalama,
Kisotiwa kemikali, huwezi tamani tema,
Ni tunu isokifani, kuzaliwa Afrika.
Rangi yangu maridhawa, watambua walimwengu,
Rangi ile ya uzawa, na sikama ya kizungu,
Raha nakshi kutiwa, na nyeusi rangi yangu,
Ni tunu isokifani, kuzaliwa Afrika.
Wajiona takataka, kutamani visovyao,
Puani vinawatoka, na visokoma vilio,
Amakweli waumbuka, vyawakaba kwenye koo,
Ni tunu isokifani, kuzaliwa Afrika.
Nimetulia Mawenzi, mevuka vingi vilima,
Ni zamu yao washenzi, mizigo kwa wao mama,
Nyuso zenye makunyanzi, watembea kiinama,
Ni tunu isokifani, kuzaliwa Afrika.
Uzuri wa kitu sasa, waja kwa historia,
Kosa kurudia kosa, la Ndugu alokosea,
Jikinge na hili kosa, na tao kufuatia,
Ni tunu isokifani, kuzaliwa Afrika.
By
MUSSA SHIKOME
I get spanked just about every day? I don't know why? I guess it is just natural for guys! I never see girls do it! Guys are really weird you have to admit it. There are many different types of spankings out there. There are punishment spankings, there are appreciation spankings and there a couple others out there that you teenagers know about. I could see it being appropriate at a young age as a punishment when getting spanked with a wooden spoon, or a paddle, or a board. Sometimes even a belt! But getting hit in the rear-end by another mans hand is just straight up weird. I don't get it! I'm sure a lot of you are on the same page as me. Especially you girls! What is the purpose of it? To say hi? Or just another way of giving a hi-five or saying good job? I mostly get spanked by my dads friends, my coaches, and my friends. And also a couple times by my parents when I was little as a punishment. I admit it, I spank my buddies every once in a while, but once I think about it, why did I? no reason. Exactly. Spanks on Spanks why do we Spank!
Breathe In
Breathe Out
Breathe In
Breathe Out
Danger!
Keep Out!
High Chemical Levels!
The shadow is sneaking so sly
Inhale
Exhale
A poison all around the atmosphere,
anxious to associate with us.
It follows us in a crude way.
Our world is repeating its righteousness.
Have we grown to this regular righteousness?
Shall we mold our world right again?
We cripple in pain, as the igneous shadow is among us.
This science influences us.
Now we have no confidence.
But we do have silence.
Our world is acting artificial.
Artificial can't last forever.
Everything has a lifespan.
Short, long, Endless?
Only time will tell.
Inhale
Exhale
Uprising with light overtaken by the black shadow.
Can we light the sky naturally again?
Or does that need to be artificial too?
Our environment soon is going to be as black as abstain.
We used to be bright like the sun.
Now our sunlight will be a thing of the past.
Were welcoming this dark figure…
No.
We're making this dark figure.
The leaves ´dead´
The flowers ´dead´
The environment ´dead´
We're dying.
Are we dead yet?
Introduction
The particular pleasure of reading a Salaam lies in hearing reverence become a living voice rather than a fixed statement. Praise may sound intimate, ceremonial, grief-stricken, grateful, or quietly contemplative, and each choice changes the relationship among speaker, sacred subject, and listening community. A successful poem does more than announce devotion: it discovers an emotional occasion for the salutation and gives that occasion shape through image, cadence, memory, or narrative.
As you read the community poems, notice the range of possible approaches. One poet may build an atmosphere through recurring invocations, while another may focus on a single virtue, remembered incident, or moment of spiritual need. A Salaam concerned with Karbala may emphasize lament, witness, moral courage, or the enduring meaning of loss. Diction can move from elevated and ceremonial to direct and personal; pacing can be expansive or concentrated. These differences matter because the form must balance a shared devotional purpose with the individual speaker's reasons for speaking now.
Reading beyond the first example reveals how poets negotiate that balance. Compare which poems address their sacred subject directly, which turn outward toward a gathered audience, and which move between those positions. Listen for how repetition accumulates emotional force rather than merely restating praise. Browse the poems in this collection as related interpretations, not interchangeable specimens: together they show how salutation can become meditation, testimony, remembrance, ethical reflection, or communal utterance.
Reading Guide
Approach each Salaam as both a written poem and an act of address. Its meaning resides not only in what is praised or remembered, but also in who appears to be speaking, to whom, and under what emotional pressure. Because devotional language can carry familiar phrases and inherited associations, close reading should ask how an individual poet renews that language through arrangement, detail, sound, and movement. As you compare several poets' approaches, attend to the experience the poem creates rather than checking only whether its subject is appropriate.
- Follow the direction of address. Notice whether the speaker addresses the Holy Prophet directly, speaks to a community, reflects inwardly, or moves among these positions. That direction controls intimacy and public resonance. Ask: who is being invited to hear, witness, or answer this salutation?
- Look for particulars within the praise. A list of honorific qualities can establish dignity, but a concrete image, action, or remembered teaching can make praise emotionally credible. Compare where poets rely on declaration and where they embody admiration. Which details allow you to feel the stated virtue?
