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st64 Feb 2014
“I know you're tired but come, this is the way...

In your light, I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you,
but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”*        ― Rumi


1.
“You and I have spoken all these words, but for the way we have to go, words are no preparation. I have one small drop of knowing in my soul.
Let it dissolve in your ocean.

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice.”
― Rumi


2.
“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”   ― Rumi


3.
“The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.”                          ― Rumi


4.
“The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it's gone.

Sorrow prepares you for joy.
It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.
Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their
place.”                                     ― Rumi


5.
“You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi


6.
“You think you are alive
because you breathe air?
Shame on you,
that you are alive in such a limited way.
Don't be without Love,
so you won't feel dead.
Die in Love
and stay alive forever.

I want to see you.
Know your voice.

Recognise you when you
first come 'round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come
into a room you've just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
“more”...                                                       ­     ― Rumi


7.
“When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute,
NEVER GIVE UP!
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!

The cure for pain is in the pain.
In Silence, there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”                                       ― Rumi


8.
“Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi


9.
“Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
But don't move the way fear makes you move.

If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”   ― Rumi


10.
“Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.”
― Rumi, Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi



11.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing, there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

What you seek, is seeking you.”                             ― Rumi


12.
“The lion is most handsome when looking for food.

Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies.
Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!

I am your moon and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl
I want you to laugh
To **** all your worries
To love you
To nourish you.”                                          ― Rumi


13.
“I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.

The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.”                        ― Rumi


14.
“Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.

Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair.. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.

But listen to me. For one moment - quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.

I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.”
― Rumi


15.
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi



16.
“Like a sculptor, if necessary,
carve a friend out of stone.
Realise that your inner sight is blind
and try to see a treasure in everyone.”                    ― Rumi


17.
“Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.

There are lovers content with longing.
I’m not one of them.”    ― Rumi, The Essential Rumi


18.
“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don't.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.”          ― Rumi


19.
“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

Inside you, there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.”
― Rumi


20.
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”     ― Rumi





"On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a day.”
                                               ― Rumi






S T – 25 feb 14
Rumi - born to native Persian speaking parents in 1207.
Died 1273 AD.
Rumi (an evolutionary thinker) believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dance as a path for reaching God.
st64 Feb 2014
(Blackened tissue beside debris of bleachd cocktail
Power pundit in cubicle
A ship in shadow-pieces passing by, unnoticed

smoking water.. now costs getting kickd  out ur xafe
Your blood lies in a high-account and all the stampz areMelting
Crawling in a desert, accusations shave the top off my black land
Did failing the test lead to a power-packed punch in strands
No time for treagedies clogging up the freeway
Twenty watts up the waterfall and your ride is here
Befits a ceremonial decapping
Catch ur vogue latte on the way out
Come aboard by jet and then expect a red carpet, soaked dry from the spoils of erstwehile-smugglers
Let em bleed green notes till the moths all come round the flame
Wait for it… the flame grows hugher… and int it all…………****!

That was easy.
Don’t chuckle out loud when expletives slidie down your back
Like champagne off the shoulder of your ne-xt planet’s ride

Duck in time cos the butters hard and the toast is dry

Four friends over six decades carry grudges heavey enough to pump oil to lakes
And the unexpected happens.. the one they didn’t watch, wwent missing
All eyes on the little one.. no, you didn’t catch them all.

You became immunes to the skills you advert-tarted and sqeueamish set in
you didn’t know casn host violence in a putrid-robe?
One finger pointing out, makes at least three in.. to the pointer
How can one planet swallow so wide a dichotomy in plasticky degrees?
It’s too wide this time to make that jump  – we will ingest what weve been giving all along
And some end up well-funded while others simply dwell..  as frogs in a well.


sun can climb in sometimes, but for half an hour
their fingers are small for the mine, keep small the issue
don’t cry when it rains in expectorata
I think frogs can swim.

when do I ever learn that..  
I am simply a frog in a well
near craxks )*


21feb
cant make this jump.
st64 Feb 2014
When the fog burns off and the air's pulverized  

diamonds and you can see beyond the islands  

of forever!—far too dramatic for me. It hurts  

something behind my eyes near the sphenoid,  

not good. I prefer fog with fog behind it,  

uninflammable fog. Then there's no competition  

for brightness, no Byron for your Shelley,  

no Juno eclisping your Athena, no big bridge  

statement about bringing unity to landmasses.  



