Three Teachers

Sometimes I am drowning in answers
thirsting for questions –
for it is the pain of not knowing
that I’ve befriended

This one speaks of separation,
that one of where union ends
another speaks of two fountains that have crashed together
and shot toward the heavens.

I have loved and longed for a bird in a gilded cage
thinking the bird on the perch was alive
Jalal’u-din is dead, Mevlana lives
yet when the cage is closed
away, the bird flies.

But when the door is open
it is the I of I who flies away
as if pain had wings
and love had weight.

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The Cloaked Lovers

Her eyes are
knitting needles,
my heart
Her design,
Her words are golden gossamer threads,
sewn into a cloak,
as clandestine
invisible as a spider’s web,
dusted with dew
and tangled light
we slip away like moon and stars
as dawn arrives to restore our sight
And she reveals the secret,
He is in all ways everywhere,
wherever we always are.

Oh, faint fever,
feel this ever-curing bond with You…
the sinuous slips of aloeswood
the interlocking of imagined fingers…
the indentation of Your proximity upon my soul
’tis the tincture of oud.”

This love is a cross road between
long and distant highways
unseen
You are always there… I,
sometimes here, with her, yet
love is where there is
not a where…
of this, dear God,
I have become aware.

Now, I sit in shadows
and listen to lovers
speak of their encounters…
“He was touching me, ” she said.
He says, “she kissed me…
then we woke beneath sheets,
I remained the bed,
she made tea in the low angle morning light…”
all this, I saw whilst
out of sight.”

These are simple tales and plaints
But You and I Lord,
we speak poesies into the solitude,
Lovers like these say,
“I – you,
touch your – my soul,
You – I,
kiss my – your heart,
we – You,
wake in quiet moments,
Sight lingers behind my eyes
in shadows of truths
I dip this porous cup
into the ocean of my heart…
to where Your rivers flow
carrying the sweetness in the sunlight
through the valleys of the dark.
spilling love along the path.
We sip tea, now just Mustafa and me, oh Beloved…
We two speak poesies.

If there were but only one star
in an empty night,
I’d be able to imagine it
disappearing…
I’d worry – but why?
For You are every star…in this
star-filled sky
You are the arc of my eye’s leap…
from one star spire to the other.
I’ll navigate in infinite circles if I must.
But it will take a billion disappearing stars,
one after another into dust,
for You to go dark
but they are always in Your sight
wherever they are.

Send my eyes to the gallows
banish me from my city walls
Muhammad was left by flesh
and angels alike
orphaned time again and again

The silk road of love
travels away from the heart
and yet this same road
is the unpaved path going in and in
and in.

What trail can the feet follow,
when flesh is shed
when the mother and father are dead
when the uncle has left
when the tribe is cleft
when from the cave you fled
awaiting the message
to follow what the messenger said

Taken in by gypsy’s, left for alms
bodies dance with open palms
one up, one down
I, the center axis
You, where all reality collapses
into a point, a single unity
of being.
Love is the synapsis.

This heart is a star in my Beloved’s sky,
not an earthbound beacon.
The former follows Her an eternity,
the latter eventually disappears.
Love is all that’s left of me
as my body is poisoned with death
it slips away
like a shell
with every soul dislodging breath,
ever more, ever more
within the extinguished body
is the spirits secret cure.

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Thirst

There is melody within a noisy river
that only a thirsting man knows.
Only those whose fore-arms are scarred by thorns
have felt the pleats of the fragrant rose.

Dry parchment seeks the stream of the ink
like a cube of sugar seeks a tongue’s sweetness
An audience is nectar to the silent poet
it is tea and poetry that listen to the pleas of guests.

Empty barrels wait patiently at harvest time
Sun, rain, and clay have crept up the vine
The grapes are drunk with longing for the vintner
This is how love ripens into intoxicating wine.

We wandering beggars need a host’s respite
as much as an innkeeper needs his sojourners,
who never seem to stay long in the caravanserai,
for the closest companion of the thirsty is thirst.

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Woken by Absence

When drunk with wine,
upon soft pillows of golden thread,
I, in darkness, slept,
whilst sultans’ dreams filled my head,
I am woken by Your absence,
that of a restless lover in my bed.

So, we lie awake, You and I,
in silent prayer instead
and offer supha in a thunderstorm,
all this over tea and tesbhi
and sweetened sheermal bread.

