I don't get tired of you. Don't grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!

All this thirst equipment
must surely be tired of me,
the waterjar, the water carrier.

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for!

Show me the way to the ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.

All this fantasy
and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night in the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.

Joseph fell like the moon into my well.
The harvest I expected was washed away.
But no matter.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity,
or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,
but I'm not going with them.

This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.

A great silence comes over me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.

An intellectual is all the time showing off.
Lovers dissolve and become bewildered.

Intellectuals try not to drown,
while the whole purpose of loves
is drowning.

Intellectual invent
ways to rest, and then lie down~
in those beds.
Lovers feel ashamed
of comforting ideas.
You’ve seen a glob
of oil on water? That’s how a lover
sits with intellectuals, there, but alone
in a circle of himself.
Some intellectual
tries to give sound advice to a lover.
All he hears back is, I love you.
I love you.
Love is musk. Don’t deny it
when you smell the scent!
Love is a tree.
Lovers, the shade of the long branches.

To the intellectual mind, a child must learn
to grow up and be adult.
In the station of love,
you see old men getting younger and younger.

xxxx

A MOUSE AND A FROG

A mouse and a frog meet every morning on a riverbank.
They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other,
they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,
empty of any fear or suspicious holding back.

To watch and listen to these two
is to understand how, as it's written,
sometimes when two beings come together,
Christ becomes visable.

The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn't thought of
in five years, and the telling might take five years!
There's no blocking the speechflow-river-running-
all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.

Bitterness doesn't have a chance
with these two.








THE LONG STRING

The mouse asks the beloved frog,
" Do you know
what you are to me?"During the day ,
you are my energy for working. At night ,
you are my deepest sleep.
But could we be together
outside of time as well as inside?"

Physically, we meet only at breakfast.
Your absence during the rest of the day
enters all my cravings!
I drink
five hundred times too much.
I eat
like a bulimic trying to die.
Help me!

I know I'm not worth it,
but your generosity is so vast!

Let your sunshine shine on this peice of dung,
and dry it out, so it can be used for fuel
to warm and light up a bathhouse.

Look on the terrible and stupid things I have done,
and cause herbs and eglantine to grow out of them.

The sun does this with the ground.
Think what glories God can make
from the fertilizer of sinning!

The mouse continues to beg, "My friend,
I know I'm ugly to you.
I'm ugly to me!
I'm perfectly ugly!
But look, you'll be sad
when I die, won't you ? You'll sit by my grave
and weep a little?

All I'm asking is,
be with me that little bit of time
while I'm still alive!
Now. I want you NOW !"

A certian rich man was accustomed to honor a sufi
by giving him pieces of silver.

" Would you like one piece of silver now,
O Lord of my Spirit, or three at breakfast
tomorrow morning?"

The sufi answered,
" I love the half a coin that I have already in my hand
from yesterday more than the promise of a whole one
today, or the promise of a hundred tomorrow.
A sufi is the child of this moment."

Back to the mouse, who says,
"The slap of Now
has cash in its hand. Give me slaps,
on the neck anywhere!"

Soul of my soul of the soul of a hundred universes,
be water in this now-river, so jasmine flowers
will lift on the brim, and someone far off
can notice the flower-colors and
know there is water here.

" The sign is in the face. " You can look at an orchard
and tell if it rained last night. That freshness is the sign.

Again, the mouse,
"Friend, I'm made from the ground,
and for the ground. You're of the water.

I'm always standing on the bank calling to you.
Have mercy, I can't follow you into the water.
Isn't there some way we can be in touch?
A messenger? Some reminder?"

The two friends decided that the answer
was a long, a longing! string, with one end tied
to the mouse's foot and the other to the frog's,
so by pulling on it their secret connection
might be remembered and the two could meet,
as the soul does with the body.

The froglike soul often escapes from the body
and soars in the happy water. then the mouse body
pulls on the string, and the soul thinks,
dang.
I have to go back on the riverbank and talk to that scatteredbrained
mouse!

You'll hear more about this when you really wake up, on Resurrection
day!


So the mouse and frog tied the string,
even though the frog had a hunch some tangling
was to come.
Never ignore these intuitions.
When you feel some slight repugnance about doing something,
listen to it. These premonitions come from God.

Remember the story of the military elephant
who would not move toward the Kaaba. Paralyzed
in that direction, yet swift if pointed toward Yemen.
It had some in-knowing from the unseen.

So the prophet Jacob, when his other sons wanted to take
Joseph out in the country for two days,
had a heart-sickness about their going, and it was true,
though divine destiny prevailed, despite his foreboding,
as it will.

It's not always a blind man
who falls in a pit. Sometimes it is one who can see.

A holy one does sometimes fall,
but by that tribulation, he or she ascends,
escapes many illusions, escapes
conventional religion, escapes
being so bound to phenomena.

Think of how PHENOMENA come trooping
out of the desert of nonexistence
into this materiality.
Morning and night,
they arrive in a long line and take over
from each other, "It's my turn now. Get out!"

A son comes of age, and a father packs up.
This place of phenomena is a wide exchange
of highways, with everything going all sorts of different ways.
We seem to be sitting still,
but we are actually moving, and the fantasies
of phenomena are sliding through us
like ideas through curtians.
They go to the well
of deep love inside each of us.
They fill their jars there, and they leave.

