Month: May 2016

Free Verse # 360 (unheard untouched unsean)

Pierre Mhanna2 Comments

When spring shakes
his flowery branch and sings
do not wonder, that is me,
come back from the dead to show you
what it means to be free,
what it means to live
without restlessness and fear.

~

Her touch reminds me
of the deep presence
from which I was born.

Like a roaming ribbon of fragrance
her touch recalls me
into the heart of the flower.

~

People wish to travel places,
but this being with you
is all the places in one,
and your single touch
completes the journey home.

~

This heavy ache inside
at dawn a wound gushing
unheard untouched unseen
with the silent scream
of a distant star

~

Incarnate solitude…
heart become a bowl
welling to overflow
with the bitterness of tears

~

Since I cannot pen my joy
let me pen my tears,
into the heart of solitude
let my pen weep.

~

Can the world be fixed?
The silent jasmine,
The rising moon.

Advertisement

Wandering Thought # 31

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

Life is a power that is only capable of laughter. Even in death and decay, a fine ear can hear her laughing — and not a cynical laughter, but the laughter of power, the laughter of a being infinite in her energy. Nor do we need to wait for the onset of death and decay to experience that communion, be forced into it, to live out our ultimate openness with a heart ready to turn existence into a continual feast and celebration.

The Turn

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

Unable to find you
out in the world
I turned inward
to the source
of incompletion and ache
and found that my heart
in its reckless longing
was erecting itself
as a temple
with your light for its pillars,
with your love
an unshakable fountain of joy
revolving in its center.

I turned inward
but then, marvelous inversion!
your light flowed out
and etched itself
into the fiber of the world.

Where are you now?
A fluid motion
moving all around,
a moving ocean
without edges or shores
hovering nimbus
over the entire creation,
sweeping it in its onrush
to the center of the soul.

Who are you now?
All the names
that ever went down in history
and all the names
that fell out,
forgotten and unknown,
you are the source of naming itself,
and the hover of silence
in the secret heart of dawn.

Free Verse # 359 (again and again)

Pierre Mhanna2 Comments

The rays of dawn
slide through the clouds;
inside my ribs
an empty nest
aches and shivers
with a handful
of burning ash,
the smoldering remnants
of a poem
consumed by longing.

~

Place your lips on mine
and whisper
your heartbeats,
these grains of incense
amid your ribs burning
in the fire of forever,
that fated fire bound
to merge us one.

~

Again and again
tight against its bud
the flower of my heart
folds its petals.

Again and again
your touch flings me open,
deeper in the realization
of the reality of love.

~

Where are you
Photographer unknown

Who are you,
you whose breath
has always whispered
like a dawn in my heart?

Where are you,
you whose heart beats in me
deeper than the voice of life?

~

Night gazing in
through the window –
on the table
a book of poetry
and a burning candle –
somewhere in the deep
the voice of love.

~

Heart decimated
by the pain of absence.

Heart becoming
for longing the oil
sustaining the candle
of the deeper heart.

Bringing me Home

Pierre Mhanna3 Comments

You live in me
as that which gives the diamond
its sheen,
as the radiance inside
the rays of sunlight,
as the secret unfolding
in the blue hush of dawn.

You live in me
but how
it cannot be said,
and as these metaphors
try to utter your how
my heart implodes
with a spaciousness
the entire universe
cannot begin to fill.

You live in me
in a way I cannot reason
or explain,
in a way I can only fathom
by opening up to you
and drinking the beauty and the pain
of my surrender.

You live in me
and through your living
I realize how everything in you
is an eternal beginning,
that life is a flowering spring
even in the midst of winter and death,
even in the throes of shattering of loss.

Long ago
your absence whispered in my ear
and my heart
became an altar of longing
burning with the oil
of your secret:
in you everything is completed,
in you the circle is full.

So abandon me
and let the pain of your abandonment
cut deepest into my skin,
for that is how you push the seed in me
through the soil of your garden,
awakening me to your light
and bringing me home.

Dissolved in Your Light

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

The passing clouds
whisper
what the heart already knows,
“no home but the infinity
of your eyes.”

This the lighthouse
within the sacred core,
this the prayer
invisibly unfolding
the world from the silence
of the blue dawn.

So the clouds teach
the wisdom of your sky
as I listen to my heart beat,
and suddenly, subtly,
this stirring meditation
turns the inward outward
and in this marvelous inversion
I am found and lost
on the curve of your wave,
dissolved in your light.

Free Verse # 358 (blooming with promise)

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

في العشية
أشعل قليلا
من بخور قصائدي
وبأناملي
في الغيمة العطرة
أتلمس تكاوين وجهك
باكيا عمرا مضى
وعمرا يمضي

~

Softly along the edges
then deeper into her core
she cracked and broke
as he held her into him
blooming with the promise
of the sun in her womb

~

Searching for you
I lost my way,
but a wave
cut from the ocean
is all froth and ache
and a poem
from door to door
rolling
setting the world aflame.

~

These scribbles of ink
are the traces and crumbs
of a heart straining
to live in your presence —
and all my poem does
is ache for your touch.

~

Dawn,
her blond hair
from the blue eves
falling in rivers,
a kiss of honey
firing the world,
a poem singing a glory
hallowed by grace.

Tsuchii Bansui – Moon over the ruined castle

Pierre Mhanna1 Comment

Spring in its tall towers, flower-viewing banquets,
The wine-cup passed and glinting in the light
Streaming through pine branches a thousand ages:
That moonlight of the past – where is it now?

Autumn: the white hoarfrost across the camp,
Counting the wild geese, crying as they flew:
Light of the past flashing on row on row
Of planted swords: that light – where is it now?

Now, over the ruined castle the midnight moon,
Its light unchanged; for whom does it shine?
In the hedge, only the laurel left behind:
In the pines, only the wind of the storm still sings.

High in the heavens the light remains unchanged.
Glory and decay are the mark of this shifting earth.
Is it to copy them now, brighter yet,
Over the ruined castle the midnight moon?

— Tsuchii Bansui – Moon over the ruined castle

Wandering Thought # 30

Pierre Mhanna9 Comments

There is no sense perception that does not immediately transfer itself into our understanding and imagination, gaining interpretation through a moral and aesthetical lens. There is nothing we feel, see, or experience that does not call our entire human history and heritage, cultural, moral, and aesthetical. That a flower is more than a flower — and here we disagree with Science that declares the functionality of things their ultimate truth — is so because since times immemorial the human spirit and imagination interpreted it as so, created it as so. A flower is always more than a flower. And the same is true about every other object of the world, about life itself as witnessed and lived in the human spirit, as created by humanity and the human genius.