Shelly Lowenkopf

I’ll be looking forward to more submissions in the future.

Thanks for posting.

David Bohmiller

My latest writing desk is a
large square flattish book
called: “The Great King… King of Assyria,”
Metropolitan Museum of Art publication showing the
bas reliefs in their
collection, and to see these
flat figures with Assyrian eyes and noses doing their
almost two-dimensional dance along the flat surface of those
ancient walls sets me
going in the dark directions of
poetry, to fall into crumbling dust, let my
borders and their
border-guards down, follow the
slow or swift drift to the
Ground, with a
capital “G”, sink into the

Assyrian Ground of anonymous being to re-arrive among
talkative columns overlooking a clear blue sea,
talk among those columns with the
long-dead, see through their
almond eyes, have their
slightly curled smiles like taut
bows in the hands of master
archers, those
curled beards like fluted
columns themselves, or like the
Rastafarian heads of ropey black hair in our
own time, sound of
sistrum, O
sound the
sistrum and bring out the
dancers, we’re going to
crumble through the
dust of all
dissolutions and re-
emerge long dead and already ancient to walk along the
shoreline and call out with no
voice but
majestic echoes that come curling

all the way up into the
late twentieth century to
rattle among
subway cars, fly
up against the
labyrinthine walls of our
overpopulated cities

to see if anything at all, any of those cries
that arise out of the
deepest Ground of our
beings, can be

heard.
______________________
5/5/90 (from A Maddening Disregard for the Passage of Time, soon to appear)

I am made to think of the Cavatina of Beethoven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lTOcjSRvCI

Only in this poem, HIS name is painted even more clearly for all to see: “The Fashioner.”

Alhamdulillah

It is difficult to put ones feelings to words, I know now after attempting it. Poetry is a difficult art to learn, I know now after miserably failing at it.

I would be honored if you were to assist this amateur in learning the art. Here is something I attempted very recently:

Have you seen a fish pulled out of sea?
Seen how it yearns to return home?
Have you felt its pain when it
Twists and turns in painful agony?

Ti’s how my broken heart throbs
After leaving the holy vicinity.
I am weak at heart and cannot bear
The pangs of separation from my Beloved’s City.

Unite me now if you wish to cease,
Cease mine moaning and weeping.
Unite me now or I shall suffocate
Just like the fish pulled out of sea.

- Khaadim

Wasalam.

Thank you for the very sweet comment. And to be reminded of her poetry is a high complement indeed…

I have enjoyed reading your poetry very much.

May Allah Ta’ala grant you increase.

Wassalam
Ashraf Dockrat

poems from true life which turn life into poems, unique treasures.

They remind me of the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska .

Thank you so much and Ramadan Mubarak.

Hind

Wonderful to hear from you! My email address: abdalhayy@danielmoorepoetry.com.

Yes, of course you can use the Ping-Pong poem… with gratitude…

Or perhaps this:

HIS PERPENDICULAR THRONE

Love for Allah is a Great Simplicity
while love for all else complexifies redundancy

Of all the horses in a race from the starting line
only one wins who is all the other horses combined

whose confident canter to receive the winning wreath
represents all the other contestants in perfect form

in one toss of mane or flick of tail
as its trillion hooves resound

And when we turn from the race
to Allah Who commands them all

winners and losers disappear
in the swift light of a perfect outcome

Oh face of my single beloved
disappearing around the edges

At the heat center of your graceful animation
is His Light pouring through you

in floods from His perpendicular Throne
___________________________________________

(from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak / The Ecstatic Exchange

I’d love to use your poem “Midnight Ping-Pong Match” in the October issue of The Sound Journal.” I’ve been wanting to include a poem from you and I like that one. The issue is on “Balance.” Anything short on that subject?? (short means about a page). Here’s the URL for the last issue: http://thesoundjournal.org/july-2009-issue/ Please write – I’ve lost your E-mail.
Warmly,
Tamam