Poetry, anyone?

[InLove]

Originally Posted by faryal

Assalamoalkikum,

I read this poem on the internet,and thought it was beatiful. so here it is:

Rosebud

It is only a tiny rosebud,
A flower of Allah's (God's) design;
But I cannot unfold the petals
With these clumsy hands of mine.

The secret of unfolding flowers
Is not known to such as I.
ALLAH opens this flower so sweetly,
Then in my hands they die.

If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
This flower of Allah's design,
Then how can I have the wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?

So I'll trust in Allah for leading
Each moment of my day.
I will look to Allah for His guidance
Each step of the way.

The pathway that lies before me,
Only Allah knows.
I'll trust Him to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose.

How beautiful!

[InLove]

Originally Posted by Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

Another I wrote a while ago (second draft.)


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Constructive comments greatfully accepted by author/composer.

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

I'm in. Love.

[InLove]

I like that, too.

[InLove]

Don't stop writing--the world needs you.

[InLove]

With pen in hand, I live my life
For each thought from God deserves expression;
In this way have I praised You.

Let the songs of my youth offer an account--
These lines were well-penned,
However ancient and alien they seem now,
They reveal a crimson pathway;
In this way have I testified.

But these days--these new words!
They do not come from me.
Am I wrong to suppose none ever did?
Pure delight it is to assign Your glory--
The copyright is Yours.

Perhaps You have kept me from arrogance,
For if I were like the songbird,
I could sweetly present these lines to the world.
But the spotlight might reveal my face, not Thine,
And my song would fail.

Yet there are songbirds all around me--
You have shown them to me.
And you have touched their hearts with my words.
In this way will we praise You--
In this way have You blessed me.

Father, cast the demon ambition from me;
Send him to a distant place.
Day and night he attempts torment
On my spirit; Thy will must be done.
Poverty tries to trample me underfoot,
Keeping ability away.
In these times, I find myself crying out to You,
Failing to see Your kindness--
LORD, take away my blindness!
For even when hunger afflicts me,
My children are fed by Your hand.
For this, Father, I praise You;
My heart is full even when my stomach is empty.

Today I count blessings, Father--
That always brings a smile.
Innocent on my own I could never be;
Guiltless by Your Love, I forever stand.
I have learned to await that Day--
A day whose mention made me tremble--
Now I am at peace with the vision.

Each of us wanders in our own wilderness.
We take long and winding pathways.
If it be Thy will,
I would pray my path be quickened--
But only Thy will must be done;
For the wisdom of Solomon
Is but a gold thread of Your garment,
And the music of David
But a silver note struck on Your harp.

How many times have I closed my eyes,
My spirit broken within me,
Only to open them and find
The word "patience" scrawled upon the page?
'Twas never my thought which moved my pen to write it!
My life is fleeting and small--
It is like a grain of sand in the hourglass;
It is but a tiny seed in Your garden.
This is why I must lose it--
How can I claim ownership?
I own nothing!
I deserve nothing.

You can tip the hourglass with a thought--
You can till the garden with a sigh.

Yet You chose to spare sand and seed--
Those things You could have returned to dust.
You descended from Your throne to live as men--
You descended to Hell's gates
To suffer at Satan's hand
Because you loved me--this grain of sand.

How foolish to call the rose graceful!
Or the dancer, or the swaying palm.
Or the feline, or a lovely woman--
Grace is yours alone.
Yet after all the grace You have bestowed,
You lend us more so that we may see it,
And give it, and receive it from one another!
Oh, praise be to You, my Lord and King!

I am reminded of words written by another
Whose pen was surely moved by You--
Words not for borrowing or lending,
But freely given for all to use:
My spirit is moved, my lips are parted,
For my tongue could reveal nothing truer--
Indeed, dear Psalmist, your song I remember--
Indeed, my cup runneth over!

--copyrighted material--1987

[Pathless]

Her Song
(for SHE WHO THOUGHT US INTO BEING)

She is here,
all around us.
She is here,
deep inside us.
She is here,
and everywhere.
Weaver of galaxies
and universe,
She enfolds us,
transforms us
and holds us.

She is here,
all around us.
She is here,
deep inside us
She is here,
and everywhere.
Birth Mother of all heavens
Birth Mother of every star,
Birth Mother of each planet
Birth Mother of everything.
Life Bringer, Thought Maker,
Song Weaver,
Receiver of all our dreams.

She is here,
all around us.
She is here,
deep inside us.
She is here,
and everywhere.
- Carol Lee Sanchez

[elme]

here is a thickness hanging...
invisible.

air traffic-jammed with global thought
worries, tension, heartache

and tomorrow it grows
thicker and thicker

so i bring with me a small gift to you, world
my happy, carefree, positive thread that will be woven into the quilt of global thought

the world brain

happy day to you all!







made it up right now...02:20am. rea-a-a-a-lllly tired...... *sigh* Good Night

[Pathless]

thanks

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from tables we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

--W.S. Merwin

[Pathless]

BUOYANCY

Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.

