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.