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Man Jun 2023
She's an amazing woman,
If only she thought similiary
Of me.
Simon Piesse Jun 2022
Dear Don Alberto
Flamboyant Octogenarian
To a pair of weather-beaten families on the Camino
And to Backpacker Bridget from Granada via Barnsley
And to all who seek shelter from the Galician downpours
You sound
Like an Angel
As you hold aloft your otherworldly radio
And play for us Tina Turner’s
Simply the Best
On happy repeat.

Dear Don Alberto
With your doggy entourage
To a bunch of Ryanair Refugees on the Camino
And to uber cool Bridget naturalised Granadina don’t mention Barnsley
And to all who seek sanctuary from the Galician heatwaves  
You taste
Like a rustic slice of empanada
Rich deep and
Eternally replenishing itself.

You weren’t ever on our map
Don Alberto, were you?
The ID cards you offer up for inspection
Make us laugh at the farce of our controls and borders.

And so
To us make-shift pilgrims on the Camino
You show us how to journey properly
Dancing the salsa
On every roundabout.


Simon Piesse
This by our recent experience of doing a pilgrimage with 4 children.  First in hopefully a series. Feedback welcome!
Ylzm Aug 2021
The greater the revelation the deeper the mystery
The closer to the light the dimmer and further it is
But compelled and captive, propelled not by will
Accelerating into the void, a star amongst many
Each and all inexorably to be our very own Destiny
Mark Toney Jul 2020
Annual pilgrimage begins
thousands flocking to our doors
braving elements of chance
what does new year have in store?
As they enter our domains
obedient to adverts’ beckoning
is there hope for addled brains
as they face their day of reckoning?




© 2020 Mark Toney.  All rights reserved.
7/26/2020 - Poetry form: Rhyme - © 2020 Mark Toney. All rights reserved.
AM Joseph Jun 2020
Tanned days rest futile and barren, effortless.
Wan old woman on a mahogany chair. Balding.
Folded torn date palms amidst desserts thirsting.

Blue-black nights spent watching lovers, kissers
eat lips, tongues. At soft tips of sanded hill castles.
I dream of full, silky fleeting rivers. Oh Krishna.

You are the giver, taker, war, peace and refugee.
Plane songs, sorrows and all the remaining dreams.
I’m empty, yet a ripened bunch, ready to submit.

Like a dog at your altar. Running knives on my back.
I cannot grow, the blue is too far a lover. Or wither, the
ground too close a migrant. Just a blessing cut down for

those curses fettered in pages, drawn beneath gypsy tongues.
Crop me off this pilgrimage, myself running out of pilgrim
Age.
Reverberations resound,
Airwaves surround,
The Holy Ethereal
Transcribes my Soul Sound.

I yearn for freedom,
I sing for heartsease,
I beseech the firmaments,
That musicality conceive
A New Dawn; Millenial Fawn;
Material-Realm Transcendence;
Spiritual Efflorescence,
O, my Spirit is hearkening unto
The Holy Dove's cathexis.

Write from your heart,
Sing from your soul,
Unravel the Perdition
Until The Vestibule of Lightness unfolds.

Dream in stratosphere;
Achieve upon The Terraqueous Plane;
Ascend The Earthen Spire;
Know we each bleed the same.
What is music without love?
What is Heaven without Hell?
The Elemental Legacy beckons you higher,
Legion fatidic arbiters conspire
Rendering self-sovereignty a liar.

Open your eyes,
Unfurl your heart,
Sing to the Aethers
That The Spirit never depart.

This is Musicality's Manifesto,
This is Destiny's Diminuendo;
Therefore,
Know the blaze, fathom the burn
Of unquenched ardor, unyielding zeal;
With passion within, ye
Shall never fail,
So pilgrimage Life's Mecca
Bearing its sacral travail.

(Se' lah)
Excelsior Forevermore,


Sanders Maurice Foulke III
Shofi Ahmed Aug 2018
I
Didn't I walk past ‘cause the
crowds were mushrooming
around the Hajre Aswad.*
As like the rose, it comes
with thorns on the stem.
The most significant stone sits
pulling the biggest crowds.
It makes sense, it rhymes.

A twilight isn't a harsh cut
at the end of a summer day
when it paves the way
for the waxing moon.
No cut is a cut on the way
to the desired noon!

I too thought while the flock
before me was bumping on
the way to the desired one
Let's not me be a disturbing one.
So for then did I walk past
the Hajre Aswad!

II
Are you, are you 360-degrees
on the way to the beloved?
Maybe it’s not you who sway
losing the most at first in this way!

Should you then change your mind
and really do a u-turn
even jump in the water.
Already a lost one you are.
Too little a size you are:
for Jonah's whale just a bite!

Punters swept the way ahead
I too didn’t do a U-turn.
Squeezed, I get caught in the crowd.
In the flow rolling fast and by chance
I kissed the Hajre Aswad.



II
Didn't I reach out to the sky
We know there is no colour
The rainbow is far from the touch.
I just chanced to click a link
that lets you keep on browsing.

There was no colour,
just black: the Hajre Aswad.

Is the black only black though?
Pierce through the black,
the moon gardens
amid the starry honeycombs.
The whole world has seen
blooms only on the
nocturnal black screen!

But did you see at this end
what a sheer beauty prevails
off this black veil?
Hajre Aswad, o my God!
Could it sample? Is there a rose?

IV
Should I ask the rose
that shines the colour of the day?
I can feel it whispers:
Tap into my fragrance
if you can, one might dip in
but I am yet to touch a skin!

The rose whispers:
Below or above, in or out
into a space sooty indeed.
Maths or programming
call it whatever you think.
A colossal solar disk
doesn’t swallow it.

No altitude or latitude here.
You won't see a line
let alone an intersection
on the heart of the matters
the fresco Hajre Aswad!

V
Where do I begin?
How do I give a demo of this, o my God!
How it didn’t need a eye to see.

I didn’t pop into a rosy garden.
It was night and dark indeed.
This a colourless magic
pierces through my lips.
And tints in the heart
what a firework!

Now be it a most spectacular duo
the rose and lapis-lazuli-blue nymph
under the same cloud.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter.
To me now, no colour is a colour!
Since it snuck the light
This on cloud nine
Hajre Aswad the black stone thriller!

VI
I am unable to draw down
is a dwarf under the moon.
Since kind you looked
behind and with your toe
no star saw it, it was worn
like the starless night's swarthy sock.
You opened the door a little
upon the earth at it’s core!

Allah willing, one fine moment,
this eclipse will conk out.
There will be no dark mole
at the night’s core anymore.
The moon and the sun be one persona
basking into your bursting chroma!

The sun will go off the screen
That day it won’t have a rule.
It will be cool swimming in your pool!
Then the voice mine, can’t be swallowed
by the Jonah’s whale no more, no more!
Hajre Aswad: The Black stone in Makkah.
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