Smoke

Don't listen to anything I say.

I must enter the center of the fire.

Fire is my child, but I must be consumed

and become fire.

Why is there crackling and smoke?

Because the firewood and the flames

are talking to each other.

You are too dense. Go away.

You are too wavering.

I have solid form.

In the darkness those friends keep arguing.

Like a wanderer with no face.

Like the most powerful bird in existence

sitting on its perch, refusing to move.

Mary's Hiding

Before these possessions you love

slip away, say what Mary said

when she was surprised by Gabriel.

I'll hide inside God.

Naked in her room

she saw a form of beauty

that could give her new life.

Like the sun coming up,

or a rose as it opens,

she leaped, as her habit was,

out of herself into the presence.

There was fire in the channel of her breath.

Light and majesty came.

I am smoke from that fire

and proof of its existence,

more than any external form.

Only Breath (2)

Friends, when I taste love's wine,

the two worlds combine,

and I have no purpose

but this play of presences.

If I spend one moment outside you,

I repent, and when I have

a moment of closer rapport,

I dance to rubble the ruins

of both. Shams Tabriz,

this friendship is all I say.

Only Breath (1)

Ah, true believers, what can I say?

I no longer know who I am.

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim.

Not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.

I am not from the East or the West,

not out of ocean or up from the ground.

Not natural or ethereal, not composed

of elements at all. I do not exist.

I am not from China or India, not

from the town of Bulghar on the Volga

nor remote Arabian Saqsin. Not 

from either Iraq, between the rivers,

or in western Persia. Not an entity

in this world or the next. I did not

descend from Adam and Eve or any origin

story. My place is the placeless,

a trace of the traceless, neither

body or soul, I belong to the beloved,

have seen the two worlds as one

and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only

that breath breathing human being.

Empty

Margate Harbour, Joseph Mallord William Turner

When you are with everyone but me,

you are with no one.

When you are with no one but me,

you are with everyone.

Instead of being so bound up with everyone,

be everyone.

When you become that many,

you are nothing. Empty.

When You Feel Your Lips

Moon, by Maria Tepper

When you feel your lips becoming infinite

and sweet, like the moon in a sky,

when you feel that spaciousness inside,

Shams of Tabriz will be there too.

Bonfire at Midnight

Fire of Finland, by Kim Leonard

A shout comes out of my room

where I've been cooped up.

After all my lust and dead living

I can still live with you.

You want me to.

You fix and bring me food.

You forget the way I've been.

The ocean moves and surges in the heat

of the middle of the day,

in the heat of this thought I'm having.

Why aren't all human resistances

burning up with this thought?

It is a drum and arms waving.

It is a bonfire at midnight on the top edge of a hill,

this meeting again with you.

The Music

For sixty years I have been forgetful,

every minute, but not for a second

has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed.

I deserve nothing. Today I recognize

that I am the guest the mystics talk about.

I play this living music for my host.

Everything today is for the host.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for what comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

This Recklessness

War Path, by Alfred Jacob Miller

I have no vocation but this,

and no need to touch every rose and thornpoint.

You are seeing through my eyes

and tasting with my tongue.

Why sell bitterness? Why do anything?

When you breakfast at the king's table,

there is no appetite for lunch.

I do not complain or brag about ascetic practices.

I would explain, but words will not help,

how there is nothing to grieve.

If you have no trace of this recklessness,

tell me your state.

I have forgotten how to say how I am.

The sun has already shone today.

Why should I describe the moon

coming up over sleeping quarters?

Grainy Taste

Without a net, I catch a falcon

and release it to the sky,

hunting God.

This wine I drink today

was never held in a clay jar.

I love this world,

even as I hear the great wind

of leaving it rising,

for there is a grainy taste I prefer

to every idea of heaven:

human friendship.

I See My Beauty in You

I see my beauty in you,

I become a mirror

that cannot close its eyes to your longing.

My eyes wet with yours in the early light.

My mind every moment giving birth,

always conceiving, always in the ninth month,

always the come-point.

How do I stand this?

We become these words we say,

a wailing sound moving out into the air.

These thousands of worlds that rise from nowhere,

how does your face contain them?

I am a fly in your honey, then closer,

a moth caught in the flame's allure,

then empty sky stretched out in homage.

An Elephant in the Dark

Elephant, by Julia Watkins

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.

No one here has ever seen an elephant.

They bring it at night to a dark room.

One by one, we go in the dark and come out

saying how we experience the animal.

One of us happens to touch the trunk.

A water-pipe kind of creature.

Another, the ear. A very strong, always moving

back and forth, fan-animal. Another, the leg.

I find it still, like a column on a temple.

Another touches the curved back.

A leathery throne. Another the cleverest,

feels the tusk. A rounded sword made of porcelain.

He is proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place

and understands the whole that way.

The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark

are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.

If each of us held a candle there,

and if we went in together, we could see it.

How Minds Most Want to Be

You are the living marrow. The rest is hay.

Dead grass does not nourish a human being.

When you are not here, this desire we feel

has no traveling companion.

When the sun is gone, the soul's clarity fades.

There is nothing but idiocy and mistakes.

We are half-dead, inanimate, exhausted.

The way minds most want to be

is an ocean with a soul swimming in it.

No one can describe that.

My soul, you are a master, a Moses, a Jesus.

Why do I stay blind in your presence?

You are Joseph at the bottom of his well.

Constantly working, but you do not get paid,

because what you do seems trivial, like play.

Now silence. Unless these words fill

with nourishment from the unseen, they will stay empty.

Why would I serve my friends bowls

with no food in them?

Whatever Circles

Walk to the well.

Turn as the earth and the moon turn,

circling what they love.

Whatever circles come from the center.

