Can't Sleep

  In war, innocent people are always the victims.

Many battles are fought this way, casualties drop and we merely cast blame,

 but things seem too insignificant to most to take notice.

Even a murder is not just cause for distraction from the ride to and from the bar.

We just call it two sides fighting and on the sidelines

more gather at a neighborhood football game.

In these deadly games of racism, its as if

no one even cares whose the one to blame.

so many people are more interested in gossip

over the neighbors and what the havenots don't have

to care a man died trying to save someone from

a 21st century surge in white supremacy.

Still we don't call this war. 

We barely see the fight. 

We don't even see the need to disagree.

Unless someone cuts in line and it directly involves you and me.

(Noorunnisa Muiz can't sleep)

an ancestor blinks

 oh, young soul, your ancestors wait.

one day, your leggings

will feel too heavy.

your shoes will weigh

you down like two tons of lead.

even your bones

will abandon you, but don't be afraid.

you will be ready when the time comes.

wait til you see what is waiting here.

you are just the briefest blip

in time and we are here

in eternity waiting for you.

imagine, the first drop of blood

and how far you have come.

NOOR-UN-NISA'S 27 UPS AND DOWNS

(Its a delicate walk to balance hope with chaos.-Stacie Martin)

when you walk up and down
27 times, the two halls
of a psychiatric unit
to get in a mile
of exercise
while locked up manic,
you learn to balance
chaos
and
hope.

you teeter and totter
and never fall down.
well, maybe that's not true.
you do fall down.
you are on the ground,
but you rise up
even if it takes all day

and you take the next step forward
even if it takes the entire next day
and even if the entire 27 times
you walk up and down those two halls
is all in your head, you have accomplished
a miracle...you celebrate the ups and downs
of everything you have managed that day.

you are still here after all. and when you fell,
you got up. and when you were down and
couldn't get up, you laid there and visualized
moving forward until you could do it.
there is nothing to give up when you are down,
because down can't exist without up.
After all, that is the meaning of yin and yang,
here and there, high and low, manic and depressed,
sick and well, disaster and miracle, in and out,
open and closed, shut and open, alive and dead.

~Noor-un-Nisa has insomnia and is writing poems instead of sleeping~
 

Semicolon tattoo: Here's what it means and why it matters. One small character, one big purpose. Laura Willard