Wake me, Darling, from this hide and seek,
for there is no sweeter presence
than the absence of the Beloved
of Whom the silent speak.

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This Sobhet Came and Went

And some time came and went
in a Tavern that never closes
As we donned our cloaks and left,
‘twas another tranquil sunset
among the many millions issued,
another expression of white light 
in as many radiant hues.

We have all come to know each other 
more deeply, and still,
as old Hafez says, 
our “hearts are very very old friends.”

Called from all four winds to the Sema
around the great Shaikh, our hearts turned,
and I have never seen him more clearly
than in I did whilst gazing 
upon his reflection in all your eyes.

Ah, together we are the tekke 
without the walls and roof
The threshold across which we step
is without a door or stoop
Yet our hearts knock modestly
like arriving guests,
weary but not waning
Let us never in that doorway rest.

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“Beauty Seeks a Mirror”

I was dazed by the colors of dusk,
astounded by its clarity,
immediately inebriated by light,
spellbound by saturated hues,
clouds aflame in saffron, tiger and tangerine,
brushes of amaranth,
lost in Egyptian blue.

Others stopped to stare at the sky,
to pause along our crossing paths
and set aside,
for a moment or two,
their chores tonight.
We derelicts, who prefer to be done
at times, rather than “do.”

Why gaze at the sun’s long scattered rays,
so distant and desperately brief
these amazing seraphic displays,
that return, rapt, every day,
yet, the unusual is nothing new,
“why then do I care,”
I asked below this crescent moon.

My eyes traced the silhouette of birds
and dendritic limbs,
as bare of leaves, as I of words
And when still no one spoke,
the answer to “why this” grew clearer,
how we turn ourselves inside out
for the beauty within that seeks a mirror.

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Everything Became You

My heart is a winding
painted canyon
carved by my Beloved.
I followed her echo
out to the ocean
And below Her surface
I dove.

I emptied myself
into Her depths,
beneath the currents
of unspoken worlds
and breathless I rose,
Her eyes, my pearls.

Her lips, the wings
of an albatross
we sheered crested waves,
kissed in halcyon
above deep parted canyons
and then beyond.

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A Rose in Life’s Grotto

Loving with an empty heart,
we hear Her exhale, grotto’s dark,
wrapping breath around the rose,
in bending light, our spirits arc.

A cavern entrance framed in thorns
for spacious shelter from the storm,
where some upon the threshold waver
thirsting, dusty, weather worn.

Her fragrance twists from turning center
a grave for blossoms seduced by winter
listen between the Beloved’s bells,
How Her hollow harkens us to enter.

(At home, our rosy boughs persist, 
no wonder winter, anxious, visits
with such a lush and lasting garden, 
who for long could ‘er resist?”)

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Hu

Hu

Who am i?

Am I the “who” of whom I ask, “Who am I?”
Or the “I” who asks?
That I wonder at all, tells me
that there must be another me
who is not an “I.”

The answer of which I’m thinking
holds the “answer I cannot think of” for ransom.
If I refuse to pay, I am a murderer.
If I pay, I must die.

The chick within the egg
consumes the very yolk
which gives it life.
I am the chick, I am the yolk, and I am the shell.

The yolk of my soul is the unseen “I”
The chick is the “I” who reasons
and the shell is the “I”
which separates the entire egg
from the from Truth.

I am the You-ness
who names me as I am, as You are..
I am called the hidden one,
the thinking one,
and the fragile container.
Without You
others call call me many things.
With You,
I am nameless.

When I break open,
reason is freed.
It picks with its beak at seeds in the dust
and dissolves into the truth
and becomes the dust.

I am the truth
with which I seek to reveal the truth.
I am the unlit lantern in the dark.
I am the darkness which awaits the lantern.
Light the wick, oh nameless One,
so that we both can see the other.

I am not who I am,
I am who I am not.

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Tea to Boil

I’m putting the tea to boil…
finding a spot on the earth in which to sink,
a heart string to play, my mind to think
and untangle a knot of toil
I’m putting the tea to boil

Something warm to come
porcelain cups and waiting lips
hibiscus leaves and rose hips
within the heart a thrum
stirs a ripple in a steeping conundrum

My last verse has gone missing
it’s sound, sans words, lost in half slumber
so half awake, and torn asunder,
by answers hissing then bristling
then comes the awaited harmony of a kettle whistling

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