An Edge of Foam

A dervish lover was told to turn

toward his own face,

and he did, saying, Lord, lord, for years

with no answer, no message back,

yet he was always there turning in silence,

with no music supporting him,

no tambourine rhythm.

A pigeon knows which roof to haunt.

Even if you drive it off,

it will circle and stay near.

This is the critical moment

when a swell of ocean turns

its edge to foam.

Every dervish has two mouths,

a crafted reed opening

and the lips of the flute player.

Lord, don't speak from there.

Held Like This

Mother and Child, by Henry Moore

Held like this, to draw in milk,

no will, tasting clouds of milk,

never so content.

Inside the Rose (2)

But there are those in bodies

who are pure soul. It can happen.

These messengers invite us to walk with them.

They say, You may feel happy enough where you are,

but we cannot do without you any longer. Please.

So we walk along inside the rose,

being pulled like the creeks and rivers are,

out from the town onto the plain.

My guide, my soul, your only sadness

is when I am not walking with you.

In deep silence, and with some exertion

to stay in your company,

I could save you a lot of trouble.

Inside the Rose (1)

That camel there with its calf running behind it,

Sutur and Koshek, we are like them,

mothered and nursed

by where and whom we are from,

following our fates where they lead,

until we hear a drum begin,

grace entering our lives, a prayer of gratitude.

We feel the call of presence,

and the journey changes.

A dry field of stones turns soft and moist

as cheese. The mountain feels level under us.

Love becomes agile and quick,

and suddenly we are there.

This traveling is not done with the body.

God's secret takes form in our loving.

The Taste of Morning

Time's knife slides from the sheath,

as a fish from where it swims.

Being closer and closer is the desire

of the body. Don't wish for union.

There is a closeness beyond that.

Why would God want a second God?

Fall in love in such a way

that it frees you from any connecting.

Love is the soul's light, the taste of morning,

no me, no we, no claim of being.

These words are the smoke the fire gives off

as it absolves its defects,

as eyes in silence, tears, face.

Love cannot be said.

This Piece of Food

This piece of food cannot be eaten,

nor this bit of wisdom found by looking.

There is a secret core in everyone

not even Gabriel can know by trying to know.

Raw, Well-Cooked, and Burnt

You ask, Why do you cry

with such sweetness all around?

I weep as I make the honey,

wearing the shirt of the bee,

and I refuse to share this suffering.

I play the sky's harp.

I curl around my treasure like a snake.

You say, What is this I business?

Friend, I've been a long time away from that.

What you see here is your own reflection.

I am still raw, and at the same time

well-cooked, and burnt to a crisp.

No one can tell if I'm laughing

or weeping. I wonder myself.

How can I be separated and yet in union?

A Door

I have lived on the lip

of insanity, wanting to know reasons,

knocking on a door. It opens.

I've been knocking from the inside.

Love Dogs

Turquoise Jar, by Farhad Moshiri 

One night a man was crying Allah. Allah.

His lips grew sweet with the praising,

until a cynic said, So. I have heard you calling out,

but have you ever gotten any response?

The man had no answer for that.

He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep

where he dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,

in a thick green foliage.

Why did you stop praising? Because

I've never heard anything back.

This longing you express

is the return message.

The grief you cry out from

draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness that wants help

is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.

That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

Give your life to be one of them.

Unmarked Boxes

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round

in another form. The child weaned from mother's milk

now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,

from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.

As roses, up from ground. Now it looks like

a plate of rice and fish, now a cliff

covered with vines, now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open.

Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep

and changes shape. You might say, Last night

I was a cypress tree, a small bed of tulips,

a field of grapevines. Then the phantasm goes away.

You are back in the room.

I don't want to make anyone fearful.

Hear what's behind what I say.

Tatatumtum tatum tatadum. There is the light gold of wheat

in the sun and the gold of bread made from that wheat.

I have neither. I am only talking about them,

as a town in the desert looks up

at stars on a clear night.

A Lantern

You are so subtle you can slip into my soul,

how would it be if you, for a time,

were living visibly here?

So hidden that you are hidden from hidden things,

you enter me, and my hiddenness

shines like a lantern.

You Solomon, who understands bird-language

and speaks it, what will you say now

through my mouth?

King whose bow no one can draw,

use me for an arrow.

Shams is the way I know God.

Move Within

Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.

Don't try to see through the distances.

That's not for human beings. Move within,

but don't move the way fear makes you move.

Ashes, Wanderers

The Wife of Plutus, by George Frederic Watts

In this battle we do not hold

a shield in front of us.

When we turn in sama,

we do not hear the flute or the tambourine.

Underneath these feet we become

nazar, the guide's glance,

ashes, wanderers,

as the moon diminishes,

until it is gone for a few days,

to come back changed.

Send for the planet Venus to play here.

Flute, drum, and strings are not enough.

No. Who but these musicians

could stand the beat that melts the sun?

I Have Such a Teacher

Last night my teacher taught me the lesson of poverty,

having nothing and wanting nothing.

I am a naked man standing inside a mine of rubies,

clothed in red silk.

I absorb the shining and now I see the ocean,

billions of simultaneous motions moving in me.

A circle of lovely, quiet people

becomes the ring on my finger.

Then wind, and the thunder of rain on the way.

I have such a teacher.

Birds Nesting Near the Coast

Soul, if you want to learn secrets,

your heart must forget about shame

and dignity.

You are God's lover,

yet you worry what people are saying.

The rope belt the early Christians wore

to show who they were, throw it away.

Inside you are sweet beyond telling,

and the cathedral there,

so deeply tall.

Evening now, more your desire

than a woman's hair.

And not knowledge,

walk with those innocent of that,

faces inside fire, birds nesting

near the coast, earning their beauty,

servants to the ocean. There is a sun

within every person, the you

we call companion.