I relish the now rare states
of being held by a half sleep space… where
a companion feels no compulsion to move,
or even open her eyes. Where
our voices connect in languages
foreign to the masses
who claim to speak or talk
or write.
I thought to myself, “how light a touch
to pen such a heavy meaning
onto so fragile a parchment….”
And now I go back to sleep
with a stirring poem, softly
running its fingers through my hair,
whispering, “free me,
lest I remain a dream,
half awoken.”
Poetry has no purpose.
None at all. It seems to be
some kind of emission from a busy mind,
a broken heart, a clouded memory,
a longed for future. It has no purpose
because it does not fulfill
any of these states.
The busy mind still toils,
the heart crumbles,
memories fail,
and the future eludes.
Poetry is a rope dropped into a coil
at the bottom of a dark pit; its usefulness
is hardly imaginable. Its words are
square wheels on a child’s go-cart
at the top of hill. It is an untamable wild animal
being chased around by a poet
with a vanity stick.
The purpose of poetry is that
of the disembodied spirit, cut from the palace
of heaven…and that purpose is,
to seek its purpose
before it dies by the writers pen
on the parchment of
humanity.
What is the purpose of poetry?
It is the most noble,
non-purposeful thing
to ever dawn upon
our awareness – no more,
and no less than a wine splashed peach sunset,
or the waterfall of blue sorbet,
the velvet catkins of a pussy willow
and the tappings
of your grandfathers ghost in the curio cabinet, or
the hearts quiver
in a lovers exhale…
Find the purpose of these, and then maybe
you’ll find your answer.
She lifts her face …
She says she can touch the sky,
So it is she that scatters these clouds
abandoned in a long-ago last goodbye.
There’s a story by Pasternak,
“He let go of my hand,”
Tanya says with tears in her eyes,
“and I was lost!” I am this man.
And this one, she walks out of canyon lands,
clenched by roots of evergreens,
Into the surf of an ocean that carries
the scent of another far into her dreams.
And she says to me,
“…as high as I could never reach before,
I could touch the sky;
glide my hands through constellations
and move the stars to reflect in the gaze of others…”
lighting lanterns in their hearts.
Some sounds I hear
Through your silence
You’re listening
And I am waiting
Until you echo.
Then you see my point
And I hear music.
Faith is a feather on a sandy beach
Jarred from its station by the slightest breeze.
And love is a feather placed on your forehead
Lost in the whisper by what a sage might say.
Time is a feather dropped in a caravanserai
Its barbs are ruffled with a charlatans sigh.
Count naught on a feather that lies in plain sight
‘Tis the one hidden in the wing on which you’ll take flight.
I chose a black parchment
and left my poem in light gray letters.
The words were underwhelming,
but the darkness overtook you.
Years later I re-read cautiously in low light;
you’re somewhere on these pages.
Swaying on the train,
Lovers lean and my lips
Curl and part vicariously
That I might complete
Their kiss.
I move with them
In their hesitation with their
Tongues’ self-consciousness.
I only imagine
If they were us
Our uncompleted love.
And I watched
And I waited
For mouths to consummate
To meet – but no
My moment’s lost
Lurching forward
to a stop.
I’ve only steel handles
For this flesh
To hold from falling.
The doors slide open
We all disappear again
From another intersection.
Words soften, subtle caress
upon ears, imbued with light held eyes.
Aloft, then settling
in currents of the hearts cascading
over rock; spilling, trilling,
in singing waters we go wading.
‘Tis pain pressed tenderly
against wrapped and fragile bone,
for so long inflicted with the
angst of the unknown. Lo,
hear my wailing pour the wine
Like waves rolled by the ocean.
Pass your gentle hand through me
and sweep away this veil,
between skillful lips
and the awaited kiss,
that draws the ribbons tenderly
from loves unopened gifts.
So little time remains
that I’ve erased the minutes meaning
from anything I can count on,
be they digits, duration, or friends.
Maybe now, never maybe,
Who’s to say “when?”
A life’s pendulous procession
in the pulsing recollection of
moonlit ponds and night blue clouds.
And shadowed owls
saying hooooto the metronome
its rise and fall of swallowed breaths,
that spins the many pointed star suspended,
swinging in my pitch black chest.
And interspace, what is this?
A measure of a thing not there,
an atom, a planet, an anywhere?
The void is filled with wrinkled plans
of faded routes from
me to thee defying
never-again, but then again.
Oh there’s been greater distance felt
with a lover by my side
than I have cherished with
such a glimmering soul,
across a galaxy’s divide.
A soul that sees mountain ranges
as thin as air,
and rivers raging, weathering
but no more than
the silent stream
of a single tear.
I was once the music of my era
So melodic and lyrically astute
and I painted myself
into the foreground of a song
and became both composer and instrument.
I’ve become the narrator of my own drama,
the protagonist, villain, and victim;
the watering pair of candlelit eyes
waiting in the wings of life,
for my denouement to begin.
You are the soft curves
of a smile that cradles remembrance;
Pooling in the palms of prayerful hands,
harmonizing with the Sahara’s singing sands –
All of nature in peaceful cadence.
Music is the bell of nostalgia,
ringing softly in the distance.
I follow its calling,
as a bee who seeks
the saccharine path of reminiscence.
‘Tis in our nature to stop and sip
from the sweetest pool of time-gone-by
and then, once quenched, open our wings
into the sibilant breeze of destiny
and live love’s ballad whilst our bodies die.