There is a source they come from,
and a fountain inside here.
Be generous.
Be grateful. Confess when you're not.

We can't know
what the divine intelligence
has in mind!

Who am I,
standing in the midst of this thought traffic?

I like it, as long as it is all equal, Heaven forbid it leans one way or
the other........

Remember the mouse on the riverbank?
There's a love-string stretching into the water
hoping for the frog.
Suddenly a raven grips the mouse
and flies off. The frog too, from the riverbottom,
with one foot tangled in invisible string,
follows, suspended in the air.
Amazed faces ask,
"When did a raven ever go underwater
and catch a frog?"
The frog answers,
This is the force of Friendship.
What draws friends together
does not conform to the laws of nature.
Form doesn't know about spiritual closeness.
If a grain of barley approaches a grain of wheat,
an ant must be carrying it. A black ant on black felt.
You can't see it, but if grains go toward each other,
it's there.
A hand shifts our birdcages around.
Some are brought closer. Some move apart.
Do not try to reason it out. Be conscious
of who draws you and who not.



rumi

Quiet, you sad man.
A deserted place is a fine spot to relieve oneself,
and since there's no living thing here, or means of living
it needs fertilizing

The dervish began his own list
of questions and answers

what kind of bird are you?? Not a falcon,
trained for the royal hand. Not a pea****,
painted with everyones eyes. Not a parrot,
that talks for sugar cubes.Not a nightingale
that sings like someone in love

Not a hoopoe bringing messages to Solomon,
or a stork that builds it's nest on a cliffside.


what EXACTLY DO YOU DO?
you are no known species.

You haggle and make cracks
to keep what you own for yourself.

You have forgotton the friend
who doesn't care about ownership,
who doesn't try to turn a profit
from every human exchange



rumi

Lovey

you are lovely!!...what a nice good morning!

Each Note


Advice doesn't help lovers!
They're not the kind od mountain stream
you can build a dam across.

An intellectual doesn't know
what the drunk is feeling!

Don't try to figure
what those lost inside love
will do next!

Someone in charge would give up al his power,
if he caught one whiff of the wine musk
from the room where the lovers
are doing who-knows-what!

One of them tries to dig
a hole thru a mountain
another flees from academic honors
one laughs at famous mustaches!

Life freezes if it doesn't get a taste
of this almond cake
.......................................................the stars come up
spinning
every night, bewildered in love
.......................................................They'd grow tired
with that revolving if they weren't
.......................................................They'd say,
"how long do we have to DO this!"

God picks up the reed flute world and blows.
each note is a need coming thru oneof us,
a passion , a longing-pain.
........................................................Remember the
lips
where the wind breath originated,
and let your note be clear.

Don't try to stop it
BE your note.





rumi

i want to dance HERE in THIS music
not in spirit , where there is no time.

i circle the sun like shadow
my head becomes my feet.Covered with

existence, Queen, annihilated,
a walkingstick dragon, my blind mind
taps along it's cane of thought. Love

does no thinking. It waits with soul,
with me, weeping in this corner. We're

strangers here where we never hear
YES.


We must be from somewhere else

if anyone ever asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look. lift your face
and say,
like this?

when someone mentions the gracefulness
of the night sky, climb up on the roof
and dance! and say,
like this!

if anyone want's to know what "spirit"is
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her
keep your face there close

like this.

when someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon
slowly loosen....knot by knot the strings of your robe

like this

if anyone wonders how jesus raised the dead
don't try to explain the miracle
kiss me on the lips !

like this! like this!

when someone asks what it means to "die for love"
point


here


if someone asks how tall i am
i frown
and measure the space between the creases of my brow
and say

this tall

the soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns
if you dont believe me
walk back into my house

like this

when lovers moan
they're telling our story

like this


when someone asks what
there is to do
light the candle in her hand

like this

how did the scent of you come to me?

on the wind

How did my sight return?

your light

a little wind cleans the eyes

aww

with her delicate and beautiful fingers
she caressed my eyes closed
the fingertips trickling down my face
like fat summer raindrops
sweep of the palm round the cheek
was pure delight

confections of love,
distilled and concentrated
while cradling my jaw
and
soothing my brow

it was like forever
the anticipation of her lips

but when i open my eyes
pooling with tears

her enormous rich brown eyes
search back at me directly with
deep and sincere yearning

and suddenly,
the surprising flash of recognition
and sincere lingering wonderment

what was in that candle's light
that opened and consumed me so quickly?

there was a dawn i remember (i am in time ahead of you)
when my soul heard something from your soul.
I drank water from your spring and felt



the current take me

you are granite
i am an empty wineglass


you know what happens when we touch!
you laugh like the sun coming up laughs
at a star that disappears into it


love opens my chest and thought returns to it's confines
Patience and rational consideration leave
only passion stays, moaning and feverish.

in your light i learn how to love
in your beauty , how to make poems

you dance inside my chest
where no one sees you

but i sometimes do!
and that sight becomes this art!!

Come to the orchard in spring,
there is light and wine, and lovers
in the pomegranate flowers!

if you do not come, these do not matter

if you do come , these do not matter

Bravo,,,

inspiration incarnate

yummy