We are creating for ourselves a world in which it is impossible to live; and even if life was still physically possible, it would be undesirable.
~ ~ ~
Once it is over we’ll discover it — modernity was a big lie. Modernity — an incredibly rich soil that nonetheless did not allow the growth of anything great.
~ ~ ~
Thirty six; the year I discovered the truth about myself.
There is a hierarchy to love — those who lose their heads stand highest.
Like a tight bud I closed in upon myself, but that was only the outward appearance of it; in truth it was an inward motion, a closing in upon the self that is an opening up of an inward world, the inward world, the world of the soul; and the most precious thing this gave me? (and this I call poetry, the self-expressive, the inwardly reflexive) — the ability to withstand my solitude so I could deepen myself and give myself back to the world through my heart and from the depth of my soul.
A man who is in a gravely ill condition refuses to go see a doctor despite the many advises he is given. Days go on and his illness grows worse until, at last, he falls out of consciousness and an ambulance is called in to rush him to the hospital. If he survives the damage he suffered will not be reversible, and he will be forced to live on in a diminished existence.
Man, the rational animal, will not do the one rational thing that ensures his future survival, the survival of humanity. Could it be that, after all, man is irrational? Rationality — if we believe his claim, that he is rational — has been a tool at work against his survival — rationality as his greatest stupidity; its progress and advancement leading to his extinction.
Man, the animal with no control over his impulses and will, ultimately wills his own end.
Is the tree less surrendered to love for rising towards the sky and asserting itself, its own height and elevation? Is it less in unity and oneness for affirming itself, its own identity and uniqueness? For wanting to rise higher than its surroundings? For wanting to look down on its surroundings, and high towards the sky? Is it not a betrayal of its duty to its oneness if it refuses to assert its own difference, its own necessarily partial view of the sky towards which it rises? — Replace the tree with man and you will find much of modern spirituality vanishing with a whiff of bad breath, vanishing to reveal itself as a sewer, and one giving discharge to…
Desire stirs
and I am writing again,
pen dipped in the dew
of the pond
in her womb.
~
In life’s wax and wane
my poem is a fire moon
blossoming steady
in the sea
of her eyes
Whatever men insisted women should be or are feminism insisted that women should be its opposite, or that the power relation should be inverted so as women gain the upper hand — this reactive stance as much as it is lauded and needed (we’ve been waiting for it for millennia) will not take us beyond the dynamics of the power relation, the dreadful either/or so entrenched in the breast of culture and the shaping of men and women. This reaction should, instead, grasp itself differently, channel its energy differently — rather than being a reaction it should affirm itself, it should be an affirmation and an affirmative act — women are women irrespective of men and the will and desires of men; woman is woman not as an act that is directed against men, but as an affirmative act of herself and her own being, her own life, aspirations, and embodiment in the world — a creative act and a first act. That is essential, since only this will suspend the opposition struggle of men and women and allow each to find itself entrenched in the other — the woman in man, and the man in woman, and their struggle together in the creation of a new culture that goes beyond the limitations of the old. This will truly be the blow that dismantles the gender dynamics that have governed culture since millennia, giving men and women the space needed to discover themselves and each other anew and in a new light. The relation no longer power-centered, its destructive edge will be replaced by a more supportive and mutually understanding spirit that refuses to slide back into the old modes of relating even when conflicts and tensions arise. What will it look like, this culture? What will its men and women be? — it and they are flourishing right under our eyes, they are coming and will come at a quicker pace in the coming decades. The love-flower that daring spirits dreamed a thousand years ago — we are the witnesses of its coming of age.
Though it often hides itself behind a veil of humanism, it is the mark of a tortured soul, this need to identify with every suffering and struggling cause. Through this identification it prolongs its own torture, finding new means to discharge its weariness; and where new causes cannot be found new causes must be invented, lashes of evil imagined here and there, imagined villains that must be vanquished. The suffering soul only betrays itself with the vehemency with which it wishes to expunge all suffering.
The power play in sex is one of the most difficult things I had to come to term with. This being said, to make a fetish of the power play, to make it the focal point of the relationship is to miss out on the spiritually interpenetrating aspects that truly form the throbbing core of why two people are together, and what makes them expand and grow together into that which is held above them. The power play is a form of expression, this character or that being suited to this spectrum or that, this essence or that. On its own it does not supersede or form the essence and budding center of the connectivity.
