Singing the Way

I deviated from language
And I ended up in poetry
I deviated from silence
And every valley became fertile

I deviated from words
And the sun spoke through
The Earth in me until
My thoughts became like prophecies

I cast out all dogmas, idols, prophets
Until I could relate to nature
Without the layers of man
Then poetry became a wild incantation

Of trees and planets and stars
Then the inner reality of the cosmos
Spoke to me like a sunset speaks
To the eyes of seeing creatures

I deviated from speaking
But structures of meaning still
Built castles in my mind
That is why I was born

So that I might retrace my steps
Not as a seer but as a singing way
The trance that never ended
Until I became as transparent
As the inner meaning of the Tao.

Solution to a Mystical Book of Epigrams

The circle of our coming and our going
Melts here in infinite knowing
Such that has no beginning
Or shall maybe ever have an end

For no one can ever in this world explain
The love that bears the pain
Through centuries of the Keeper
Who arranges the body of this universe

That nothing is truly good or evil
It just is what it is and evolves
Finally to decay and start again
I leave a drunkard of time and place

And holy tears stream my eyes
Not for my little portion of profit or children
Not for experience or her legacy of trials
But because I know everyone stands

In a limited place, without freedom
Only occasional moments of outbreaks
That might last but a few seconds
Of eternity, and so my days are spent

Circling and tracing the way back
To the source, as if in rehab from unity
I must accept this divided world
As a lonely place or as a solitude yearning

For another kind of bliss, I am friendless
Among so many people, so many routines
That barley have time to say or thought at all
If the one I love is God, do I need any friend?

FATE OF HUMANITY

Beloved, how am I to say?
How should the soul fly
Or find wings, for this heart’s powerful memories
That Love might win out over time
And sea not be ruined by our cities

Beloved, I have stood
For the duration of many suns
But nobody is saved from impermanence
So what heroism of gratitude
Can repay the service of this life given to me?

I have blossomed and found peace
Like a flower in full bloom
Thrived in this world of dreary separation
Starved for union, to things beyond this world
How shall the soul take wings?

You have the grace of answer
I’ve not the memory to wait all eternity
For one day the sun should wander
Outside of her limits, and the sky grow dark
Beloved, did not the Prophet travel?

From planet to planet, until all worlds
Found their equivalent to pure gold
Truth, justice, equality and shared wealth.

last pearl of the Rubaiyat

i sent my soul through invisible
spaces that became invisibly near
the One, some letters of the after-life
Heav’n by and by left me pure

to face the obstacles that will soon expire
for mortality is magic shadow
and i am spirit sun-illumined
this i know as well as the lantern-held friend

at midnight, by the master of the show
will i know the alchemy behind time
the stars tell me their secrets
shafts of light build in my memory

of the future, i worship a grand unity
of a theory of everything, not discovered yet
i send my spirit through abstract
spaces that become divinely abstract

my desire are only mystic, women or roses are
no longer important to me, even this craft
of song i must give up soon to solitude’s claim
the thoughtful soul to silence does retire

perhaps to philosophy’s last attempts
i will water my vines, with flowers
of the bird and wings of transparency
for the leaves of life keep falling

one by one, until all that is left
is simplicity, and the One
a book of verses beneath the bough
is the last testament to my own prophecies

that paradise is the bliss of those who meditate
beside me sing with me, of the One
in the wilderness, of that who doesn’t rest
but is behind all acts of creation here or tomorrow

i send my hopes through garden treasures
spaces that become sublime treasures
where my golden grain becomes your food
and you find satiety in a dusty face

who is also the One, the portal, the Sultan
Of your destined hour, where you will go your way.