- Trace the emotional progression. A Salaam may begin in greeting and travel toward gratitude, longing, lament, supplication, or resolve. The journey prevents reverence from remaining static. Ask what has changed in the speaker by the closing lines, even if the sacred subject remains constant.
- Listen to repetition and cadence. Repeated names, salutations, sentence shapes, or sounds can produce ceremonial gravity and aid oral delivery. They can also become mechanical if they arrive without variation. When comparing poems, ask whether each return deepens, intensifies, or redirects the feeling.
- Examine the handling of Karbala. Where a poem engages an incident of Karbala, notice whether it selects a vivid moment, narrates a sequence, or reflects on moral consequences. Ask how the poet balances grief and historical reference with poetic focus rather than attempting to explain everything at once.
- Attend to breath, pause, and closure. The tradition of upright recitation makes pacing especially consequential. Long phrases may create ceremonial sweep; shorter units may register awe, pain, or urgency. Does the ending feel like a blessing, renewed salutation, ethical charge, or purposeful silence?
No single feature determines the poem's achievement. Read beyond the first example and compare how voice, detail, movement, and sound cooperate to make each act of praise or remembrance distinct.
Writing Tips
Begin a Salaam by identifying the inner necessity behind the address. Reverence supplies the poem's orientation, but it does not automatically supply its dramatic life. Ask what has prompted the speaker to offer praise or remembrance at this particular moment: gratitude, longing, grief, moral uncertainty, communal observance, or a renewed understanding of an exemplary quality. That occasion will help you choose images, pacing, and an ending that belong together.
- Choose a manageable center. Rather than attempting to encompass every virtue or every implication of Karbala, select one quality, incident, image, question, or emotional need. Concentration permits depth. A narrow center can radiate outward, while an unlimited subject often produces a catalogue without development.
- Decide how close the speaking voice stands. Direct address can create immediacy; reflective narration can create contemplative distance; communal language can suggest shared witness. Choose deliberately, and mark any shift between personal and collective voice so that the reader understands why the poem's field of attention has widened.
- Make praise perceptible. Abstract words such as mercy, courage, purity, and guidance gain power when attached to an image, consequence, or human situation. Do not merely name the quality repeatedly. Show how it changes the speaker's understanding, conduct, memory, or hope.
- Build an emotional architecture. Plan a movement rather than a sequence of equivalent compliments. Greeting might lead to recollection, recollection to lament, and lament to resolve. Another poem might move from spiritual distance toward felt nearness. The order should make the final salutation or insight feel earned.
- Use repetition as transformation. A recurring phrase should gather new meaning from the lines around it. Alter its context, syntax, length, or emotional temperature. One common beginner mistake is treating repeated devotional phrasing as sufficient musical structure; repetition becomes memorable when each return carries changed pressure.
- Respect Karbala through selection and restraint. If the poem centers on an incident of Karbala, identify what the reader must see and what can remain outside the frame. Vivid but measured detail may carry grief more responsibly than relentless intensification. Let the event generate reflection rather than reducing it to decorative pathos.
- Let sound serve sincerity. Alliteration, internal echoes, rhyme, and balanced clauses can lend ceremonial weight, but forced elevation can make the voice feel borrowed. Read each ornate phrase beside a plainer alternative. Keep the version whose sound clarifies devotion rather than displaying technique.
- Design the ending as a return with consequence. A closing blessing, greeting, prayer, vow, or statement of witness should not merely repeat the opening. Ask what the poem has learned or made newly present. The strongest ending often joins reverence to an ethical or emotional change in the speaker.
During revision, read the draft aloud at a measured, attentive pace. Mark where breath fails, emphasis lands on an unimportant word, or repeated phrases lose energy. Then test every abstraction against the poem's images, every tonal heightening against the voice's credibility, and every section against the central occasion. Remove explanatory lines that tell readers what an image has already conveyed. The goal is not formal recognizability alone, but an address whose sound, structure, and feeling seem inseparable.
Interesting Facts
- Direct address creates two audiences at once. The poem may speak toward the Holy Prophet while also being heard by readers or a gathered community. This double orientation allows a private feeling to acquire public resonance without ceasing to be intimate.
- Praise is often harder to develop than conflict. Because admiration can appear emotionally settled from the beginning, the poet must create movement through discovery, intensification, remembrance, longing, or changed resolve. The artistic question is not simply what is honored, but what the act of honoring does to the speaker.
- Repetition can signal humility or urgency. The same returning salutation may sound meditative in spacious lines, insistent in short phrases, or communal when framed as a response. Its effect depends on timing and variation, not repetition alone.
- Upright recitation gives breath an ethical weight. A line that appears graceful on the page may feel hurried or overburdened when spoken. Pauses allow names, images, and moments of grief to receive attention, while sustained phrases can create dignity and ceremonial momentum.
- A Karbala-centered poem need not become a complete account. Selecting one incident, image, or consequence can intensify remembrance by giving the reader a precise point of contemplation. What is omitted may create reverent silence rather than narrative deficiency.
