Who needs pants, anyway?

I already do all these things and trust, they work.

1. push yourself to get up before the rest of the world - start with 7am, then 6am, then 5:30am. go to the nearest hill with a big coat and a scarf and watch the sun rise.

2. push yourself to fall asleep earlier - start with 11pm, then 10pm, then 9pm. wake up in the morning feeling re-energized and comfortable.

3. erase processed food from your diet. start with no lollies, chips, biscuits, then erase pasta, rice, cereal, then bread. use the rule that if a child couldn’t identify what was in it, you don’t eat it.

4. get into the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. fry tomatoes and mushrooms in real butter and garlic, fry an egg, slice up a fresh avocado and squirt way too much lemon on it. sit and eat it and do nothing else.

5. stretch. start by reaching for the sky as hard as you can, then trying to touch your toes. roll your head. stretch your fingers. stretch everything. 

6. buy a 1L water bottle. start with pushing yourself to drink the whole thing in a day, then try drinking it twice.

7. buy a beautiful diary and a beautiful black pen. write down everything you do, including dinner dates, appointments, assignments, coffees, what you need to do that day. no detail is too small. 

8. strip your bed of your sheets and empty your underwear draw into the washing machine. put a massive scoop of scented fabric softener in there and wash. make your bed in full.

9. organise your room. fold all your clothes (and bag what you don’t want), clean your mirror, your laptop, vacuum the floor. light a beautiful candle.

10. have a luxurious shower with your favorite music playing. wash your hair, scrub your body, brush your teeth. lather your whole body in moisturizer, get familiar with the part between your toes, your inner thighs, the back of your neck.

11. push yourself to go for a walk. take your headphones, go to the beach and walk. smile at strangers walking the other way and be surprised how many smile back. bring your dog and observe the dog’s behavior. realize you can learn from your dog.

12. message old friends with personal jokes. reminisce. suggest a catch up soon, even if you don’t follow through. push yourself to follow through.

14. think long and hard about what interests you. crime? sex? boarding school? long-forgotten romance etiquette? find a book about it and read it. there is a book about literally everything. 

15. become the person you would ideally fall in love with. let cars merge into your lane when driving. pay double for parking tickets and leave a second one in the machine. stick your tongue out at babies. compliment people on their cute clothes. challenge yourself to not ridicule anyone for a whole day. then two. then a week. walk with a straight posture. look people in the eye. ask people about their story. talk to acquaintances so they become friends.

16. lie in the sunshine. daydream about the life you would lead if failure wasn’t a thing. open your eyes. take small steps to make it happen for you. 

In my little mosque 
there is no room for me to pray.
I am turned away faithfully
five times a day

My little mosque:
so meager
in resources, yet
so eager
to turn away
a woman or a stranger

My little mosque 
is penniless, behind on rent
Yet it is rich in anger—
every Friday, coins of hate
are generously spent

My little mosque is poor yet
every week we are asked to give
to buy another curtain
to partition off the women,
or to pave another parking space

I go to the Mosque of the Righteous
I have been going there all my life
I have been the Cheerleader of the Righteous Team
I have mocked the visiting teams cruelly
I am the worst of those I complain about:
I am a former Miss Mosque Banality

I would like to build
a little mosque
without a dome
or minaret
I’d hang a sign
over the door:
Bad Muslims
welcome here 
Come in, listen
to some music,
sharpen 
the soul’s longing,
have a cigarette

I went to the mosque 
when no one was there
and startled two angels
coming out of a broom closet
“Are they gone now?” one said
They looked relieved

My great big mosque
has a chandelier
big as a Christmas tree
and a jealously guarded 
lock and key
I wonder why
everyone in it
looks just like me

My little mosque
has a bouncer at the door
You have to look pious
to get in

My little mosque 
has a big sense of humor
Not

I went to the mosque
when no one was there
The prayer space was soft and serene
I heard a sound like lonely singing
or quiet sobbing. I heard a leafy rustling 
I looked around 
A little Quran
on a low shelf
was reciting itself

My little mosque has a Persian carpet
depicting trees of paradise 
in the men’s section, which you enter
through a lovely classical arch
The women’s section features—
well, nothing

Piety dictates that men enter
my little mosque through magnificent columns
Piety dictates 
that women enter 
my little mosque
through the back alley,
just past the crack junkie here
and over these fallen garb-age cans

My little mosque used to be democratic
with a rotating imam 
we chose from among us every month
Now my little mosque has an appointed imam
trained abroad
No one can dispute his superior knowledge