Sufi art courtesy of: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sufi-1405-114848225

Rubaiyat courtesy of Omar Khayyam:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m

Ode to Meditation (The Good Darkness)

This is where you are asked
To collection your mind’s fragments
Into a quiet pool around silence
Bit by bit let go of grasping

Thought without possession
Attains quantum emptiness
Perched, and perished, hidden
Beneath Paradise, minutes of fresh prey

Where you will not exist
Darting below Creation’s wheel
A hooded comet, God’s pastime
Where no tongue will tell your secret

And no observer clouds your way
It’s a gift to the ear, to make time stop
Even for an instant, resets the brain
The good darkness, deepen it

A candled moth, without half-light
Nigh journey coming closer to God
No poison of desire, no tumult of attachment
No self, no trace of following

Only the listening beyond time and space
Step beyond, be, become, die
Before Rumi, Attar or Sanai
Erase memory to upload nothing.

LAST COMMENTARY ON FREE-WILL

The core of my heart is now patience and endurance
Without these, how can one live?
When they departed, Love and God
I had to carry on dwelling in this body
Then I Said to the wind, ‘Go and overtake them,
For they are biding in the shade of the grove,
And bear to them a greeting from sorrowful man
In whose heart are sorrows because he is separated from his people
I will be left to kiss black stone
And smile to the veiled faces left in my life
How many aspiring souls does it take to reach Eternity?
The core of my heart is modesty and empathy
For all that I have experienced has led me thus
In our robes of darkness from the anguish of fate
We must return to Destiny’s love-desire again
With God-desire enough to carry on
For freedom is thus, the beggars are in ourselves
Go and take it! With these new attributes.

SUFI PSALM III

When I to you have reached the Eternal Calm
That no matter or experience can emulate
I will explain to be in the presence of God
So unlike the God or Good I once imagined
As if with the best friend magnified times infinity
Sharing pilgrimage so humbly, my final festival
Never let me forget that Celebration, the loves that
Tastes like meeting, and in all farewells remembers the spark
Of awakened eyes that stops the beasts and flowers
To the river of Prophets I have no more to say
O’ my two private friends, faith and reason
At last you have reconciled your old duality
At the place of Beloved contemplation, last meditation
Lost in that place of bewilderment and amazement
Shall I to perceive the fountain of life
Since water is the source of everything
And Light is the creator of all water
Let us listen to the songs of the Dolphins and the Angels
If I fast, if I am poor, If I sacrifice, it is only
To speed up my union with my Beloved.

SUFI PSALM II

Would that I were aware
Of all the Love in this Universe
My heart would possess a bounty
From the Divine, and those that would
Deem me dead would say
I have become entangled in all lovers
On the day of parting with all the worlds
Thou seest a sun on celestial spheres
Surrounded by flowers of the different planets
Orange, gold and pink: like blessings of Goddesses
On the smooth surface of mausoleums
Of Beloved remembrance,
The Spirit would then baffle everyone
Playing hide and seek with the centuries
That faith departs, that faith could endure
The Gospels change to suit the needs of the people
Every student of the Psalms of David, every Jewish doctor
Every Sufi poet, could prepare their holy words
Until all words would have been forgotten
Would that I were aware
Of all the departed roads, dead-ends, golden cliffs
Of time, I’d bring you to the wedding quarters
Where we marry not each other, but the God of Love.

SUFI PSALM

O Beloved, supernal and exquisitely omnipresent
O garden among the flames
Of so many dreamy lifetimes
I have sat at the table of my heart
Waiting for signs of your rapture
I have had a meal with other souls
To drink your water of timeless love
I have talked to the spirits of all the worlds
Only to hear your laugh in their strange mouths
O Beloved, we who profess the religion of love
Follow you, without any material care
My heart can take on any form because of you:
A meadow of gazelles, a cloister for monks
The idols and sacred grounds have been left behind
For a future whose caravan path only you know
O Ocean without a shore
O Morning Light without darkness
I have had hid myself from you for too long
In the guise of a scholar, in the suffering of a peasant
Thou art a unity sphere with no precise locality.

