"The Court of the Caliph al-Muttaqi"

Take in the smoke of this sweet incense, and you inhale
The scorched flesh from threescore towns and villages
Wasted beneath the burning spires of Samarra
And the minarets which daily fill the air with calls of my empty name.
Hear the strumming of the young minstrel
As he sings of the black banners of Khurasan
Sweeping down from the mountains like a dark cloud of vengeance
And setting aright the injustice wrought in God's holy name
Before the coming of shadows
And those who hide within, dabbing their poison on daggertips at the caliph's own table,
And the slave army from beyond the mountains,
Owned by ourselves, but rulers of us, too,
As a horse mad in the desert rules its rider.

To hide within a throne in the City of Peace, I was not born,
Yet broken are the swords of my ancestors,
Softened to dancing girls and this chalice of red wine.
And in my darkness, ghostly revelers on whose clothes stains of the blood of Abu Muslim
Stand as markers, even as the last candles provide a feeble warmth
In the silence, save in my conscience, where already the cold of the grave
Awaits the firm footfalls of my executioner.

This is a poem I wrote over a year ago about an Abbasid caliph from the 10th century who tried to restore the dynasty's real power before being blinded and put to death. It's meant to speak to universal themes, about how we can be trapped by the past from living up to who we want to be. Imagery refers to the black banners of the Abbasid Revolution, which began in Khurasan in the middle of the 8th century, and Samarra, where the Abbasid capital was temporarily moved from Baghdad some decades before al-Muttaqi's brief reign.