I

You went around the sun

Not fully knowing

what you had gotten yourself into

Under the warmth of Allah’s breath

Pulsing through your hair

Radiating joy like a child

Charting a course towards infinity

Unaware of the dangers ahead

In life in love

Holding it together for that luminous moment

When it all becomes clear

 

No one

Not even the great spirit protector

Reigning the heavens

Expected your ship-wreck

That you would disappear into the sea of sorrow

Lost to me and all Earthly beings

With no map no path

To our common destiny

 

All we have now  is each other

The ones you left behind

To find solace in the company

Of lost souls pretending direction

Claiming to be whole

Despite the hole in our heart

Our collective pain is family

 

II

Sometimes I forget you’re still dead

I almost called today

to share something I knew you would love

and should have anyway

in case you were there

that death was a conspiracy

everyone is in hiding

watching, waiting

for the great awakening

 

III

You say I don’t know joy

Like you

I experience all

The emotions, sensations, sentiments, thoughts

Even the evil Jesus dreamt of

While he dozed on the beach at Acre

 

I say you don’t know me

That sorrow is more beautiful than joy

Pain more revealing than comfort

Loss the ecstasy

Once thought exclusive

To witches, shaman, djin

 

Joy, hafiz may have told

Is a fortress for the wicked

A wilderness for the insensate

A dungeon for the selfish

A tomb for the compassionless

 

Sorrow, Rumi may have written

Is playground to the soul

A battlefield for love to die

To be resurrected

A musicians touch

A poets word

A nurses hand

A gardener’s drop

Cascading down from the heavens

Sparking seed

Nourishing root

Foliate, Fluoresce

To tell the next generation

Of the ones who came before

 

IV

Your tears are of no use

on this fertile ground

Go cry in the desert

Where everything will fight

for your  piquant bead

kill for a drop of your blood

 

to watch you writhe

on the windswept crystalline plain

as the last glint in your eye

goes opaque

and no plant will let you pass

without taking a small piece of you