I tried to keep quietly repeating,
No strength but yours,
but I couldn't.

I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That's how I hold your voice.

I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.

I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!

The sky is blue. The world is a blind man
squatting on the road.

But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.

A great soul hide like Muhammed, or Jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows him.

To praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the emptiness.

To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.

So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It's a total waking up!

Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?
It doesn't matter how long we've been unconscious.

We're groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.

--Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

[Pathless]

UNFOLD YOUR OWN MYTH

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the porphet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there's a pearl.

A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he's wealthy.

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.

Start walking towards Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you've grown,
lifting.

--Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

[wil]

Reincarnation
-by Wallace McRae,
Cowboy Curmudgeon,
http://www.cowboypoetry.com/mcrae.htm#Rein
Winner Cowboy Poetry Contest Elko Nevada

"What does Reincarnation mean?"
A cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replied, "It happens when
Yer life has reached its end.
They comb yer hair, and warsh yer neck,
And clean yer fingernails,
And lay you in a padded box
Away from life's travails."

"The box and you goes in a hole,
That's been dug into the ground.
Reincarnation starts in when
Yore planted 'neath a mound.
Them clods melt down, just like yer box,
And you who is inside.
And then yore just beginnin' on
Yer transformation ride."

"In a while, the grass'll grow
Upon yer rendered mound.
Till some day on yer moldered grave
A lonely flower is found.
And say a hoss should wander by
And graze upon this flower
That once wuz you, but now's become
Yer vegetative bower."

"The posy that the hoss done ate
Up, with his other feed,
Makes bone, and fat, and muscle
Essential to the steed,
But some is left that he can't use
And so it passes through,
And finally lays upon the ground
This thing, that once wuz you."

"Then say, by chance, I wanders by
And sees this upon the ground,
And I ponders, and I wonders at,
This object that I found.
I thinks of reincarnation,
Of life and death, and such,
And come away concludin': 'Slim,
You ain't changed, all that much.'"


imho-gotta love that, that stuff is a medium for growth...and isn't that what we'd all like to be rembered as...someone who helps others grow...even after we are gone?

[Pathless]

Like Nothing Had Happened

And so there you were, separate again, but not,
And drenched in rain. What I am describing
Is a literal scene: the cold, cold rain drenching
A summer night with a bag of flesh standing
Out there, smiling, shaking, and stunned.

The music moved slow, molasses trip-hop beats
Spiking the shattered and floating time,
Floating upon the wings of common birds--
No Phoenix, no mythical Angel lives there.
Just budding eternity in a present moment,
Or maybe the other way around.

Sticky and strange and with the scent of an orange,
It dropped and spread itself thick out on the carpet of
The world. Moss and tender things creeping
Across the pavement like paws or vines, like strangers,
Stragglers, like running wind--and when it hit,
It was like nothing had happened except

The opening of a flute. The rhythm, in alternate
Tumbles of hurting and grinning, spun grimly
To hang there live, a waving spider's web. Truly,
There was nothing to it, and all this effort only
Makes me sick. I should pause and I do.


--(me)

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by wil

...
imho-gotta love that, that stuff is a medium for growth...and isn't that what we'd all like to be rembered as...someone who helps others grow...even after we are gone?

nice one

[Pathless]

Here is part of a work in progress that I have been inspired about this morning:


My blood is boiling
as the placated masses watch TV.
I am
patriarchy's nightmare--
a man born again and baptised in
his own fire.

This is my body,
and this is my world that I have come to
reclaim.

I am the seated masses' nightmare--
the iron striking the forge, while they are
spiritually jello. I am
a sense of urgency I am
the quickening of my own blood
I am colorful and I am the
horned god exploding in language and in doing so
I am a galaxy
I am a flower
I am an atom in the palm of my hand.

I believe in love.
I am love and I will be love and love explodes
in spirals to explode again and there is nothing that is left
untouched or changed by it and its colors.
All colors
Love.

[Pathless]

Remembering Music and First Light
1/30/06

First woke from the womb
to bombshells blooming
over Africa and the paved streets of America.
With no words in first years, all was blue,
red, yellow, green, brown, black, black,
black; the shimmering darkness of self respect. Infinity
covering over me, born through great streams
of straight, strafing starlight; sunbeams:
remembering--

Remembering vast savannahs
and flowers. Like that day back by the community pool,
on the hills by the community center, moms and I and I
looking out over the stubbly summer hills of ohio,
dotted with dandelions.
Back at home,
in my crib, almost quite literally, I remember,
remember,

I remember those grassy savannahs of Africa
in cartoon style wallpapered on the walls; smiling lions beckoning me
to all the Zions of my future
unfolding as organic flowers,
fold over unsung fold.

When all of the music hit me,
it hit me hard. When all of the music hit me,
that's where I'm trying to get back to,
where all of the music
hits me. It hits me. It hits me
and it doesn't end.