For Birdie Jaworksi, talented writer, poet and blogger, whose vision of the Internet as a catalyst for change has inspired my inner heart; and for the Iraqi people. Every day fifty or more people are being killed on the streets of Baghdad outside the American controlled "Green Zone" in a ferocious civil war between Sunni and Shi´a factions that has only just begun its horrific bath of bloodshed. Some of those brutally tortured and murdered in the false invocation of the name of Allah are members of yet another group within Islam, the Sufis, who, like the speaker in this poem, are hidden lovers of the One, intoxicated with divine yearning. These humble folk seek a path of mystical and metaphorical understanding beyond all insanely ossified or radically politicized literalist interpretations of the Book that the Prophet (a blessing upon him) spoke over thirteen centuries ago to set all humankind free. Unfortunately, the Sufis are despised by all the other sects quarreling for power, because their non-dualistic vision of God was, is and will always be a threat to the caliphs and other despots who´ve hijacked and distorted Muhammed´s just vision of society ever since the first few decades after his death.
Blazing astros streak across a twilit sky.
Wine the pigment of blood swirls before me.
My narghile pipe´s brain-colored ashes
float promiscuously down to a filthy floor.
Beloved, how could it begin otherwise?
The frantic mind falls into an empty gaze.
All eternal questions, I snuff them out slowly
under my worn slippers along with the cinders.
Drunk with love, I find myself in a dim tavern
deep in yesterday and today´s compost maze
of ancient passageways and donkey bones
and brand new barricades and check points
and electrified fences and turret roadblocks.
The four men with guns who have come for me
with the threatening stares of another tribe
could never fathom my surpassing thirst
nor comprehend why I keep drinking steadily
to taste You in my gourd´s foul dregs.
Nor why, after they quickly surround me
and break my cup and kick me and smash my nose,
my drunken breath still flames out of love for You.
Even more so when they take their aim
as all five believers call out Your name!
They should realize, dearest One, there´s just You
forever within my unbreakable being, revealing
nary a thing but most blessed feeling.
My Lord, is this why I fix my final stare
beyond tracers flying above their crazed shouts
at Your light that answers my inebriate prayer
as it rises like smoke up to paradise´s ceiling
while I recoil from the discharged rounds that flare
and burst me through the night´s soft air?
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Comments: 43
A powerful poem of love from you!
You responded very strongly to the warping of faith into murderous intent. I´m glad you caught that and brought it to attention. Thank you for reading this poem.
Faith, If you are picking out sensory descriptors and the writing feels vivid to you, that pleases me to no end. I tried to ground an essentially lyrical poem of mystic love as intoxication and yearning into a horrific environment that has been transmogrified from a magnificent syncresis of ancient medina and modern metropolis into a Dantean war zone.
The Sufis do not belong to any particular ¨tribe, that was a metaphorical use of the term. They simply cleave to the esoteric or hidden symbolic interpretation of the Quran as a spiritual handbook for living and fulfillment in a way that literal minded Muslim believers do not. They see past the 10, 000 rules to the handful of principles of the One. So in that sense they are not like the different N.A. tribes. However, they have been persecuted and hunted down as the Indians were.
Thank you so much for reading my recent poetry, Faith.
Virgil, this poem is in the tradition of Sufi poetry that uses the image of the tavern and ¨getting drunk¨as a set of metaphors for seeking God and finding Oneness and annihilation and return. The imagery of Bagdhad as an inferno is probably a composite of my travels through North Africa and lengthy exposure to Muslim culture there, and the daily carnage I witness (as you do) getting pumped out of my TV set, We get different channels then you do here in Europe, among them Al Jazeera.
I appreciate you reading my poems, my friend, and your sincere and individualistic reactions to them. Thanks for asking for the connect.
Your poem is thrilling with the commonplace, the horrific,
the history. Should be required reading for religions.
a vivid sand-swept image that will be with me for a long while...very well done!
Thank you very much for your accolade, my dear. It means a lot to me. I am probably stuck in the pre 9/11 vision of things, but I still very much believe in the underlying unity of all faiths. That was my spiritual master´s the great Andalusian Sufi shaykh Muyhiddin Ibn´Al Arabi´s view back in the high spiritual age of the 12th Century, where he could clearly see the mass death the Crusades were bringing because as well as the caliphal acquisition of Christian soil in Europe, since both sides were fanatically willing to kill and keep killing until nobody was left in the name of the ¨one true faith¨meme.
Kathryn, you mention Auschwitz, where Victor Frankl was tortured and in the midst of being castrated and beaten almost to death he realized he held within himself the ¨final freedom¨, his dignity of unconquerable spirit, which became the basis of this logotherapy practice. This notion of the final freedom pervades this poem: We have the choice to remain true to our own spiritual convictions, even if others maim, mutilate and murder us.
John, you mentioned Rumi. Clearly his poetry first and foremost was an imortant influence on this poem. I read passages from the Mathnawi aloud to myself EVERY DAY, as I read aloud the poetic writings of other Sufi poets--Ibn Arabi, Saadi, Hafez, Ibn Zamrak--often. Thank you so much my dear John for stopping by. I know you have read these poets and written often of these themes on Gather in your own mystical and antiwar poetry.
