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 . . .

Underwater in the Fountain

Susanna Sitting by the Fountain
Crispijn van de Passe I, Dutch, 1564 - 1637
Philadelphia Museum of Art

When you die into the soul,

you lift the lid on the cooking pot.

You see the truth

of what you have been doing.

It looks terrible and sad

before the crossover move

that lets nine levels of ascension

turn into ordinary ground.

Into silence, a conversation with Khidr,

as there you are blind and deaf,

underwater in the fountain.

Consider What Choices

Jackson Pollock, unknown title; I call it "Paw"

You wreck my shop and my house

and now my heart, but how can I run

from what gives me life?

I am weary of personal worrying,

in love with the art of madness.

Tear open my shame and show the mystery.

How much longer do I have to fret

with self-restraint and fear?

Friend, this is how it is.

We are fringe sewn inside

the lining of a robe.

Soon we will be loosened,

the binding threads torn out.

The beloved is a lion.

We are the lame deer in his paws.

Consider what choices we have.

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.