THROUGH ROSE COLORED GLASSES is a book of visionary poems mindful of the story of Sayyedina 'Isa (Jesus), peace be upon him, who one day passed by a decaying dog carcass in the road with his companions, and replied, when they complained at how rank it smelled, "Yes, but its teeth are beautiful " We can live our lives in misery seeing only the miserable aspects of this often grindingly difficult existence, or in peace seeing the beauteous and majestic Handprint of The Divine Reality in everything. These often ecstatic poems, mindful of the former, prefer the latter for their inspiration and...
THROUGH ROSE COLORED GLASSES is a book of visionary poems mindful of the story of Sayyedina 'Isa (Jesus), peace be upon him, who one day passed by a d...
YOU OPEN A DOOR AND IT'S A STARRY NIGHT: What is this life to us if it's not a continual wonder, whose elements of surprise should lead us to recognition of the Source? A continuation of the Ecstatic Exchange Project of putting a life in poetry, and poetry in life, in the new voice of a radiantly indigenous application of the Prophet Muhammad's revelation, peace be upon him, and its living and instantaneous continuation through enlightened teachers / ...a sky full of small circular rainbows like/pinwheels, small enough to see the/radiant sheen of their entire/circumference spinning, / a door...
YOU OPEN A DOOR AND IT'S A STARRY NIGHT: What is this life to us if it's not a continual wonder, whose elements of surprise should lead us to recognit...
In all the human spiritual paths there are stories of great men and women of divine gnosis who die in states of exaltation, sweet relief, or harmonious blending with the Next World that is more of a pause, almost a whisper. And their deaths, while entering holy silence, bring into stronger emphasis their erstwhile presence among people as teachers and examples of true humanity and sincere piety, as if their own lives are proof-positive of God's merciful existence, and their deaths simply a continuing chapter in the Great Adventure. // There are poems about roses blooming on rose-stems/rising...
In all the human spiritual paths there are stories of great men and women of divine gnosis who die in states of exaltation, sweet relief, or harmoniou...
MILLENNIAL PROGNOSTICATIONS: This is not a book of poetic futuristics, oracle-like I-Ching countings or consciousness Tarot readings, nothing so formal nor formulated. Perhaps its "prognostication" aspect is in trying to be open-hearted and sense-aware of images and their meanings, or meanings and their images, as they occur in the world both most immediate to us and by extension universal and even cosmic, detail by detail, focusing on what Blake called "minute particulars." It's a kind of lengthy prayer with sidebars, digressions and returns, hopefully each time more earnestly to the Source...
MILLENNIAL PROGNOSTICATIONS: This is not a book of poetic futuristics, oracle-like I-Ching countings or consciousness Tarot readings, nothing so forma...
SHAKING THE QUICKSILVER POOL: Poems that point to Infinite Beauty (The Book of Infinite Beauty being the too ambitious previous title of this collection), which is only Allah, al-Jamal, Who created everything out of love in a balance of Beauty and Majesty, two attributes sometimes clearly manifest, sometimes at odds with each other, as seen by our clouded human perceptions. But behind every event and every creation, is that Infinite One, and the quicksilver pool is our total existence here, which, to focus more intensely, we might give a shake (our selves), to see God's Face in the things we...
SHAKING THE QUICKSILVER POOL: Poems that point to Infinite Beauty (The Book of Infinite Beauty being the too ambitious previous title of this collecti...
I'm not sure why anyone would want to undergo spiritual training, the rigors and difficulties of a path of spiritual discipline, except to reach a state of enlightenment. And I'm not sure that the state of enlightenment would be one of grim survival, or a harsh stoicism after all the exhausting rigors, but rather a joyful and constant perception of the simultaneous multifariousness of all things, and the single Divine core around which we all endlessly circulate... The Perfect Orchestra of the Real. This world's natural light is supernatural light, and even when shining on the discordant,...
I'm not sure why anyone would want to undergo spiritual training, the rigors and difficulties of a path of spiritual discipline, except to reach a sta...
A MADDENING DISREGARD FOR THE PASSAGE OF TIME: While we are indeed born into time, and at death we slide out of time altogether into eternity, in whatever space we might conceive, in a supreme moment we might taste timelessness, fleeting though it may be (though that fleetingness too being still only a matter of time). But there are also those whose "disregard" of the passing of time is due to their absorption in Eternity, and The Eternal One.
A MADDENING DISREGARD FOR THE PASSAGE OF TIME: While we are indeed born into time, and at death we slide out of time altogether into eternity, in what...
Poems of ecstatic movement, longing, glimpses and glimmers of the divine reality of our existence: Not a moment can be squandered / not a moment can be lost // Grab the rope and swing out / over the abyss // "What rope?" you say / when there are / ropes all around us // dangling at our elbows and lying in / coils at our feet // But invisible to our visible eyes // Our eyes must quit the visible / to see them
Poems of ecstatic movement, longing, glimpses and glimmers of the divine reality of our existence: Not a moment can be squandered / not a moment can b...
In all the poems of a poet's work there's the impulse to get to the bottom of things, to the original energy pulse, the first cause as it manifests in the present tense, the spark off the main strike. As always, the title came to me first, and the poems followed, some faithful some astray from the theme, but always rebounding back again to resonate with that original strike, in these scattered sparks.
In all the poems of a poet's work there's the impulse to get to the bottom of things, to the original energy pulse, the first cause as it manifests in...
Chants for the Beauty Feast are poems in celebration of our breathing, living, daring and imaginal beauty, in this world with all its aches and pangs, and the next and the Unseen world with its intersections into and throughout this one, divinely directed. Light everywhere moving with relentless bliss.
Chants for the Beauty Feast are poems in celebration of our breathing, living, daring and imaginal beauty, in this world with all its aches and pangs,...