No Flag

I used to want buyers for my words.

Now I wish someone would buy me away from words.

I have made a lot of charmingly profound images,

scenes with Abraham and Abraham's father, Azar,

who was famous for making icons.

I am so tired of what I have been doing.

Then one image without form came,

and I quit.

Look for someone else to tend the shop.

I am out of the image-making business.

Finally I know the freedom

of madness.

A random image arrives. I scream,

Get out! It disintegrates.

Only love.

Only the holder the flag fits into.

No flag.

Looking for the Center

The Friend comes into my body

looking for the center, unable

to find it, draws a blade,

strikes anywhere.

The Knots Untie (2)

We have tried the fullness of presence.

Now it's time for desolation.

Love is pulling us out by the ears to school.

Love wants us clean of resentment

and those impulses that misguide our souls.

We are asleep, but Khidr

keeps sprinkling water on our faces.

Love will tell us the rest of what

we need to know soon.

Then we'll be deeply asleep and profoundly awake

simultaneously, like cave companions.

The Knots Untie (1)

Fire is whispering a secret in smoke's ear.

This aloeswood loves me

because I help it live out its purpose.

With me it becomes fragrance,

and then disappears altogether.

The knots untie and open into absence,

as you do with me, my friend.

Eaten by flame, and smoked out into the sky.

This is most fortunate.

What's unlucky is not to change and disappear.

This way leads through humiliation and contempt.

The Moments You Have Lived

An essence turns to ocean,

the particles glisten.

Watch how in this candleflame instant

blaze all the moments you have lived.

Medicine out of Pain

In this drumbeat moment of red flowers opening

and grapes being crushed,

the soul and luminous clarity sit together.

All desire wants is a taste of you,

two small villages in a mountain valley

where everyone longs for presence.

We start to step up.

A step appears.

You say, I am more compassionate

than your mother and father.

I make medicine out of your pain.

From your chimney smoke I shape new constellations.

I tell everything, but I do not say it,

because, my friend, it is better

your secret be spoken by you.

Autumn Rose Elegy

You have gone to the secret world.

Which way is it? You broke the cage and flew.

You heard the drum that calls you home.

You left this humiliating shelf, this disorienting

desert where we are given wrong directions.

What use now a crown?

You have become the sun.

No need for a belt.

You have slipped out of your waist.

I have heard that near the end

you were eyes looking at soul.

No looking now. You live inside the soul.

You are the strange autumn rose

that led the winter wind in by withering.

You are rain soaking everywere

from cloud to ground.

No bother of talking. Flowing silence

and sweet sleep beside the Friend.