For you

For you
I will open my heart again
and again like a rose in bloom
and I will sing your song as I watch
the petals of my heart wither and fall
to the trample of feet and seasons.
Sometimes, I see a reflection of you
in the faces of this crowd
in a crest of these waves.
Before such reflections I gladly bend knee
tear open my shirt and place the dagger
in their hands before my naked breast.
For you
I would drink the poison of a thousand heartbreaks
each one bringing me closer to you
because none of them are you.
I would laugh through the tears
as I sing out your song louder and louder
every time the world turns its back on me.

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...

confessions p. 10

Please save me from myself

I beg you, I'll break my own feet

so I am always on my knees before you

I beseech you to take up arms against me

conspire with me to betray myself

please, unsheathe your blade

color it in my blood

don't toy with me

stab me through the heart!

Let the fountain of my torn heart write in blood

that poem which no pen can write!

reflections on dust

I don't know what You're doing to me
but You've got me on my knees
kissing the dirt on the ground
because that's all I'll ever be
all I can hope to be
the dirt beneath Your feet.
So step on me, scatter me
kick me up into clouds
Your light brings out my colors.

When it rains, the water collects in my recesses
the more I recede, the deeper the flow.
In my thirst, I drill holes
through the dustmote island of my self
and seep, gently, into the sea.


******


I will plunge up to the neck in self
to implode out of my self.
I will crush the grapes of sorrow
into the laughter of wine.
I will desire my way out of desire.
I will break the forms
and put them back together
after tasting their cores.
My bones are wed to dust
but one day I will divorce
everything destined for dust.

cherry orchards

I remember

sharing glasses of ice water

beneath the shade of the elderberry tree

cool stream bubbling, my aunts chattering

platters of cucumbers, cheese
the smell of fresh bread

and tea, steaming from picnic cups
passed around with a prayer by my grandmother.

I remember

lazy afternoons under the sun

the buzz and drone of grasshoppers

my father’s rhythmic snore

and me, laughing on my back

alongside my cousin and sister

reaching up to twist off cherries of different colors

the way they would burst between my teeth

sweet juices rolling in my mouth

and the sticky feeling of their pits on my fingers.

*

And now, through air conditioned spaces

and the metallic taste of water fountains

where the midday laze is replaced

with Tim Horton’s double doubles

I still look for those red, pink and yellow cherries

in the colored aisles of the grocery store.

"Message"

She doesn’t know how she got to be lying on her back

but she is calm as an empty dead end in Tehran.

Her eyes peer between legs running away from her

as the rip of the gunshot rings in the air.

Hands heavy, palms open, fingers unfurled

she watches the crowd racing, eyes darting, teeth gnashing

and hears them scream and yell as though underwater.

A camera seizes upon her graceful stillness

she sees it, and for a moment

before her last breath like a step without feet

before the lights dim and colors fade so the blood

which pours out her orifices looks no different

than the green of a nearby tree leaf

for a moment, in that tryst of eyes and camera lens

she shares with it her story, her namesake

Neda.

dying season

In these downtown streets there are no half smoked butts
only the erratic heartbeat of cars, vents and traffic lights,
the pallid tone of flesh beneath fluorescent lamps
as we break into quick smiles between hurried bites
along fancy store fronts, foul back alleys and the reek
of second hand smoke, cheap coffee and stale glances.
Old christmas lights hanging expired from branches
with amber brown buds about to bloom at their peak.

I seep into dawn and grow with Spring's first call
I long to taste the colored tones
of newborn life amidst gardens of bones
and soak in the sun like leaves before they fall.
I want to consume every scent as daily bread
and listen to the stories carried in the breeze
I want to be overwhelmed in all the season's senses
for a passing glimpse of that unnameable presence.

***

this is a recycled revision of 3 past pieces.