All the thought balloons are blank. The marching  

band can't practice, even a bird's got to get  

within five feet before it can start an argument.  

Like dead flies on the sill of an abandoned  

nursery, we too are seeds in the rattle  

of mortality. A foglike baby god  

picks it up, shakes it, laughs insanely  

then goes back to playing with her feet.  



I have felt awful cold and lonely and fog  

has been blotting paper to my tears.  

My dog is fog and I don't have to scoop  

its **** with my hand in a plastic bag.  

There are sensations that begin in the world,  

the mind responding with ideas but then  

those ideas cause other sensations.  



What a mess. We stand at the edge  

of a drop that doesn't answer back,  

fog our only friend although it's hell  

on shrimpboats. There, there, says the fog.  

Where, where? You can't see a thing.


                                                      by D. Young






21 Feb 2014
Dean Young (b. 1955)




Poet Dean Young was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and received his MFA from Indiana University. Recognized as one of the most energetic, influential poets writing today, his numerous collections of poetry include Strike Anywhere (1995), winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry; Skid (2002), finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Elegy on Toy Piano (2005), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Primitive Mentor (2008), shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize.  
He has also written a book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction (2010).

Strongly influenced by the New York School poets, and Surrealists such as Andre Breton, Young’s poetry is full of wild leaps of illogic, extravagant imagery, and mercurial shifts in tone. Using surrealist techniques like collage, Young’s poems often blur the boundaries between reality and imagination, creating a poetry that is enormously, almost disruptively, inclusive.
In an interview with the journal Jubilat, Young admitted of his poetry: “I want to put everything in.”

And speaking to the centrality of misunderstanding in his poetry: “I think to tie meaning too closely to understanding misses the point.”
st64 Feb 2014
..and I drop the small pebbles of my notes
in cursive, words are writ of the silent-things
I never utter in the frown-of-day
on the surface of the lake


1.
soft touches from the fingers of a southern wind
offers some surprise in the falling
orange-orbs in the sky come tumbling down
from the shaking sky
there's no time to run - - keep still, oh *keep still

closer they come
and yet closer, they whizz by

close your eyes, they will pass
they will come, yes
but they will
pass

close your eyes


2.
have no fear
we are here
you've seen it and it took you a while
to understand
(we've been told to expect you)


3.
when she said the things with shaky-hand on your lake
it was right there.. beneath the surface, half a ripple away
she did not know
you could have put out your hand, even fingertips
to touch
you never did.. so, she never knew
didn't delve on
you kept silent (as you are now)


4.
how do you know the pines trees did not whistle sighs
at your temerity to keep silent..
or were you rendered almost insensate?

and surprise..above it all, the eagle flew.. saw
concrete patterns on the ground
but couldn't speak
it swooped down low and flapped on bold, so loud
and the surface of the forest-floor went crunch beneath..
approaching-steps


but how could anyone know
when brilliance lay right there.. half-frozen
below the surface of beginnings
a mere fraction away from
you..




S T - 17 feb 2014
perhaps today's the day for reckoning..
maybe, maybe not.


sub-entry: weather

whether it be rain or shine
surely, your eyes still work
to weather tempest-hard

when it comes.. that flood
be ready to catch it
in your mouth
st64 Feb 2014
in the silver of morn, little bird joyful trills
five lines remain blank
the notes won't play on
its breathe lies below the sand
where tranquil bulrushes grow


1.
in the hue of sombre afternoon
    knees drawn up to chest
    memories intent on knocking loud
cold harbour between these sheets
   no blotting out that light -- it has to be faced
there's no silver in the clouds.. so bulbous and so there
only a tie on the path


