Judge a Moth by the Beauty of Its Candle

You are the king's son.

Why do you close yourself up?

Become a lover.

Don't aspire to be a general

or a minister of state.

One is a boredom for you,

the other a disgrace.

You have been a picture on a bathhouse wall

long enough. No one recognizes you here, do they?

God's lion disguised as a human being.

I saw that and put down the book

I was studying, Hariri's Maqamat.

There is no early and late for us.

The only way to measure a lover

is by the grandeur of the beloved.

Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle.

Shams is invisible because he is inside sight.

He is the intelligent essence

of what is everywhere at once, seeing.

The Lord of All the East

Strike, Andy Heatwole

Slave, be aware that the Lord

of all the East is here.

A flickering stormcloud

shows his lightnings to you.

Your words are guesswork.

He speaks from experience.

There is a huge difference.

I Am Not

I am not the centuries-ago Muhammed.

I listen inside this day

like a fresh-fired Phoenix,

not some pigeon looking for seed.

There is a king for whom other kings

are stable boys. Some sip Hallaj's wine.

I drink his truth by the jar, by the barrel.

Qibla for the soul, kaaba for the heart.

I am the constant sky,

not a Friday mosque's ceiling dome.

Clean mirror, no rust.

I am the burning core of Mount Sinai,

not a mind full of hatred.

I taste a wine not pressed from grapes.

The one everyone calls to

when they are in sudden mortal danger,

I am That.

Gabriel could sit here beside me,

if he became God.

The King's Lead-Camel

There is a boy watching a cornfield,

keeping birds away by beating a small drum.

A king with a huge army camps nearby.

He has a tall and powerful camel

that carries big kettle drums and a drummer

at the front of his columns

constantly throbbing out courage

and determination.

That particular camel wanders

into the boy's cornfield.

The boy runs toward it

beating his toy tom-tom to scare it away.

A wise man advises, Don't bother, my son.

That camel is used to drumsound.

He will not scare.

So a lover completely given to the beloved

has no fear of death and no need of showing off.

It is with me as with the boy,

who stops beating his fear-drum

to watch and follow quietly

behind the king's lead camel

meandering through the corn.

What I See in Your Eyes

Out of myself, but wanting to go beyond that

wanting what I see in your eyes,

not power, but to kiss the ground

with the dawn breeze for company,

wearing white pilgrim cloth.

I have a certain knowing.

Now I want sight.

Out in Empty Sky

If you catch a fragrance of the unseen,

like that, you will not be able

to be contained.

You will be out in empty sky.

Any beauty the world has, any desire,

will easily be yours.

As you live deeper in the heart,

the mirror gets clearer and cleaner.

Shams of Trabriz realized God in himself.

When that happens,

you have no anxieties about losing anyone

or anything. You break the spells

that human difficulties cause.

Interpretations come, hundreds,

from all the religious symbols

and parables and prayers.

You know what they mean,

when the presence lives through you.

Silkworms

 

Silkworm Moth - Bombyx mori - Just Hatched 

Anna Theodora at flickr, used with permission

The hurt you embrace

becomes joy.

Call it to your arms

where it can change.

A silkworm eating leaves

makes a cocoon.

Each of us weaves a chamber

of leaves and sticks.

Silkworms begin to truly exist

as they disappear inside that room.

Without legs, we fly.

When I stop speaking,

this poem will close, 

and open its silent wings . . .