Sated Reflections

reflection-photo10Let’s not run from reflections
Whether they be of you, or me
Whether by light or mirror glow
By whom its shown or who it shows
Be it my darkness or flattery.

To recite what is in one’s true heart
Is the sound of a rose opening,
Reddening stealth of its petals felt
Open, for rainwaters gathering.

From one’s lips, another sips
The others poem, a cup
In which to pour, their other’s evermore
Can another’s other ever fill enough.

And should that rose be clipped or closed,
Tilt its flower and fall to earth
Be nothing wasted, in reflections tasted,
by bud to bloom, all love is birth

Beauty makes the heart lose balance,
Spins circles in the foam of the mind
’Tis not important which turn is last
be it hoops of hope, or rings of past
All soulful gaze, through unknown waves,
Is forever remembered as a fragrance cast.

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Posted in love poems, Poems Beyond Their Words, poetry | 7 Comments

Even In Shadows, Lights Work Is Never Done

The world is in a soft descent
As henchmen bend away from dawn
toward their cowardly silhouettes.
With the pull of a trigger or slice by the blade
The stage of tragedy is set
Upon their chests the black stone laid.

Three new stars appear in the darkening sky
Above the scattered flames of the sun
Nefarious actors take no rest
But even in shadows,
lights work is never done.

I see 3 everywhere, and 21, 40 missing, and 141,
and thousands upon thousands
As many stars as sweet souls there are
From each death, another candle lit
By a cold black murderers match
struck, then dropped, to Jahannam sent,
their cloaks of death, expended, rent.

Innocent victims as gems amassed
From bright varied palettes and colors, cast
by dying breath, lifts a shroud,
shifts the night by radiant cloud
Until that black flag, itself,
is blotted out.

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Posted in poetry | 1 Comment

The Waiting Rings of Time

driftwoodwestWaiting in my memory
Its gentle waves are calling me
For I was cut from eroding shore
To oceans edge for evermore

Never a sight had crossed my eyes
So vast a nexus, land and sky
and sea. Transfixed so there I stood
In briny sand and drifting wood

While still, each visage yet untamed,
Each piece of wood, not one the same.
To touch them all, I sought to soothe
With salted kisses, lay them smooth

There among the writhing forms
I walked barefoot and weather worn
While each piece begged my presence stay,
Another hurried me on my way

What could quench this thirsting gaze,
Lo, is all for destination’s sake?
I beg for but a moment longer,
for all these twisting paths to ponder

I too am driftwood on the beach
A wilting flower within your reach
One day You’ll have me by Your side
and unbury my waiting rings of time

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Posted in Poems Beyond Their Words, poetry | 6 Comments

The Pebble of Niyat (Intention)

inspirationInspiration is everywhere
Like sand from the beach flying off your heals
still you’ve no idea where a single grain is;
It is not around you, but within,
Where there is not a where.

So then where are you running my friend?

Your niyat is like a pebble within a shoe,
it can change the course of mankind
with little more
than a minor discomfort.

 

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Posted in Poems Beyond Their Words, poetry, Short Stuff | 2 Comments

How long to write a poem: Twenty Five Words Toward the Truth is…

A collection of 25 word short poemettes that were inspired by something; or they are simply petals fallen from the rose, clipped from the thorns.

Sometimes 120 seconds to jot, sometimes an hour to write, sometimes years to finish… but I never completely understand a single one of these poems.

With mere seconds to write, a poem then becomes a slow growing youth; whenever I reread my own, it needs more guidance, pruning, allegorical fine-tuning.

In my mind, the pen gets in the way. Poetry is really, for me, finding the shortest possible distance from my heart to the keyboard.

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Posted in poetry, quote, Short Stuff | 7 Comments

Poverty and Pride

“Faqr Fakhri”

The poverty of the heart,
empathizes with the lonely, the downtrodden.
For it shares what little it has,
and the less it has,
the more valuable what it gives becomes.
I’ve only one thing,
there is no other,
so who can be poor,
when choosing one among one,
and receiving it all?

I am the poor scribe of my own soul.
A wealthy writer
wields a pauper’s pen…
for only that kind of thirst
could draw up the ink
from the unfathomable well of the divine.

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Ishq

“Water derives its color form the vessel that holds it.”

