Bread and wine

Bread and wine

O Beloved, speak to me now.

Your words have become my bread.

Pour the wine.

I am Your son and I thirst.

The river is flowing, inside and out, and I am bewildered.

Soothe me with Your fingertips and fragrant rose-balm.

My restless heart wounds itself on the ribs of its cage.

O Beloved, offer the silence of quenched desire.

I asked for words and received Your haunting melody

and a wine-soaked poem that won’t translate

            into any language.

Your voice sounds in the dark confines of the human heart.

Wine spills from its trembling vessel and drowns my thirst.

O child of God, rejoice in the wordless poetry of your Beloved;

the bread and wine that draws you each moment

            ever closer to Him. 

                            (from The Garden of Surrender)

Where my heart used to be

Where my heart used to be                                                    

You left a ruby where my heart used to be.

There’s a fire inside that stone.

Now the world is a busy dream

on the periphery of its hard lucidity. 

Now its heat and glow

is the gauge of my every endeavor.

The myriad paths of my calculations

peter out into sunlit fields and green woods;

wires cross and sputter; mechanisms derail.

Cause and effect – hoisted on their own petard.

The balladeer is a drunkard and a romantic,

yet, when he stumbles and injures himself,

he remains thoroughly intoxicated,

his Dulcinea ever more pure and wieldy.

Just so, the fire in the stone

draws my prodigal heart –

for what would deter it?

In joy, I burn.  In suffering, I burn.

O child of God, nurture the flame within.

This burning is the foot path to liberation.


                      (Unpublished)

Brian Darnell -- Book signing for A Jewel in the Dust, November 12, 2011 at Sheriar Bookstore

Song link -- Where would I be?

Where would I be

One day to blur

One day to blur

There are all sorts of theories about You.

I don’t know what to believe.

So, long ago, I stopped believing –

beyond belief ... beyond disbelief.

Rain falls and I don gear to keep me dry.

Where is opinion and belief in that?

Mortar holds the bricks together.

Oil lubricates the mechanisms.

The eightfold path – a photo taken from space;

no conjectures there.

I take my Beloved for granted.

Didn’t He promise – He is always with me? 

O pilgrims, I am a raindrop one day to blur into the Ocean.

My opinion is, my opinion is of little consequence –

using what works and discarding what fails,

I find my Beloved closer than the vein in my neck.

O child of God, drop that six foot pole,

sink to the bottom to find out where you are.

                     (from A Jewel in the Dust)

On parting

On parting

                                                                                        

We wish each other the best ... but, really,

what might we hope for one another?

Our itinerant Lord, from the new life’s path,          

spoke of hopelessness.

I begin to catch His drift,                 

many hopes and partings later.

To believe in Benevolence Eternal

is to eschew hope, to shake the dust

from our sandals every step,

tendering the apples of our eyes –

         

what our Lord tenders ... hopeless love –

not a thought for ourselves ...

or others – hopeless love!                       

No prayers but praise for the One

whose totality of Love and Mercy

allows not hope’s grip nor foothold.

O child of God, timid hearts hope.

The brave-hearted love regardless of outcome.

                    

                                  

Song link -- All the difference

All the difference

Empty bowl

Empty bowl
                                                                            

With begging bowl, I roamed the streets,

unaware of the jewel sewn into my garment.

During my last incarceration, You baked me a cake,

folding into the sweet batter a serrated file.  

You showed me how my bowl might be used

as a chalice ... or as a ghamela

carting away stones of the wall --  by Your grace --

continuously being dismantled between us, 

scattering them in the barren fields 
from which they came.

Later, You turned the bowl upside down

to wear on my head like a crown;

like Quixote tilting with the windmills.

How great is the jewel of Your compassion!

Each moment the river deposits

it’s thick effulgence at the door of my hovel.

I have only to step outside to stake my claim.

I have only to position my bowl under the spigot of God.

O child of God, beware of the illusion of poverty.

Nothing is worth more ... or less ... than your empty bowl.

                    (Unpublished)

                           

  

Extraordinary forms

Extraordinary forms                                                                        

So many masters in the world

promising liberation.  I belong to the One

Who declared Himself

liberated from all promises.

Down to the bitter dregs,

now the real work begins.