Errol, so good of you to drop by. The reference to Federico touches me greatly: I live within a few blocks of the summer home where he played piano, the Catholic school he attended, the gardens of the Generalife where he performed his poems of Cante Hondo and his plays of La Barraca, and the safe house where the fascists caught him and dragged him from to shoot him down like a dog in Viznar, only a few kilometers away. Your allusion is very apt, and Lorca is a personal hero of mine as an adoptive Granadino. The spirit of Lorca, like the essence of Jalaluddin Rumi and Victor Frankl and Jesus Christ, permeates this poem.
My dearest Liz, thank you for featuring this offering in your august group. I am honored. I am also very pleased you could visualize with your senses the drama of this solitary death, one of thousands that has occured and keeps occuring in an unreconstructed Iraq.
Jennifer, your reaction to the poem was a strong visceral one. That´s good, it means it impacted you as a statement. You are right, our nation has come out of denial even if our leaders in the Administration refuse to listen to their own citizens, who voted last November against furthering this war.
Virgil, you might check on Spirit Calls ... a voice from the wilderness. for the concept of the difference between 'normal' Duality and the required transcendence of Trinity needed to accept and appreciate 'others'.
(on that site is free download if desired)
Peace, j.
deep in yesterday and today´s compost maze
of ancient passageways and donkey bones
and brand new barricades and check points
and electrified fences and turret roadblocks."
John, you have said it all, expressed the contrasts so well! Again, you have moved me to an emotional state of great thought and insight.
Thank you.
Indeed, Liz, this deserves to be featured and read widely.
Apart from all the seemingly underlying plots so eloquently expounded upon here I found it to be an enjoyable read. Of course without some interjection of the wise ones I might have misconstrued the totality of it.
Thank you!
When will they ever learn?
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose
And nothin' ain't worth nothin', but it's free
Feelin' good was easy lord...
Show me the country where bombs had to fall,
Show me the ruins of buildings once so tall,
And I'll show you a young land with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or go I -- you and I.
Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger
My face you'll never see no more.
But there is one promise that is given
I'll meet you on God's golden shore.
I am a man of constant sorrow...
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace...amazing grace...
Sorry for regurgitating...It's just that your powerful portrait
evoked the sound of all these languishing lyrics...
Your poem is testifying to the test of faith and vision in trying times. It is inspired and well written by a Western man who is safe yet aware of his imminent peril for many reasons. But I am sure that one of the most magnified is your recent conversations with the Arch Angel of Death which is suspect left you with a much deeper love for He Whom We Shall All Return To.
I pray many fellow "believers" see His Light, as they are summoned to His love. What a sight to see... a pathetic poetic prophetic last look with eyes veiled by flesh, and rudely disrobed by blood spilling criminals.
God Help Us If The World Does Not Turn And The Sun fails to rise in The West. The Way of The Master of All The Lovers Must Be Preserved. And as I see it, a global movement based on the enactment of the final ayyah of Surah 96 is the only way to fight the devil and keep the faith in these modern times of bombs, bullets, and mass murderers. Peace Love And Balance Amigo. Nicely Done.
A powerful illumination on the razor edge between insanity and zealotry. "In the name of MY Father..."
You are such an excellent writer - I can't tell you how proud I am to call you my friend.
tc
the Sufi philosophy has just one thing to say, to put it very skeletally, live and let live, they are not the kind of people who will preach nor are they the kind who will force their philosophy down your throat, their path is taken by those who choose to follow... It is terrible that all that is left of them is the rancid rotting smell of flesh... It is terrible that good people are being removed from our planet in the name of 'goodness', the irony of it is just sickening!!!
this is a poem in translation by a Sufi poetess Rabi'a al 'Adwiyya
"I have two ways of loving you:
A selfish one
and another way that is worthy of You,
in my selfish love, I remember You and You alone.
In that other love, You lift the veil
and let me feast my eyes on Your Living Face.
That I remember you always, or that I see You face-to-face-
no credit to me in either:
the credit is to You in both."
I wonder why people who think with such beauty are dying such ugly deaths, at the hands of people who should be dying so ugly-ly
This is definitely one of my favourite poems of yours. It speaks directly to me and its voice is so powerful and vivid that I was transported there when reading it.
It reminds me of Guy Sajer's "The Forgotten Soldier" and the way that his writing literally propels the reader, whether she/he wants to or not, right into the heart of the action.
There's also an echo of Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" in the bitter irony of executioners and the victim being of the same faith and the way that faith can becomes cannibalistic and turn on its own.
( By the way, your comment above about "this terrible paradox of the bond between murderer and murdered" strangely reminded me of my own Clearness and Impenetrability story and the relationships that exist between the victims and the perpertrators there although I do know that your comment wasn't referring to that particular situation. )
"My narghile pipe´s brain-colored ashes float promiscuously down to a filthy floor."
That's an interesting use of the word "promiscuous" that made me think.
