I’m thinner now, I’ve no belt holes left,
While there is food in abundance,
my appetite is always for something else
Many a poem is left buried on the beach,
and each night as the tide ebbs,
these unspoken words
Are dragged out beyond ocean’s reach.
Freed of my father, I go forth fatherless.
For my grandfather whose garden flowers I smell,
I’ll raise a child of that lost fragrance.
For the one of silver locks and light eyes,
with him I’ve fallen, over my arrogance.
For the true Beloved of God, my lips are pursed.
And for the silent one, I enter broken, leave whole…
For you all, I depart the clutches of hope,
because nothing knows water like thirst.
I’m going home to build a church
in the desert of my soul.
A mosque for the nameless.
The temple of the faithless.
Here is where my book unfolds.
I’ll bleed into the parchment
made of the finest linen,
where my poetic impudence
is finally forgiven.
Like Yunus, I go quiet and wordless
to ripen under the Great Author’s sky.
And when fruit falls,
I’ll dip the pen of “me” into the ink of “I”
and write of the word of the lamb and the lion,
kiss Mary’s feet and Muhammad’s eyes.
A friend said, “In the flaws of human love,
Divine love seeps in…”
I know now
that through the flaws of our own divine love,
It is human love that mends.