We used to use our minds 
to understand Quran 
My little mosque discourages 
that sort of thing these days
We have official salaried translators
for God

I used to carry around a little mosque
in the chambers of my heart
but it is closed indefinitely pending
extensive structural repairs

I miss having a mosque,
driving by and seeing cars lining the streets, 
people double-parking, desperate
to catch the prayer in time
I miss noticing, as they dodge across traffic 
toward the mosque entrance between
buses and trucks,
their long chemises fluttering,
that trail of gorgeous fabrics Muslims leave,
gossamer, the colors of hot lava, fantastic shades
from the glorious places of the earth
I miss the stiff, uncomfortable men
looking anywhere but at me when they meet me, 
and the double-faced women
full of judgment, and their beautiful
children shining
with my children. I do

I don’t dream of a perfect mosque
I just want roomfuls of people to kiss every week
with the kisses of Prayer and Serenity, 
and a fat, multi-trunked tree
collecting us loosely for a minute under 
its alive and quivering canopy

Once, God applied
for a janitor position at our mosque,
but the board turned him down
because he wasn’t a practicing
Muslim

Once a woman entered 
my little mosque
with a broken arm,
a broken heart,
and a very short skirt
Everyone rushed over to her
to make sure
she was going to cover her legs 

Marshmallows are banned
from my little mosque
because they might
contain gelatin derived from pork enzymes
but banality is not banned,
and yet verily,
banality is worse than marshmallows

Music is banned
at my little mosque 
because it is played on
the devil’s stringed instruments,
although a little music
softens the soul
and lo, a hardened soul 
is the devil’s taut drumskin

Once an ignorant Bedouin
got up and started to pee against a wall
in the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina
The pious protective Companions leapt
to beat him 
The Prophet bade them stop
A man is entitled to finish a ****
even if he is an uncouth idiot, 
and there are things
more important in a mosque than ritual purity 

My little mosque thinks 
the story I just narrated
cannot possibly be true 
and a poet like me cannot possibly
have studied Sahih al-Bukhari

My little mosque 
thinks a poem like this must be
written by the Devil
in cahoots with the Zionists,
NATO, and the current U.S. administration,
as part of the Worldwide Orientalist Plot
to Discredit Islam
Don’t they know
at my little mosque
that this is a poem
written in the mirror
by a lover?

My little mosque
is fearful to protect itself
from the bricks of bigots
through its window
Doesn’t my little mosque know
the way to protect its windows
is to open its doors?

I know the bricks of bigots
are real
I wish I could protect my little mosque
with my body as a shield

I love my dysfunctional little mosque
even though I can’t stand it

My little mosque loves Arab men 
with pure accents and beards
Everyone else is welcome 
as long as
they understand that Real Islam
has to come from an Arab man

My little mosque loves Indian
and Pakistani men with Maududi in their pockets
Everyone else is welcome because as we all know
there is no discrimination in Islam

My little mosque loves women 
who know that Islam liberated them 
fourteen hundred years ago and so
they should live like seventh-century Arabian women
or at least dress
like pre-industrial pre-colonial women
although 
men can adjust with the times

My little mosque loves converts
especially white men and women
who give “Why I embraced Islam” lectures
to be trotted out as trophies 
by the Muslim pom-pom squad
of Religious One-up-man-ship

My little mosque faints at the sight
of pale Bosnian women suffering
across the sea 
Black women suffering 
across the street
do not move
my little mosque much

I would like to find a little mosque
where my Christian grandmother
and my Jewish great-uncle the rebbe
and my Buddhist cousin
and my Hindu neighbor
would be as welcome 
as my staunchly Muslim mom and dad

My little mosque has young men and women
who have nice cars, nice homes, expensive educations,
and think they are the righteous rageful
Victims of the World Persecution

My little mosque offers courses on
the Basics of Islamic Cognitive Dissonance 
“There is no racism in Islam” means
we won’t talk about it
“Islam is unity” means
shuttup
There’s so much to learn 
Class is free and meets every week

I don’t dream of a perfect mosque, only
a few square inches of ground 
that will welcome my forehead,
no questions asked

My little mosque is as decrepit 
as my little heart. Its narrowness
is the narrowness in me. Its windows
are boarded up like the part of me that prays 

I went to the mosque
when no one was there
No One was sweeping up 
She said: This place is just a place
Light is everywhere. Go, live in it
The Mosque is under your feet,
wherever you walk each day