Nostalgic for that moonlit garden;

the fragrance of His sanctuary ...

but, the artist sculpts in a studio, 

far from the garden’s pedestal;

no slaughterhouse in a field of lilies,

nor butcher’s table beneath the pergola.

Love takes extraordinary forms –

disillusionment, grief, chaos, despair.

He gives us fair warning –

not for the weak, nor the faint-hearted.

O child of God, the One Who seems so far away,

is at your elbow, sword in hand.

                  (from A Jewel in the Dust)    

Don't circle me

Don’t circle me
                                                                              

I’m a moth caught on fire,  

said the old disciple.  Don’t circle me.

I’m a moon whose silver is stolen

from a hidden sun.

Don’t circle me.

I’m not the proof.  I’m circumstantial evidence.

I’m a dancer who left the ritual

to circle a greater periphery,

to listen to a more distant tune.

The Maypole is back yonder.

Don’t circle me.

But, I can take the witness stand;

point to the One who made me like this.

I can reflect His gold-red majesty,

the raging furnace of His Being.

I can show the dirty hands that helped

roust Him up the hill to Calvary.

I can point to the Hub, again and again,

standing apart from the spinning crowd

and answer His beneficence

with all the grace, art and passion I can muster.

O child of God, Meher gives you the Light

no darkness can dispel.

                   

Spinning tales

Spinning tales                                                                                 

I hadn’t a clue – so You scattered a few about –

sandal prints under my windows;

sacred threads snagged in the hedgerow;

Your blood staining the cross within my chest.

People wonder why I go on about this!

It’s ancient history, they say.

I’m like the angler whose trophy fish is mounted

          above the mantle –

I can’t stop spinning tales about it!

Especially when Your wine gets me drunk

and I feel again the excitement of finding You

          on the end of my line.

Gone forever -- the despair of empty nets

pulled again and again from the sea of illusion.

My nets are bursting now, my vessel in danger of sinking

under the weight of Your bounty.

Jesus must have smiled when I turned down Your street –

He’d sent me that way years ago looking for You.

O child of God, the Avatar is the fisher of men.

It’s His hook causing that pain in your chest.

                       (from A Jewel in the Dust)

Lukewarm water

Lukewarm water                                                                             

I once owned a tea set

of great delicacy and beauty.

Over the years, it became chipped,

stained, cracked and broken . . .

and there were episodes of destructive rage,

so that when You turned up at my door,

asking if You might trouble me

for a spot of tea,

all I had to offer,

in my extreme poverty,

was lukewarm water served in the cup of my palm.

You accepted my gift and I became Your slave.

O child of God, lament not your recklessness and ignorance.

Had you been prepared, His lips might never

          have touched your fingertips.

                        (from A Jewel in the Dust)

                                                 

Song link -- Don't let go of my hand

Don't let go of my hand

Journey of constant failures

Journey of constant failures 

Is this a straitjacket ...

or swaddling clothes?

the fruit immature ...

or rotten to the core?

This journey of constant failures –

a teaching story or a grinding wheel?

Should I try leaping across the river

or kneel on the bank and pray for angel wings?

Abraham whispered to his son, “I am an instrument.

I don’t know where my hands end and God’s begin.”

Suppose Isaac answered, “Everyone lives and dies

by the hands of God.

How fortunate if my last glimpse of this world

is the light in my father’s eyes –

“the light in the eyes of Love’s perfect slave.

Both under the knife, we have placed whatever we are

on our Father’s offering stone.

“Let us help each other now keep our appointments,

trusting to the benevolence

of That Which Is approachable only by dissolution,

sacrifice and utter surrender.”

O child of God, how did you ever come to the notion

that your life and death belong to you?

                     (from A Jewel in the Dust)                              

The lost language

The lost language

                                                                             

You had Your chance

but, held Your peace –

perhaps, because only a handful

understood Your language.

Later, Your silence became Gautama’s flower; 

a sand grain, a moon and stars’ silence;

the noiseless marrow of our bones;

the pause between heartbeats;

the silence of the backs of our hands,

the napes of our necks –

a silence wrapped in dust; the kernel of the grain;

the hollowness in the horn of plenty.

You had Your chance to speak –

and Your Word flooded the planes,

reaching the smallest, most turbulent and severe

of all our dry places; sated the heart

and began our re-acquaintance

with the lost language of God. 

O child of God, His dialogue, is continuous and pervasive,

how could you ever feel beyond its range?