~~ Sufi Al-Junaid of Baghdad

moon4sufiBehold the Moon, she loves the Sun so deeply,
that all we see of her
is the solar light of her beloved
reflecting off of her lunar surface,
otherwise dark and invisible.

How pleased the Sun must be,
to behold such a blushing beauty –
to know that of himself –
his own disclosure,
manifested within another
so supplicant
as his moon.

With such burgeoning love,
all the moon comes to know of herself
is the source which fulfills its desire
which blushes her cheeks.

Thus, the Sun and Moon,
become indistinguishable
in the shared singular light.
Mirror images,
each mirroring the other.

The Moon speaks,

What else can I be
but the reflection of my Beloved,
what else then is my Beloved,
besides that which illuminates
my own hearts essence.

And so the Divine One
Presented humans with the Cosmos
so that their human hearts might look up and observe
these celestial bodies,
and take lesson.

What I see within the heart of another,
is my heart looking into itself.

It is God’s “plan of reflection,” that two thus exist
so that God’s pure light
is reflected in and by both.

A vision of oneself
with the psycho-physical faculties of oneself
is a State of Solitude
and Attribute of Aloneness.
It is meditative Gnosis of Self

When the place of vision is shifted
through the presence of another
Their relationship itself
fulfills the archetype of that union we seek with
God.

The conjoined reflection itself,
finds a Deeper State of Solitude
within the nexus of a placeless place.
And this nexus is in the Heart.

 

So what of the Moon and the Sun, themselves
In their solitude – how do they reconcile
Divine and Human love?

From Gnosis of Self
The seeker within the lover
moves toward Gnosis of Universe
then Gnosis of God.

‘–   from Ghanood to Adraak
to immersive Warood
Then Kashaf
a key turns
Fatah of Shahood
Then fana al fana
toward fana fillah
Silent
AllaHu
wa Baqaa billah  –‘

As the gaze of
the supplicant lover
and the beheld beloved
volley in the same light between them,
their love for the other
ponders the archetype of there being “no other.”

Who then to love, if the Sun and Moon become one
how are they to be none-other to each other,
if there is no “other.”

So begins the haj and jihad between
Ishq-majazi (Love of Gods Creation) and Ishq-haqiqi (love of Truth)
The Moon and Sun seek haqiqi with None-other but God
but have majazi for no other but each other
Can the moon and sun unite
to dissolve “other-ness”
Or does the annihilation of self (other) in majazi
become idolatrous?

Perhaps, the Sun and Moon
are alone as one with each other,
but One Alone In God.

Nothing can be more truthful
than beholding with the heart,
that which cannot be seen with the eyes
It is God’s indescribable light
streaming through.

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Posted in essay, love poems, Poems Beyond Their Words | 2 Comments

On Beloveds: 25 Words Away From Truth

There are pearls in you
So I’ll slip without splash
Into the pools between your lashes
For the eyes have depths
Only lovers can dive.

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What is forgotten

olive fields

Olive fields in Alentejo, Portugal

What is forgotten
Is easily replaced
All else remains, divine
quiet rings of ripples last
long after the Beloved’s pebble cast
to vanish beneath the water line.

From the still axis
a deeper message heard
in the silence,
between the echo,
rising in the azure
on the thermal rise
where prayers go.

A deluge of words
wails the ears
and not a drop
to quench the drought
or bathe away
salt-powdered tears.

Soundless
is the river drift
That carries us
through parted lips
Home to harvest
the black fruit orchards
dotting the red walled fields
where the divine rain falls
and the fertile heart yields.

Where it’s buried
cracks the seed
to grow and ripen on the vine
then plucked and pressed,
and poured in cup,
ripens in the drunkards mind.

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I Followed a Writer Up a Tree

autumwritten
I followed a writer
up a prodigious tree
Every leaf I brushed,
his poem.

From the crown
I scanned the pastoral
a poetic landscape in repose,
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom.

O’ vast vibrato of sibilance
slipping the breaths of
Thalia and Melpomene!
Alight by dusk, I lingered.

Comes the long wind of winter
to undress each tree!
So from my aerie,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…

The low-slung place
where each poem fell
I thought, “here so many,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy…
recite their odes
of heaven and hell.”

And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over quiescent leaves
while red and russet
ran from their dendritic veins
Moldering into the palette
of dormant memories.

O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.
From the rot of the roost
to the dust below boots,
by the pen of the winter writer
Spring will come again.

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