Poem: The World Went Away

1

The world went away on a hunting trip
and left us alone in the

long and short corridors and sudden
staircases ascending heavenly levels

A gray light entered around us with
whispering tread and a soft

electrical energy whose crackle was a
new language to our ears but whose

words seemed to emanate from our
hearts

There were no edges or slopes no
ledges or shale cliffs no

entrances or exits all simply
spacelessly spacious and

timelessly timeless in a
placeless place whose

air was our selves obliterated
and whose Presence was

Allah

2

What kind of rose speaks to us out of the
grave of our selves?

What eyes look into our eyes
in the new place?

What road are we on when
all roads are gone?

If the truth speaks through us would
birds scatter from the trees?

How do we refer to this or that when the
self is obliterated

or is there a this or that instead of simply
one This and for all else the

same rose multiply
multiplied?

The beauty of a horse assuages the pain of
separation

The glistening gait of a horse
dissolves separation

The ecstatic gallop of a horse through
light after light brings

unity and separation both
into this place at last

and no rose blooms that isn’t
the golden rose of a nothingness

that brings us face to face with the
rose of His Face

unveiled

3

I awake from a deep sleep into a
deep sleep

I could be aboard a windy galleon
tilting dangerously in a

thunderous sea

but I’m in Philadelphia in the same
room I went to sleep in

The same glow of a lamp overhead
keeping vigil above me

and any angels who might be near

whose world is this world as well as
the unseen

intersectioned by our visionary treks in
sleep or in waking states

opening doors and
entering rooms in which

the Prophet Muhammad God’s
peace be upon him might be

sitting surrounded by his
Companions

in the same glow of a
lamp keeping vigil above them

and he might just look up as we
enter and his soft strong eyes

lock for a moment with ours and
burn everything away that isn’t

Allah in that sweet
incendiary instant
_________________________________
10/28/11
(from The Match That Became a Conflagration, in progress)

Poem: The Saint’s Achievement

(NOTE: With this miraculous “Arab Spring” with all its achievements, it’s good to know our work in the world is for Allah and His Messenger, peace be upon him, and Light in This World and the Next, and our beacons are the prophets and Companions and the awliyya… so this poem, of an anonymous saint, may be cogent…)

When the saint reached his goal
only a chipmunk took notice
all that light pouring out of his room like a
private aurora borealis just for
Him
and scampered home to tell his wife and kids

for a split second the universe stood still from its
usual flipping back and forth from
existence to non-existence and took a quick
look at itself in the mirror of wonder and wondered
if all its lakes would evaporate all its
peaks eventually crumble all its
tombs keep their tenants cozy until time to
unfold like a magnolia bud into flower

then it was back to business as usual and ten-times
greater radius of illumination around his head
which later worker ants took notice of and
passed along the grapevine
waterfall water cascading at its usual
pleasure babies getting born in sterile
hospitals at their usual rate

while like a newborn deer our saint ecstatically
stumbling in fields of God’s glory like so many
sparks from a campfire meeting at the
pinnacle of night or the transformation from a
large top-heavy and earthbound thing to something
suddenly aerial and gliding
free

our friend gravity becoming here now the
dance master of the spirit’s freedom from it
our saint’s happy stuttering across a very
anti-gravitational threshold in order to
appear to us perfectly normal
saying perfecting normal things such as

those are roses those are thorns

the night on its double axel turns

the forward depends on the backward to
define its place

our life is a split-second of joy before
light descends

_________________________________
(from Shaking the Quicksilver Pool, The Ecstatic Exchange)