A fire beneath my ribs

A fire beneath my ribs                                                                              
 
I thought I heard Your handclap
halfway around the world . . .
 
but it turned out to be the sound
of Your fist pounding Your thigh
 
during those last, secluded years.
I hear it now – the strain and agony
 
of Your work pitched across time –
the severing blows, the opening of floodgates,
 
the sharp uncoupling of chains.
You’re with me now – a fire beneath my ribs,
 
Your universal work, whatever its immensity
and range, turning out to be, also,
 
intimate and interior, individual,
like the fitting of braces on a crippled child.
 
O child of God, Meher entered the timeless beyond
to offer you, this moment, intimacy with the Ancient One.

  

I love love best

I love love best    

Gratitude roams the ruins of my heart –

tipping the scales in Your favor.

I’ve an urge to run through the streets

shouting Your name. 

Instead, I kneel and slowly burn.

Dawn bears the same fire on the eastern mullions.

It’s not so much that You love me

but that You give me love to give . . .

more and more, more and more

and still yet more.

I know nothing of worthiness, except . . .

it has everything and nothing to do with love!

O reader!  What might we discuss 

that you and I don’t already know?

Like the elephant in the dark –

everything is true at once!

I love love best as a fire in the chest – silently longing

for the whole house to become ash and cinder.

O child of God, what is there to say?

You are bewildered – inside and out.

Ellora

Ellora                                                                                                         

At Ellora, they started with a stone hillside;

carved out everything that wasn’t a temple.

A poem should be like that –

from a vast vocabulary, an elimination

of words unconnected to one another

until the secret combination is found,

unlocking glimpses of Oneness, the inter-connection.

Words that tremble and hum

when placed together

belong to the realm of the Infinite.

The truth of a poem is in its transparency –

columns of words, sturdy as stone ... clear as glass. 

O Lord, take my life.  Make a poem from it –

chip away the awkward, the unrelated, the oblique,

the dissonant and obscure.  Leave me ...

sturdy, connected, crucial and transparent.

O child of God, the Masters say Truth is not

an acquisition but a paring away of the false.

Whole cloth

Whole cloth                                                                       
 
I rub my nose on the carpet before Your chair.
How long before the fabric shreds
 
and the stone gives way?  How long
before I sink into the dust below?
 
That celebrated widow put her two cents
into the temple treasury. 
 
Jesus extolled her faith and generosity –
it was all she had!  I’m worth two cents! 
 
Yet, I can’t seem to part with myself!
O child, not the quality, nor quantity of the gift,
 
He’s concerned with –
but, the commitment, the abandonment,
 
the whole cloth, full measure,
draining of the cup to the last drop.
 
O child of God, Your Beloved quotes the poet –
“Hafiz, remove thyself for thou art the veil.”