Love & Silence

Crystalline silence,
the heart a dewdrop
melting in the sky.

~

Cadence of silence –
A flock of butterflies
Burning through my soul.

~

In your simple glow
my life flows
you jasmine flower.

~

Twilight silence,
my life shining
in the first evening star.

~

Vessel of silence,
The empty heart waxes
Wider than the sky.

~

As the dawn
Coaxes the flower
Your breath in my heart

~

Resonant stillness,
The last voice of dusk melting
Winedrops in the sky.

~

Soon to vanish
these moving clouds,
twilight silence.

~

Morning sun,
every dewdrop
a flower.

~

Carefree butterfly
amid the white flowers,
one cloud in the sky.

~

Your scent
With the dawn breeze
Calling me home

~

My eyes –
two stars doused
in the sea of Your fire.

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Becoming Full

Only as she disappears and is hidden
does the moon become full,
realizing her mystical depths,
uncovering her original, white face.

So I, in my coming or going
cannot be displaced from You,
for, disappearing from my self,
with You, in You, I have become full.

Wandering Thought # 22

Of all values and spiritual disciplines purity is the one at which all others converge. Purity is the kernel of love and truth, the very fire which flames must spread through the body and its inward layers, cleansing, if we are to be raised to God’s sacred altar, the dome of the dawn sky. Ultimately, to have one’s pulsing heart flowing with a water so pure that it is worthy to reflect the endlessly metamorphosing face of the divine—to become the vessel of the divine flame and wine.

Haiku # 87

Early morn,

the dewed branch

sparkling in the sky.

The Hidden Face

Softly
Her hand touches
the pure, clear water
and lo! as though it were lit
by a fire from within
its clarity becomes iridescent,
crystalline transparency glowing
with the effulgence of a thousand suns
as in the burning deeps forms
the face of the Beloved.

“Where is it that you hid, Beloved, and left me to lament?” St. John of the Cross

She –

Her petrichor skin
a primal soil,
Her watery curves,
hills, fields, gardens,
hidden groves and sunlit openings,
Her eyes,
pristine ponds and clear skies dewing,
Her lips,
sickle moons shaping mists and dreams,
Her collarbones,
mountain ridges honing winds and clouds,
Her dark hair
a birthing womb of stars,
jasmine flowers, basil leaves,
lavender seeds, and rosemary needles –
She –
a transcendent being,
a limitless forest
where the poet, wandering,
goes deeper and deeper
and is forever lost,
vanishing, with no hope of return,
in the immensity of Her mystery.

Running Orders, by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

“They call us now.
Before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think “Do I know any Davids in Gaza?”
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of
war time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.”

— Running Orders, by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Haiku # 86

To the pond
a dewdrop falls,
silence…

Free Verse # 222 (midnight circle)

Like dewdrops happen
In the womb of the parched earth –
She happened in me.

~

Midnight circle –
the full moon vanishing
in the well of her eyes.

~

Dreams steeped in the mists of longing.

~

Ripe and dark
My poem is a fig
Hungering to break
On the fullness of her lips

~

My poem
Like a seabreeze
In her hair dances,
Whispers
Against her bare skin.

~

Her love
Runs deeper in me
Than life itself.
This body
Shall one day die;
My love for her
Shall remain,
as the sea, as the sky,
Forever…

~

Gratitude is an opening of the heart that paints the world white.

The Offering

I knew what it meant
the apple she offered me,
and still I bit;
I bit, looking her in the eyes,
and I will bite, again and again.
I bit and the shared sin laced us,
in the infinite well of knowing bound us,
one flesh, one soul, one longing,
together, in time’s eternal grasp.

And then came the wings of God
blanketing us with a laughter so white,
with a warmth so deep
that all awareness from our minds was shed
and what remained was a single heart
in His Heart, throbbing.

Haiku # 85

Mountain silence,
in the shadow of the oak
the murmuring stream.

~

For a moment
the white blossoms
were a cover of snow.

Wandering Thought # 21

Not paying for something but, rather, creating it makes it our own—in this respect a table is no different from a poem, or a whole life.

Free Verse # 221 (writing you; writing me — the ineffable source)

Writing
I feel your hand in mine,
Then the poem completes itself
As in me you become
The ineffable silence,
The very breath of life.

~

In this love for you
What of me remained?
Nothing but a poem
Unfolding in your palms,
Words weaved with light.

~

Wrought by starlight
your poem fell
like a pair of eyelids
over my aching eyes,
blinding me to all
save for your light.

~

I could forget your face if I entrust it to a poem; so I rather forget the poem, leave it unwritten, and within me keep your face, forevermore, unto my last breath, alive and growing, shining like a fountain of endless grace.

~

The eyes have a language words cannot touch.

~

Clouds ~ these eternal wanderers roaming through the desert sky.

~

Strewn amid my poems
rosemary and basil leaves
grown in the garden of her hair

~

Lavender seeds and jasmine flowers,
basil leaves and rosemary needles,
stars and dewdrops,
wine and candle-flames –
all amid the folds of her dark hair.

Rafeef Ziadeh – We Teach Life

Wandering Thought # 20

To truly read a poem is to be ridden with the uncanny sense that in some ambiguous place, inside, outside, something is happening, a hidden force is at work, shifting, as it were, transposing masses of matter or energy. To read a poem is to enter a docile shock, to spin with the stars as, one by one, they fall doused over the surface of the endless desert until, after a while, nothing remains but the endless, ineffable silence. It is only then, perhaps, that the poem finally unveils her face. But what we see leaves us tongue-tied, and when we awaken the poem is once more in the arms of eternity.

Haiku # 84

All her petals fell
save for one,
the flower.

Wandering Thought # 19

To live under the sway of capitalism and have our inner lives accordingly patterned means exactly this—that we experience our life as a sum of energy that ought to be invested in the market; if the result is successful and the investment pays off then we are happy, self-content, the esteemed holders of a capital (our own self and the sum of what it owns, including personal and character traits) that must be used to generate more and more; if the result is unsuccessful, if we and our efforts are not bought and sold at a convenient price then we simply become failures, forever haunted with a sense of inferiority.

The above is a system of alienation—totally cutting man off from his inner life and from the products of his hands. The above makes a farce of human values and laughs in the face of love and spirituality.

Free Verse # 220 (between you and me)

Inhaling the dawn
I exhale your name,
and at the moment
where my breath dies
I become the vessel of silence
pouring with your wine,
filling with the clarity
of your pristine eyes.

~

As the sky holds the earth
he held her into him,
his kiss into her forehead melting
a vaporous stream of wine.

~

Her eyebrows –
Two swords
Set above eyes
Blooming as a full moon,
Into every heart, cutting.

~

Between you and me
This passion is like a skin,
The flesh of poetry heaving –
A sea of electricity,
A blue sky of dawn.

~

As water to a sponge
In his presence
She felt herself soak into him,
Drawn inside-out by a force,
An openness in him
Making her flow naked, whole.

~

In the aftermath
of their lovemaking
the starry sky laid in ruin,
stars in debris falling,
dewdrops to soak
into the earth’s aching skin.

Haiku # 83

Seasalt in the air,
on the rusty gate
a butterfly.

~

Even cicadas
hum no more,
the city at night.

Wandering Thought # 18

Modern man is utterly lacking in structure and resistance, which means—that hunger must immediately be sated, that sexual lust must immediately be satisfied, that every itch cannot be tolerated and must immediately and without postponement be answered—that, ultimately, effort and pain are in-themselves bad, avoidable at all costs, and that pleasure is the one guiding principle and god.