TRANSPARENCY MYSTICISM

I am nothing and are owned by nothing
I am Sufi pure of everything but the Beloved
I am Taoist, empty of myself I exist in non-resistance
I entrust my soul to the Universe, for whatever that wishes
I seize spiritual reality by surrender
I cherish not the individual, but community
Helping others is my prize, the prime condition
Of my well-being, I kneel as such at the door
Of the Beloved, who can say that I live with philosophy?
I am nothing and follow nothing
But the truth of my own core-being
I am not this or that, I am that which moves
In evolution, aware of the mystical realm
I do not change the world, but enact neutrality
I watch and love and by my inner nature I am guided
I feel poor when I own wealth and am humble with power
For the prosperity I seek is of a divine order
And the power I seek is the union with a God-Feeling.

LAST DIWAN

I

I am the One who loves Love
Not weak human love
But Spiritual love that takes
Centuries and lifetimes to perfect
That can unify the feelings spread out
Over centuries, as forest and light

ii

We are all two souls incarnated in one body
A Spiritual companion and a material vehicle
Which one we follow is up to us
If you see me, you see Him,
If you see Him, you see me

iii

I am the One who loves Life
Not the fragile life of this body
But the Spiritual life that takes
All creatures and all forms on this journey
I will not ever cease swimming the seas of love

iv

Rising with the wave, then descending
Now the wave sustains me, and I am the water
Love will bear me away
Until there is no longer any shore
Any last light, we shall mystify ourselves.

Sex & Divinity

If I should exist inside Your soul of particulars I would turn and fit your fulfillment Cleaving you strongly Emptying you of images And causes of anxiety The length of your days Will be tender & fierce With joy & …

Treatise on Kabir II

Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat
Your heart jumping
As our shoulders touch

As our heads turn with smiles
In a moment that is a feast
Not found in temples, holy books
Not found in rituals, or authorities

Not in teachers, or sayings
It is the living divinity of life –
I’ve burned my own house down
With my yearning for you?

Ecstatic beloved. of divine partnership
Admire the diamond that can
Bear the hits of poverty and loneliness
It is the human spirit, bundled

In the market of profitless meditation
Lo! I am beside thee, and for an instant
Our minds are love, in a moment of time
Are you looking for me?

Student, tell me, what is God?
Is he but an empty dream, the soul too?
A garden of flowers O lost friends!
In your body is the garden of flowers

Take your seat on the thousand
Petals of the lotus, and gaze on Infinite Beauty.
The ultimate unbounded cannot be lured
By virtue, philosophy – but only by

Purity, freedom, emptiness, the silence
Of non-attachment, the glory
Of a lover who sees his beloved everywhere
There, an Eternal Fountain has no words.

Treatise on Hafiz II

Dear one, stay close to anything
That makes you glad you are alive –
Bring your cup near to bliss-touch
Empty it of all other substance!

You are joy-awoken heart pouring with light
You are the full moon, in the center of each eye
Dear one, let your language urge
Each to their divine source!

Say those things, that every other
Eye in this world is dying to hear?
Love is that funeral pyre
Where I am extinguished, where I

Have laid my living body to exchange
Greetings and throbbing moments, with you
Where we might sit and play music
Dear one, cleave to your true friends

Who show you the beautiful eyes of their souls
For the root of all these scents and sounds
Is but the sharing of the course
Come in my dear, from the harsh world

You who have felt elements
Upon your tender face, you
Who would receive a toast form us
You don’t have to act crazy anymore –

The Earth would die if the sun
Stopped kissing her, so let me feel
All your suffering and sordid past
In my loving arms, once again.

Treatise on Yunus Emre

I tried to make sense of the holy books
Until love arrived,
Then all the scriptures became
A holy single syllable
Her word was “love”

Divine love is the one I need
Day and night I burn –
I read the faces of suffering creatures
To find the lips of thy glory!
My pity would break into an outcry

That went beyond all God’s images
The only source I have left is your love
I find no great joy in being alive
If only to be one drop
That contains an ocean

Each passing day fans and rouses flames
Of the desire to love both worlds
As the same, Heaven and Earth
My abode and my destination
I tired to love all the people of the world

Until I felt you by my side, in everybody
Do not let me wander from your love
Don’t let me leave your door
And if I lose myself
Let me find myself again in You.