- Shared devotional purpose does not erase individuality. Voice can emerge through the chosen occasion, scale of imagery, degree of intimacy, and path from greeting to closure. As you browse the community poems, compare how recognizable intentions produce markedly different reading experiences.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and poetic form meet most fruitfully when the theme gives the salutation a reason to unfold. The possibilities below are literary affinities, not measured popularity rankings. Each can support the devotional, commemorative, and performative energies of a Salaam while leaving room for sharply different voices.
- Exemplary character and virtue. Mercy, patience, courage, justice, and compassion can anchor praise, especially when the poet connects a virtue to a concrete image or to the speaker's present moral need. The theme becomes dynamic when admiration leads toward self-examination.
- Spiritual longing and nearness. A speaker who feels distant from guidance can use direct address to dramatize desire for connection. Repeated salutations may then function as steps toward intimacy rather than as ornamental refrains.
- Gratitude for guidance. Thanksgiving gives praise a personal occasion. A poet might show how remembered teaching illuminates confusion, steadies conduct, or changes perception, allowing reverence to emerge through consequence rather than assertion alone.
- Karbala, grief, and moral witness. An incident of Karbala can sustain lament while raising questions about sacrifice, loyalty, courage, and remembrance. Careful selection and pacing help the poem honor sorrow without turning suffering into spectacle.
- Communal belonging. The voice may widen from I to we, presenting salutation as a shared act. This theme works well with recurring phrases, balanced clauses, and cadences that invite collective attention, provided the individual speaker remains emotionally present.
- Ethical renewal. Praise can become a mirror in which the speaker recognizes a need to change. A poem may move from naming an honored quality to accepting responsibility, giving the ending the force of a promise, prayer, or renewed commitment.
- Peace, blessing, and consolation. The language of greeting can frame a desire for inward calm or healing amid distress. Contrast between troubled circumstances and measured cadence can make the salutation feel restorative without requiring the poem to pretend that pain has vanished.
As you read the community poems, compare how different writers transform related themes through scale, imagery, voice, and emotional direction. Two poems may honor the same virtue or remember the same event yet create entirely different experiences because one whispers, another testifies, and another turns praise into resolve.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of a Salaam lies between inherited reverence and fresh discovery. The poet enters a mode whose devotional purpose is already recognizable, yet the poem must still make language feel necessary in the present moment. Familiar honorifics and sentiments can provide resonance, but they cannot carry the entire imaginative burden. A memorable example lets readers sense why this particular speaker must offer this particular salutation now. Individuality appears not through novelty for its own sake, but through the emotional occasion, the selected detail, and the route the mind takes through praise, remembrance, or grief.
Structure becomes necessary when it embodies that route. Repetition may enact a return to spiritual orientation; an expanding sequence of images may suggest praise exceeding the speaker's capacity; a restrained narrative of Karbala may turn remembrance into moral witness. Even paragraphing, line breaks, and pauses can reveal whether the voice is gathering confidence, dwelling in sorrow, or opening from personal feeling into communal utterance. Editors and attentive readers notice when these choices reinforce the subject. They also notice when ceremonial sound is merely applied to material that has not developed.
Predictability is therefore a greater risk than simplicity. A procession of elevated descriptions may remain static, while forced diction can place verbal grandeur between the speaker and genuine feeling. Mechanical recurrence weakens a salutation if each return means exactly what the previous one meant. Over-explanation can diminish a charged image or an incident of Karbala by instructing the reader how to respond before the scene has been allowed to resonate. At the other extreme, insufficient development may leave the poem as an opening gesture: sincere, recognizable, but not yet transformed into a complete emotional experience.
The strongest poems preserve humility without surrendering precision. They know that devotion can speak through plain language as well as ornament, and that restraint can intensify rather than reduce praise. Their endings carry consequence: the speaker has moved toward gratitude, understanding, consolation, witness, or ethical resolve. Comparing multiple community poems sharpens this judgment because quality becomes easier to perceive across contrasting solutions. One poet may achieve force through intimate address, another through measured public cadence, and another through a single image that gathers theological and emotional weight. Reading them side by side reveals that shared conventions are not obstacles to personality; they are pressures under which voice becomes audible.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on an impression of what a Salaam can accomplish. Compare how each poet shapes address, praise, remembrance, cadence, and closure, and consider which choices make the feeling deepen as the poem proceeds. Thoughtful comments can name a resonant image, a meaningful turn, or an especially effective use of repetition while respecting the devotional purpose of the work.
When you are ready, try composing your own response to the form and publish it on PoetrySoup. Let your poem join the continuing conversation, offering a distinct voice within a shared act of salutation and witness.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 23 poems, providing multiple interpretations to read beside one another. The range is large enough to support close comparison of voice, imagery, devotional intensity, narrative focus, sound, and closure without assuming that every contribution takes the same approach. Some poets may follow familiar conventions closely, while others may adapt or challenge expectations. Reading across the collection helps reveal which choices preserve the Salaam's recognizable purpose and which give an individual poem its particular emotional character.
Salaam Categories
Definition | What is Salaam 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.