2.
can you please let me be?
need to be left alone a while
while I clean up the righteous-mess of this dread
           hours to make me presentable before that
which must be lived through

smiles can be pasted on.. by old-habit, so well-mastered
it's an old tale caught in a twist by its own wick'd-tail
perhaps some gale to shake up the roster
and relieve from parallel track.. liberate
surely, they can hear the stylised bass-chords inside me
             leave their odd-resonance
boom.. boom

3.
treble is missing..
your laughter, I can still hear your tinkling-laughter
         even as I see you being lowered slowly, slowly, slowly
s l o w l y
down into the bowels of where we all go to rest one day
you take with you.. the *one clef
needed for clarity to live

shut eyes tight against that bright-red insolence
        struggle with the process of accepting the impossible
reliving anguish through swollen eyes in a clip of vision
imposing terror.. grips tummy-muscles and twists
eternally deforming galaxial-dust in my eyes


4.
in the grey of eve.. no hunger, no thirst
    place food in mouth - must
    shove fluids down constricted-throat - must
..baking sun waves at me, setting in gilt-smiles

clean out the navy-attic of my overdrawn-mind
find your blue bubblegum on the counter
and suddenly, my arms are clad in shivers-cold
                       head is spinning
I pick up the morsel, turn it over and unwrap
stare at it, discovering you.. again
tears well but never fall..
         I place the gum inside
         chew and chew and chew....................
it is you.. not lost
place the bubblegum on silver wrapping
'cause the clouds.. they offer no solution

I have to eat, my hunger grew
my sanity is toast


5.
yes, smiles can be pasted on.. by old-habit
        but not this time
why let love be secured so.. then harshness steps in
to wrench away.. leaving such monstrous-gaps?
perhaps it's safe to just.. not love..
close up the heart - pack away in congelator

(weird.. a heart is just a piece of meat)
love-letters and sweet-poems are for the eyeless
hearts for eyes.. render blind-suite
tenderly hack out these.. hack, hack!



the only remnant now.. a hard-ball of gum found stuck
      hid as a half-moon under the pedestal


still.. earth turns again
          birds sing on

your laughter never lost.. completes the score
        the symphony unfolds
as sage doth reveal..
one step at a time :)



S T -  14 Feb 2014
hello, earth.. can you dig it?
I so like the smell of Eden.




sub-entry: pedestal

when these toes finally quake
feed my heart and brains to the birds
that way, I become useful.

developing allergies to this century's din
erstwhile kings and counts climb on
today, pedestal is.. a false-friend.
st64 Feb 2014
you are in the mist, a grey mist
a beautiful coverlet to the eyes of dawn
you’re standing there, in the mist
all the eyelids fall from lunar spark and come to drape on
my beige undoing of graceful bassoon echoes


in this darkened window frame, I look out
and the beat of life pumps on in the veins of foliage friends


in the mist, all cities are alive in muffled sounds and reaching sighs
why give up so soon?
why give up.. at all?*




S T – 4 feb 14
in the mist, we see what we can.. until it clears.
st64 Feb 2014
Whatever the cost I pay up at the minnow pools.
I don't know anything of the misery of these trapped fish,
or the failure of the marsh I'm so hidden.

Up above is the island with its few houses facing
the ocean God walks with anyone there. I often
slosh through the low tide to a sister
unattached to causeways.

It's where deer mate then lead their young
by my house to fields, again up above me.

Pray for me. Like myself be lost.
An amulet under your chest, a green sign of the first
rose you ever saw, the first shore.

Then I wash my horse, dogs, me behind the barn.
Only the narrow way leads home.
Ray Amorosi is the author of three books of poems, including In Praise (Lost Horse Press, 2009).




sub-entry: Wizard (Ray Amorosi)

All this havoc
just means I’m a poor wizard.

Once, I lit three twigs and fanned the smoke,
from miles away,
into the girl who jumbled scales through my spine.

As she vanished I clapped a delighted tune.
But not without aches of my own.

Did the sack of no echoes fail me?

Now, on such a mild curse—
boils, sewn eyes, a shrew
in the **** my ankle reddens up and eyes me
with disdain. Toenails fall off.

How far will this go?

Poor wizard. Poorly done in.
These pangs are power are power as both
knees lock up
ashamed to move under me.
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