"All eternal questions, I snuff them out slowly under my worn slippers along with the cinders."
A great syllepsis that really fires the imagination - what ARE these eternal questions that get extinguished together with the embers? There's also the contrast between the profound ( the eternal questions ) and the common ( the cinders ) that really accentuates the feel of the moment.
"nor comprehend why I keep drinking steadily to taste You in my gourd´s foul dregs."
Again, as above, a striking coupling of the transcendental and everyday.
Yes, John this poem really did hit the spot for me dealing as it does with the themes that keep me forever mystified - thank you for that.
This is such a breathtaking heartbreak to read, one can not imagine the pain of living it. You have so succinctly and beautifully stated a sentiment that is, at its core, seemingly simple. It is so sad a thing -- what men have wrought in the name of their gods.
Exceptional work.
I believe that we are all connected in ways we can't yet imagine, that the breath we take is exhaled on the other side of the world, that the words we write are pulled from the mouths of those who utter them in our mind's eye. Your words are real, John, they fly beyond this screen, they are the thoughts and heartache of everyone who breathes the desire for something better than what we now create with our chaos.
The backdrop of war and religius conflict accentuates rather than diminishes the experience. Superb!
Liz, thank you for directing me here.
I have come late to this marvelous work you have created. The image of the "My narghile pipe´s brain-colored ashes/ float promiscuously down to a filthy floor." are impregnated in my mind with the sensuality of vision, taste, scent, and the dopamine high of a second glass of wine.
I look forward to commenting more deeply when I have time in the wee hours of the morning when only the mockingbirds keep me company in the absence of the barking dogs. It is a time when I can share more deeply with you in consideration of "My Lord, is this why I fix my final stare"
The fire that burns into John's words enters through the Greek classical reference to star, 'astro", beginning the journey at twilight, when the light hovers briefly in a suspended state of transitory existence, which beautifully poses the speaker as he absorbs and merges with the totality of the world encapsulated in the tavern's metaphorical stage. The same arcing lights will soon exit streaming into missiles in the sky and the very shots that will end the speaker's life. This full breath of a poem is beyond mesmerizing and saturated with the meditative peace, the celebratory ecstasy and the complete "knowing" that few poets could ever hope to even tease into syllabic sensibility. John "knows" this inner conversation so personally and it is my greatest joy to see him deliver this rich poem wearing the glow of his Sufi heritage, his spiritual confrontation with death's voices and the generosity of his heart in seeking always to find the fullest expressions of his life's challenges which encompass an enormous vision and gifts that demand perhaps more accountability to perceptual and expressive quality than most.
The narghile's enjoyment pacifies the mind and allows for a balance in observable perceptions. The wine that intoxicates this vision is truly within the blood, circulating the breath that imbibes from the pipe's meditative pose to strew the thoughts like ashes in haphazard flow without any control dictating the flow of awareness. How could it begin otherwise but in a saturation so full that everything becomes a whisper within the breeze that has always blown and always will…that has inhaled the dust and the smoke from histories' multi-storied stream of Love's evidencing and exhaled All into the Now's thirsty gaze into Time.
In this state, the restless mind no longer quivers in doubts, but welcomes the beauty of the spiritual union of the personality with everything. The "Green Zone' has no outline of protection within or without and the men with guns who believe that they can silence
the Truth that challenges their sectarian quest for power truly could never occupy this
state of being. Drinking steadily of the Spirit and maintaining full focus on the One, prevents the fragmented fearful penetration to invade the perfect consciousness.
The juxtaposition of the guns and the ascending gaze of the victim beyond the circumstantial murder to the Light's gift of immersion into the All is both peaceful and chilling. The spasm shoots under my skin and I taste the blood's alchemy transporting me into the mystery and wonder that wants to exit the worldly plane , to bid farewell to time and place and rise to the warmth of Love's pure fire.
The symbolism John utilizes is rooted in the Persian Sufi Tavern Of Ruin's
Vehicle of elucidation, but takes contemporary thrust that incisively highlights his own personal challenges and challenges all witnesses to the current turmoil within the Middle East to go beyond any hierarchal segmentation of understanding to a wider overview where the relationship of all things from the same Source of Love ultimately calls for Love as the only vocabulary and solution to the unrest. This place must be held protectively by all who are gifted enough and committed to keep the sparks alive to carry forth the Light's new births and extended wisdom. Few can honor or truly experience the richness of this poem's soul-grounded holistic exmbrace, but John is a messenger of the rare and the challenging and the Voice that needs most to be heard and we are gifted with this poem and all of his words to take accounting of our own positioning and to meditate on our own offerings in word and deed to resound the Source Voice that sings within .
John, I hate even writing awkward words to this poem. It is from that gorgeous realm that I most enjoy sharing with you and I feel bathed in an essence that transcends any word I can utter….just know that I smile within myself and at the same time within you and rhyme my breaths to match your pulse in a thank you for undertaking this complicated melding of painful scenarios into a generous Gift of most beautiful truths.
My Poet…….You always glow in the elements finest and most necessary sparks and I always feel your warmth.