At the entrance
of the poem
I wait for you,
in my hand a vow
weaved
with the light of the moon.
~
O heart
what do I do with you?
I cast you
you come back,
I hold you
you turn away,
I wait for you
you fail to come,
O heart
always on the run.
~
In the morning
your voice comes to me
and I shake like a leaf
caught in the wind
~
A dash of salt and honey; a handful of poetry.
~
Always
a little ink in my blood
to paint the shadows
of the burning flowers
~
Woman brave enough to meet me
In the throbbing heart of poetry
~
This poetry,
a chalice we raise
and pour
over the world…
the moon at dawn.
~
Without a word uttered
our poems
conversed all night
in the light
of the stars and moon
~
The swift step
of your shadow
moving across my poem
blooming at dawn
~
I gaze into her face
and my eyes drift,
a bird flying
through a sea of fog,
and this flight
becomes my journey,
this journey becomes home.
~
What does it take
to make the poem dance?
A smile from her lips,
A gaze from her eyes.
~
Even after I die
some things will never change,
stars will shine,
waves will roll,
and my breath will seek yours
in the infinity of the sky.
~
Take me with you
on a gypsy kind of road,
from poem to poem
a life of wandering,
in our bag
the moon and stars,
and a kiss shared
like bread like wine,
a kiss shared
for the rest of our days.
~
Will you come? –
I am no longer sure;
like a poem standing
in its own grave,
all around me grows
the silence of the sky.
~
Softly softly
sway inside of me,
this gentle rub
the sigh of poetry.
It takes more to giving than giving in to the initial impulse of pity. If a man is hungry, instead of giving him food, teach him how to farm, or how to fend for himself. That will be more difficult to achieve than the easy gesture of giving him something of which you have in excess, and which aim is ultimately your own self-indulgence, indulging your own pity. And the opposite to this is true as well: instead of going the hard way, of learning how to fend for himself and controlling his future, a hungry or poor man is wont to stir the imagination and conscience of another into giving him what he needs.
Man is good not because of a primordial quality, something which in him exists in a natural state apart from society, but because the possibility of being good exists for him in his future, because, molded the right way, he can become so in his future. So it is a future seed with a retroactive force that acquires of him the full weight of his soul to actually become, and not something lurking in his past which requires of him to passively submit and surrender. So it is with love; love, which demands of him not to unlearn everything as the modern nihilists would like us believe, unlearn everything and revert back to a pure and unsoiled state, but to learn and educate himself so much as to become able to love. Goodness and love are romanticized by those who lack them most, and those who, pierce a little into their soul, you’d find them to be infested with maliciousness and hate.
A friend is someone who brings us back to ourselves whenever we drift, sometimes through a kind word, at times with a hard gesture. A friend remains close to us even when we think they’re far, that our pain and ache are incommunicable, even when we think we are abandoned by the world, left to meet the weight of everything on our own. A friend is someone who knows how to wait, when and how to administer the shot.
Don’t tell the mysteries of drunkenness and love
To a pedant. Let him pass away on his own,
With his ignorance and self-centerdness still inside.
If you feel weak, feeble, and powerless, well,
So does the breeze. Being sick on the Path is a hundred
Times better than a healthy mind in a healthy body.
As long as you see yourself as learned and intellectual,
You’ll lodge with the idiots; moreover, if you
Can stop seeing yourself at all, you will be free.
If you are living in your dear one’s castle, don’t even think
About the heavens above; because if you do
You’ll drop like a stone to the filth-covered street.
Become a lover; if you don’t, one day the affairs of the world
Will come to an end, and you’ll never have had even
one glimpse of the purpose of the workings of space and time.
On the spiritual road, being uncooked and raw
Is a mark of unbelief; it’s best to move along the path
Of fortune with nimbleness and springy knees.
In a nook safe from blame, how can we stay
Secluded when your dark eye reminds us
Always of the joy and mysteries of drunkenness?
Long ago I had a premonition of these riots
That have now occurred, when with a proud turn
Of the head you refused to sit quietly with us.
Although the thorn hurts your spirit, the rose asks pardon
For this wound; the sourness of wine is more easily tolerated
When one remembers the sweet flavor of drunkenness.
Hafez, your love is going to turn you over to the rough hand
Of the hurricane. Why did you imagine that, like a lightning
Bolt, you could free yourself from this storm?
— Hafez, The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door, translated by Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn
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 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.
~
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.