Note: Some of these writings have been sitting in my draft box for some time – but they are still contemporary issues and controversies… necessary discomforts that guide change. Like much of my writing, this is parked here until it works its way into books – two due out in a March/April time frame. This particular piece came to me after reading Franklin Grahams Facebook post on the said subject above. And the comments that came from so, so many people were hideous, evil, venomous, and hateful. So much so, that I believe in the seeing of red from such deep ancestral injury, I don’t think many truly knew what they were saying or what topic talking about!
I must explore how we believers in One God, named of Abrahamic faith, can hate each other so deeply (exemplified by Graham’s rescinding of the call to prayer on campus… or in other cases removal of “Under God” in the school pledge of allegiance). This cannot come from the perspective of believers in one God. In fact, if we search history, we may find it’s not the religion to which we ascribe, but the political and socio-economic ideals that govern and challenge society. Look at Christians and Catholics in Ireland, Native Jews killed refugee Jews during the Zionist movement in the early 19t century, and over 650,000 Americans, overwhelmingly Christian, slaughtered each other during the U.S. Civil war – an unprecedented number of deaths in that span of time. The worship and acceptance of God in our hearts might have ameliorated this, instead, we invoke God with our egos to muster enough of our own callousness in order to kill anyone…our own blood, our own religion, other reglions… the same callousness that fuels some of the horrible comments people are making here. And any man with God in his heart, including Mr. Graham, should and would absolutely NOT agree with the vitriol being cast about in this thread.
Civilization has evolved (or de-evolved) over time – and as I reflect on the present, I’ve never found a conflict between these religions where there wasn’t FIRST an abandonment of their own faith (not an excess). Each closes their eyes in prayer, and becomes blind to their differences and appeals to the same God. Each partakes of water and fruit from the same oceans and trees of which none solely own. Each knows humility and hope, as they kneel and rise again from the same earth, toward the same sky. Each blessed with differences, unified in their preaching of peace.
The energy it takes to wade through the morass of facts behind law and justice, politics and the fine print within human rights amendments, depletes us of our morality. This creates a drifting world, of victims and perpetrators. Until every perpetrator becomes a victim and every victim, a perpetrator . We have lost our reverence for stillness, and silence and mystery…and but God. Such a silly thing is a thing such as God, unless It is still and silent and a mystery in your heart. That’s how I shall be first, that’s how my children will be first. We will not raise our voices until the wind comes from that Pristine Abode in our hearts. Then shall we speak.
Nowhere in these scriptures (despite the misappropriation of meaning in their violent passages) is the killing of innocents and “non-believers” called for. Where religious belief dominates a politic, the politic will resort to killing to protect its politic (even above its religion). Indeed this is the ONLY reason any nation goes to war; and ALL nations go to war and all blame the other. It will continue to happen, as this is how nations operate – stop blaming religion as its cause, and turn to religion for its comfort.
And the vicious killing of innocents on or off the soils of our abodes, without provocation, is not even nationalist, nor religious…. It’s lunacy. And no where in the Quran or the Bible is this condoned, nor does God (by any religions account) call for the murder of anyone, let alone those who do not believe in a God at all. Hence, there is no God, but one God, and Muhammad was the Prophet and Messenger of God, and Jesus was the Messenger and Prophet of God, and so were Solomon, Noah, Moses,Abraham, David….and all of these prophets came to bring a the message of One God and leverage a change for the betterment of mankind.
The Last Prophet came 1,300 years ago to seal the Monotheist faiths and to “perfect religion.” But it warned that men would misinterpret, distill it into laws, it warned against compulsion to accept it. Like Judeo-Christian societies, it turned on itself. This is not a scourge particular to only Islam. No, the change we are seeing is not the doing of Muslims or Christians or Jews. Having been among each of these faiths (personally) they are more like each other than terrorist are like any of them. I was raised by a Jewish, Christian family, was baptized as a Catholic, “saved” as a Baptist, and then recited the Shahada. I have a unique journey through religion that affords me these perspectives and all within in a society that allows me to speak them. Until now! But I speak anyway.
These reactive, fear ridden changes we swing at violently, are the result of centuries of moral decay and dilution of all faiths in the fear of poverty, disease, starvation, and the subsequent aspiration of wealth, power, national security and materialism…. Major political regimes came after the prophets and to deny these regimes their role in your/our problems, and to instead solely blame religion, tells me, many have diluted their faith… they have conscripted God like a mercenary, kicked him out of their hearts, and placed him in armament; turned him into an idol, and then killed and died and spit venom all for nothing, achieving nothing…abandoning the one Friend each and every one of us once shared in our hearts. We’ve turned our backs on Christ and Muhammad, peace be upon them.
We desperately grapple for the most personal thing we know, our own brokenness, and then attach religion to passion and lash out in any way we can – to be someone. The cause of this strife is not the preponderance or diversity of religion – it is it’s fading… and in so fading, we cannot see so clearly that we are wielding religion as a weapon, all of us; and hence we have abandoned our personal relationship with God.
We are all Christian, we are Jew, we are all Muslim – and the sooner we accept our “inner” singular faith in harmony with an “outer” religiously pluralist society we are in, the sooner we’ll realize the true reason for conflict eludes us… the war begins within ourselves and there is where it ends. The journey from the heart to the mind is this Jihad you fear, the journey back is every man and woman’s Haj.
