posted October 21, 2004 01:00 AM         

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen. Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.

I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story.

My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.

There is a way between voice and presence where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens. With wandering talk it closes.

((Only Breath))

There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise.

Drink all your passion and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes to see with the other eye.

Open your hands, if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders. Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food. Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, 'She left me.' 'He left me.' Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying. Think who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.

Flow down and down in ever-widening rings of being.

((A Community of the Spirit))

All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be completely sober.

… The day is coming when I fly off, but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice? Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way, whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

((Who Says Words With My Mouth?))

Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated.

'Since I was cut from the reedbed, I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back.

… but its not given us to see the soul. The reed flute is fire, not wind. Be that empty.'

The reed is hurt and salve combining. Intimacy and longing for intimacy, one song. A disastrous surrender and a fine love, together. The one who secretly hears this is senseless.

… Days full of wanting, let them go by without worrying that they do. Stay where you are inside such a pure, hollow note.

… No one lives in that without being nourished every day.

But if someone doesn't want to hear the song of the reed flute, it's best to cut conversation short, say good-bye, and leave.

((The Reed Flute's Song))

… Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in the grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep.

… I would love to kiss you. The price of kissing is your life. Now my loving is running toward my life shouting, What a bargain, let's buy it.

… They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?
They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.

… But we have ways within each other that will never be said by anyone.

Come to the orchard I Spring. There is light and wine, and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter. If you do come, these do not matter.

((Quatrains))

This mirror inside me shows - I can't say what, but I can't not know!

I run from body, I run from spirit. I do not belong anywhere.

((The Shape of My Tongue))

The friend comes into my body looking for the center, unable to finding it, draws a blade, and strikes anywhere.

There is a light seed grain inside. You fill it with yourself or it dies.

I'm caught in this curling energy! Your hair! Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!

Do you think I know what I'm doing? That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it's writing, or the ball can guess where it's going next.

((Quatrains))

Don't run around this world looking for a hole to hide in. There are beasts in every cave!

The only real rest comes where you're alone with God.

… Sometimes you look at a person and see a cynical snake. Someone else sees a joyful lover, and you're both right!

… Joseph looked ugly to his brothers, and most handsome to his father.

((Tending Two Shops))

After all my lust and dead living I can still live with you. You want me to. You fix and bring me food. You forget the way I've been.

((Bonfire At Midnight))

When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

… The moment I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

… You would rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

((Quatrains))

… Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.

((Someone Digging in the Ground))

Who makes these changes? I shoot an arrow right. It lands left. I ride after a deer and find myself chased by a hog. I plot to get what I want and end up in prison. I dig pits to trap others and fall in.

I should be suspicious of what I want.

((Who Makes These Changes?))

Someone says, Sanai is dead. No small thing to say.
He was not bits of husk, or a puddle that freezes overnight, or a comb that cracks when you use it, or a pod crushed open on the ground.

He was fine powder in a rough clay dish. He knew what both worlds were worth: a grain of barley.

One he slung down, the other up.

The inner soul, that presence of which most know nothing, about which poets are so ambiguous, he married that one to the beloved.

His pure gold wine pours on the thick wine dregs. They mix and rise and separate again to meet down the road.

… Be quiet and clear now, like the final touchpoints of calligraphy.

posted October 23, 2004 03:43 PM         

...The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep...

posted October 24, 2004 05:55 PM         

Close both eyes to see with the other eye.

Open your hands, if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.