POETRY

  LOVE DOGS
One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick green foliage.
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.

~~~
 

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
a an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~~~
 
 

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

When the soul lies down in that 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.
People are going back and forth across the door sill
Where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

~~~
 

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

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

~~~

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

~~~

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

Praise god for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

~~~
 

We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups.
That’s fine with us. Every morning
we glow and in the evening we glow again.

They say there’s no future for us. They’re right.
Which is fine with us.

~~~

WHO SAYS WORDS WITH MY MOUTH?
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. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
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.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

~~~
AYAZ AND THE PEARL
One day the king assembled his courtiers.
He handed the minister a glowing pearl.
“What would you day this is worth?”
“More gold
than a hundred donkeys could carry.”
“Break it!”
“Sir, how could I waste your resources
like that?” The king presented him
with a robe of honor for his answer
and took back the pearl. He talked awhile
to the assembly on various topics.
Then he put the pearl
in the chamberlain’s hand. “What would it sell for?”
“Half a kingdom, God preserve it!”
“Break it!”
“My hand could not move to do such a thing.”
The king rewarded him with a robe of honor
and an increase in his salary, and so it went
with each of the fifty or sixty courtiers.

One by one, they imitated the minister
and the chamberlain and received now wealth.

Then the pearl was given to Ayaz.

“Can you say how splendid this is?”
“It’s more than I can say.”
“Then break it,
this second into tiny pieces.”
Ayaz had had a dream
about this, and he’d hidden two stones in his sleeve.
He crushed the pearl to powder between them.

As Joseph at the bottom of the well listened
to the end of his story, so much listeners
understand success and un-success as one thing.

Don’t worry about forms.
If someone wants your horse,
let him have it. Horses are for
hurrying ahead of others.

The court assembly screamed at the recklessness
of Ayaz, “How could you do that?”

“What the kings says is worth more than any pearl.
I honor the king, not some colored stone.”

The princes immediately fell on their knees
and put their foreheads on the ground.

Their sighs went up like a smoke cloud
asking forgiveness. The king gestured
to his executioner as though to say,
“Take out this trash.”
Ayaz sprang forward.
“Your mercy makes them bow like this.
Give them their lives! Let them keep hoping
for union with you. They see their forgetfulness
now, as the drunken man did when he said,
‘I didn’t know what I was doing,” and then
someone pointed out, ‘But you invited
that forgetfulness into you. You drank it.
There was a choice!’

They know deeply now how imitation
lulled them to sleep. Don’t separate yourself
from them. Look at all their heads against the floor.

Raise their faces into yours. Let them wash
in your cool washing place.”
 

Ayaz and his speech always get to this point
and then the pen breaks. How can a saucer
contain the ocean? The drunks break their cups,
but you poured that wine!
Ayaz said, “you picked me
to crush the pearl. Don’t punish the others
for my drunken obedience!
Punish them when I’m sober,
because I’ll never be sober again.

Whoever bows down like they are bowing down
will not rise up in his old self again.

Like a gnat in your buttermilk,
they’ve become your buttermilk.

The mountains are trembling. Their map and compass
are the lines in your palm.”
Husam,
I need a hundred mouths to say this,
but I only have this one!

A hundred thousand impressions from the spirit
are wanting to come through here.
I feel stunned
in this abundance, crushed and dead.

~~~

CHICKPEA TO COOK

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot
where it’s being boiled.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

The cook knocks him down with the ladle.

“Don’t you try to jump out.
You think I’m torturing you.
I’m giving you flavor,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.

Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this.”

Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea
will say to the cook,
“Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can’t do this by myself.

I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention
to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver,
my way into existence. I love your cooking.”

The cook says,
“ I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices.
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher.”

~~~
 

I used to be shy.
You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at the table.
Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity I used to sit
on my mat and pray.

Now children run through
and make faces at me.

~~~

BIRD WINGS
Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you’d be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as bird wings.

~~~

THE LAME GOAT

You’ve seen a herd of goats
going down to the water.

The lame and dreamy goat brings up the rear.

There are worried faces about that one.
but now they’re laughing,

because look, as they return,
that goat is leading!

There are many different kinds of knowing.
The lame goat’s kind is a branch
that traces back to the roots of presence.

Learn from the lame goat.
and lead the herd home.

~~~
 

I called through your door,
“The mystics are
gathering in the street, come out!”

“Leave me alone.
I’m sick.”

“I don’t care if you’re dead!
Jesus is here and he wants
to resurrect somebody!

~~~

TRIPPING OVER JOY

What is the difference between your experience of existence
and that of a saint?
The saint knows that this is a sublime chess game with God,
and that the Beloved has just made such a fantastic move
that the saint is now continually tripping over joy,
bursting out in laughter, and saying 'I surrender!'
Whereas you my dear, I am afraid you still think
you have a thousand serious moves.

~~~~~

I AM SO GLAD
Start seeing everything as God
But keep it a secret
Become like a man who is awestruck
and nourished, listening to a golden nightingale
sing in a beautiful foreign language
while god nests invisibly upon it's tongue.
Hafiz, who can you tell in this world
That when a dog runs up to you
wagging it's ecstatic tail,
you bend down and whisper in it's ear
'Beloved, I am so glad that you are happy to see me,
Beloved, I am so glad, so very glad, that you have come.'