Tanka # 114

From me to you
the path
that cannot be seen,
a breath of tea
in autumn’s silence.

Haibun # 2

The moment I open up to them they leave…

On the wind
the scent of a flower
trailing towards the dawn

Free Verse # 415 (in the layers of poetry)

Her body is the place I come to when I long to remember, when I long to forget. Her body is the image at its fountainhead — the soul embodied.

~

The image of her hands
comes at night,
the burning wings
of a fluttering moth,
a candle’s breath
dreaming.

~

Sedimented
in the layers of poetry
the moonlight that once shun
on the shore as we kissed,
the frail scent of a basil
kissing your cheek at dawn.

~

Lovemaking is not unlike breadmaking, and when the bread rises there you have it.

~

The death
growing inside of me
shall one day blossom
and waft me like a sigh
over the sea of eternity

~

A te toucher je frissonne
comme les débuts du printemps,
comme un feu qui prend souffle
de l’intime corps de l’amour.

~

Silence descends
like a spring-shower;
in the openness I listen
to the voice of the One.

~

I’m disappearing in you again
like the tolling sound of a bell
in the fog of memories

~

Autumn night reading…
the birdsongs I follow
through the branches of words
always somehow lead
to a clearing in the forest
where I am one with you

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Tanka # 113

Too far alone
I traveled,
whoever finds my trail
must have the wind
for a guide.

Haiku # 518

Year after year
the tea getting greener…
the garden of my books

~

The strangeness of moonlight…
the name I can’t remember,
the name I can’t forget.

Tanka # 112

Twilight clouds glowing
with the gold
of the autumn sun,
my sister painting
somewhere in the sky.

Haiku # 517

Stirring the cooking pot…
the wind of autumn
restless in the trees

~

Cooking pot vapor…
the fog of autumn
spreading amid the trees

Free Verse # 414 (listening intently)

One day
at the rising of the dawn
I will listen to the prayer
God planted in my heart
before I was born

~

Full of my own self
I await your touch
to break me open
into a more, a beyond,
an uncontainable fountain
of overflowing love,
a hymn flowing
into the depth of the sky.

~

Besieged by the luminous hover
of the cloud of loneliness,
I long to know the warmth
of one human heart,
to feel its presence
breathing in my life.

~

An old man
in a young man’s body
watching life painting
with the brush of death.

~

My heart is a wounded place
that wounded birds seek
to pass through its fissures
and die into the sky

~

In the light of dawn
your voice comes
on wings of light
on wings of memory
and your breath
weaves the stillness
into a crown of poetry

~

Listening intently to the music interweaving the waters of their souls.

Unknown Artist, Somewhere in France

The most powerful of Nietzsche’s thoughts

It’s been over a decade now since Nietzsche got seriously introduced in my life, a period in which I read several of his books, my favorite remaining The Gay Science. Of all his thoughts, the one from which I benefited the most, the one which has affected me mostly and which has remained with me throughout is this one: the idea and hence the will of affirming life, of affirming the being you are now, at this moment, in this infinitely complex web of becoming. What would it take, then, to make such a leap of affirmation? It would require a human being to look into her past, and to behold the most difficult and painful events through which she has lived, and to accept them, embrace them, and even love them because they are part of the intricate makeup that constitutes her current self, because without them she would not be who she is at this moment. Nietzsche would say that she would have to will them again, want to live through them again and again out of an infinite love and affirmation for the person she has become. In fact the web of events that Nietzsche has in mind extends far beyond the person in question, the particular subjectivity, to encompass the world and its history; so the person now looks at the most painful and questionable events in history and existence and out of an infinite love of life wills them again because she wills its present and future, hers and life’s, because in her heart a powerful Yes! is resounding, a powerful emotion that acts like a loop through which everything that has ever lived wants to be again, is in love with itself. And to complete the circle Nietzsche then devised the idea of eternal recurrence. The person now stands at the crux of the moment and asks herself if, living this moment the way she is living it, she is ready to live it again and again for an infinite number of times in the exact same way. To will this moment once is then to will it for an eternal number of times, recurring through the fabric of existence, so, obviously, you would want to will it in the best way possible, or the way that is most in harmony with your strength and heart. Ultimately, you must say Yes! to living your life in the exact same way again and again for an infinite number of times; you affirm existence in your person, and through you existence entire is justified. All of this, however, must be contemplated truly and not just in abstraction, its truth must be felt taking hold of the whole heart. Nothing is more difficult. Yet the difficult is something we love, because we love life.

Haiku # 516

Her fragrance…
the silence of my nights,
the color of my days.

~

Bruised longing…
over my bed
the light of dawn

Haiku # 515

Autumn setting in…
the tree inked on her back
will it lose its leaves too?

Tanka # 111

Under the sky of dawn
the river changes color,
over the water
the silent reflection
of the morning star.

Haiku # 514

The poem I wanted to write
withering
in a bed of ink

~

Two hours till midnight…
the cicada chirping
like it’s an afternoon

~

Décapitée
la fleur sur le vent s’enfuit
dans les herbes folles

~

Decapitated flower
with the wind fleeing
through the wild grasses

Haiku # 513

Sa peau nue
sous la lune d’aout…
page blanche de poésie

~

Moon over the hills…
her face in my dreams
rising once again

~

Everything going white…
trying to remember
the outlines of her face

~

Her kiss
in my chest…
an exploded sky

Wandering Thought # 60

With the poem the poets barter their way into eternity, and that is all the poets have ever done, consciously or not. But then again, eternity is the intuition for which the poem is the medium and conductor, the activity through which eternity expands inside the poet’s heart. So a moment comes where every poet wonders if the poem is in fact more than a poem, a poetry that goes beyond poetry and overflows into life, under and inside the very marrow of life. The poet intuits eternity as a force of life, or, rather, life as an expression of eternity. The poet, then, driven as if by instinct, wants his life lived in harmony with the eternal, as he begins to experience the true opening of the heart. His relationship with life or what life is for him must now come from his openness to eternity, from his intuition of the absolute. He wants to live the eternal as he relates to life. He glorifies being inasmuch as he feels that that is a state of flowering inside the eternal; being, for him, is a state of absolute openness, of total transparency and a life taken over by the eternal. So the images come of the moth and the flame, of the whirling dervish, the ocean, and the boundless sky, and underneath it all, the silence of God, the eternal.

Writing

Writing is an upstream hike,
following the river into its birthwomb,
but neither is the longing quelled
nor the birthwomb found,
and so the ache continues,
flourishing in the heart
like silence caught in a sea of fog,
like the billowing kiss of the infinite sky.

Of writing I speak as a Sufi and a lover; writing as the gateway of love.