Jing's wedding poem

They say nothing is more bitter than the separation of lovers
and nothing is sweeter than their union.
And they say "Love is all you need!"
but what really is this word for which a man
must bend down on one knee?


A 13th century Sufi who spent his whole life answering that question had this to say
"Love has no definition through which its essence can be known.
Those who define Love have not known it,
those who have not tasted it by drinking it down have not known it,
and those who say they have been quenched by it have not known it
for Love is drinking without quenching."


Now what do I know? I'm only twenty-something years old
But I once heard a Rumi poem, and this is what it told:
"A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more than you love me?
The beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.
I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I've forgotten all my learning,
but from knowing you I've become a scholar.
I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.
If I love myself...I love you.
If I love you...I love myself."


Now, if I had to guess...
I think Love is something like the sun
in how it shines on everyone.
I think Love, is something like the touch of a mother
or the solar eclipse of an individual in surrender to another.
I think you can hear Love in every heartbeat
taste it in the breeze and call me crazy 
but I believe that Love lies waiting
in the spaces of those moments between breaths.
And I once saw a modern day urban prophet 
smiling like the open sky, laughing like a rose in full bloom
as he repeated the words 
Love is this, and this, and this.


No one comes into this world of their own accord
we are all gathered here through the Love of the Most High
so let us love, and remember our divine beginnings-
our birth amongst the stars
and let us celebrate the lover in each and every one of us
because love is this, and this, and this.


-------
*second paragraph cited from 13th century Sufi and gnostic Ibn Arabi
*"Love is this..." quoted from Brandon Wint

blades of grass

I sat there on the rocks
back against my borrowed home
lawn spread before my feet
river flow of the grey sky serene
and I could hear music from the open window
while every blade of grass
and branch of bough and tree
danced effortlessly
to the soundtrack of the breeze
I took a long drag
watched the smoke do the same
and I could feel my heart breathing
swelling in the music
and blowing away with the wind
and it struck me that this, is it, all of it
And in the face of such simplicity
I felt so overwhelmed all I could do
was shake until my eyes flooded
and I could no longer see.
*
I don't care for what we make of things
I don't care for resolutions and outcomes
I don't care about endings
I just want to remember that this is really it.

dreaming of a dream

O you who know every whisper of my soul
I would ask of you one thing.
In that quiet hour, when night air is still
heavy and pregnant with the unknown
when words eat words for want of silence
when that moment eclipses my shadow and your sun
I would ask of you a dream.
I will lay down all my borrowed words
everything I have learned, studied
and come to through another
I will grind out the fear, tremor by tremor
through the cells of this body.
I will make of my self a hollow space
free of shadows and pretensions
free of hesitation and preoccupation with self

to accommodate each particle of this dream.

I will think no thought

I will speak no word
I will not raise a finger
until the trembling night takes in to her womb
the beating of my heart and articulates that dream

The black twisted crowbar of my self is

wedged in a chink on the lock of my heart

and every night, I wench that bar 

till my hands are raw and I can't recognize my own face.

The Unveiling

She walks the threshold of the bed, every footstep setting off his pulse. She turns, and the air stills. Her hand

arches over at the shoulder, tenderly undoing buttons and time. The clothe sails effortlessly to the ground,

whispering against her skin, and with each piece, another fear, another insecurity, her every vulnerability, she lays before him. She removes and removes these pieces of herself, until nothing but her hands are left between him and what she holds so dearly in her left breast. As she lays down, completely invulnerable to the world and mortally vulnerable to him, she doesn't see how the stars themselves gleam with envy at the light that bursts through her every fiber, cell by cell, burnt and bought back to life in the raging fires and fervor of love, shining like a path to the very heart of the cosmos itself.

***

"When the one man loves the one woman and the one woman loves the one man, the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in that house and sing for joy."
Brahma Sutra

Stillness

It is late. I accidentally take the longer way. There is no one around. The sounds of cars and the city can be heard in the distance. And under the cover of snow-laden branches, the moonlight shines between a row of orderly pine trees.
I slow down, steps considerate of the snow. I can hear it whisper beneath my feet. I stop, and look back at the length I've covered. At this moment, the shadows, the dry branches on the path, the footprints in the snow, the air itself becomes liquid memory. The breath freezes in my throat. I believe in the sanctity of form, and I wonder what my eyes look like right now, because I am beyond myself with this seeing. The stillness of the trees strikes me as the most beautiful sight I've ever seen.
I imagine later breathing through the quaking of the heart or the swelling messenger of a tear, but I am so unaware of breath. I am so unaware. It is like the night herself kisses my lips and for a moment, it's as if I see through her eyes. My mouth becomes hers, or hers mine...