Monthly Archives: June 2012

by

Poems: 8 & 9 / Venetian Magicians / Prayer

Note to readers: These poems are begun by an inspired first line or two, and during this particular development from poem to poem you might find ones of cheerful and imaginative transcendence or darkening recognitions of a more perhaps serious actuality (mortality, health, its shadow, its return to wholeness, etc.). I know that my intention to see cancer as a spiritual experience (hopefully everything that comes to us, heavy or light), without wallowing in, say, self-pity (surrender to Allah, the Merciful, Living, Sustaining, the Light, is really the only course, this rocky climb of purification) keeps me in a basic cheerful state (not always, last weekend after the second chemo, was hard, and Allah knows what’s to come, known to often be somewhat dire), so these poems are ones of need, throwing the heart line out to attach to God’s harbor, even if in a sizzle of pain and deep down general dolor…

It may be a kind of course in poetics also, what is appropriate to sing of, as poet, as Muslim/Sufi (insha’Allah)… as well as a Pilgrim’s Progress through the interweave of body/spirit, flesh/soul, dunya/achira, that is each of our mortal lot.

With that in mind, I’m including the next two poems in the series…
__________________________________________________________________

8 / VENETIAN MAGICIANS

Venetian magicians in their
satin pantaloons conjuring

flames out of ferns and fountains out of
pots

against a backdrop of Vesuvius

Rolling roils of ocean boiling
over us in rare rags of surf bubbles

until we swirl with dolphins and
speak their squeaks and trills

The earth itself opening up and
swallowing us whole

Ah this life with its flags always at
half mast and wild winds

blowing them to tatters

and the cups in our hands with their
soothing liquids and the

windows we look out of and the
windows we look in

Is it between our in and out breaths that
Paradise inflates and all

darkness expires?
At the moment of

each eyeblink when
our lids are closed that

a near vision of the Next World’s
garden drapes its vines and

opens its opulent avenues?

The Venetian magicians take a bow
and the curtains close

The roiling ocean pokes its waves in the
air and flattens them at our

feet as we walk earth’s lateral beaches
looking for gold

God’s given us a door that we
only need open when the

need arises which is
always

And the road abruptly ends

which is now
____________
5/19

9 / PRAYER

Oh Allah

Let me have no fear
but only love for You

with every blow
_______________
5/19/12 (from Down at the Deep End, ongoing)

by

Poem: 7 / Sweat and Boils


We’re all sweat and boils
sweat and scabs

scraping with potsherds

The whole thing comes down
while irony and nonchalance

abound around us

The isolation spotlight
hits us hard

Rimbaud said “Patience is the key
to this savage sideshow”

God takes away everything
but Himself

And now standing face to Face
what do we say

Some say Job said “Enough!” But
it’s never enough

until it’s all gone

Our nothingness is the dust
that rises around us

_____________________

I’m afraid to stand up
dizziness might knock me down

There’s no way
to say this

I must refuse my self
and look for Mercy
_____________________
5/18/12 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress, insha’Allah)

by

Poem: 6 / All Moving Forward in Time


It’s all moving forward in time
All horses’ noses create the finish line

Each flame tip tickles the
underbelly of heaven

Each heart of ours is the plate glass
to eternity’s inner rooms

When we stand the whole universe
increases its stature

circulating its moons

It’s all moving forward in time
All horses’ noses create the finish line

If our blood didn’t pound the
oceans would grow still

All roads begin when we
put our feet on the ground

A moment has passed but we
don’t see it moving

What you hear in the air are its
waves in the inner ear

crashing infinity’s shores

It’s all moving forward in time
All horses’ noses create the finish line

Inside us the Tree of Life
blooms and dies

Inside the Tree of Life
loftier skies blaze

See them now or lose the
taste of them forever

Our innermost branches
sweep their mirror

for their light
to pour down

It’s all moving forward in time
All horses’ noses create the finish line

At the base of my tongue a
foreign population produces sons

looking for territory to expand
a wild agenda

God’s blessings on all of us
felt along the knobs of

our spines

In the strange land of ourselves
the victory’s already won

It’s all moving forward in time
All horses’ noses create the finish line

I’m running out of time
You go on ahead to the finish line

All horses’ noses create the finish line
________________________________________
5/17/2012 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress, insha’Allah)

by

Poem: 5 / Seeing the Scaffold


Seeing the scaffold at the end of the road
or a steamroller coming toward you

or a herd of elephants bearing down
or looking into the maw of a tiger

on your morning stroll

his teeth and back of throat
and his greater existence

about to surround you
and all around you palm trees

sway and water still
rushes to its destination and

birds fly into branches and
continue to sing in fact

the whole universe is now a
polyphonic birdsong some trilling

happily some crooning mournfully
light playing its kaleidoscope patterns

around you accelerating and
brightening in gorgeous flashes

and the music of the spheres has finally
broken through the clouds

into your ears
as your

heart’s about to break
and death take you

and the procession of saints can be
glimpsed over the hill

for you to join at the end
to continue on

past this world’s din
_____________________
5/15/12 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress)

by

Poem: 4 / Short Fable of the Three Schooners


The first sailboat out had
nowhere to go but forward

out into pure outness

The light slitted down in louvered
doors that swung open for it to

enter

and enter it did

The second sailboat out saw things
differently and tacked to the

side and so slid along the
light in such a way it

slid out of sight

The third sailboat out lost
sight of the fact of the outing

and its sails fell slack
winds blowing elsewhere to fill

sails that would
respond to the air attack

The first boat and its green crew
sailed on into God’s domain

His own breath pulsing them
onward and onward

in divine Flame

There’s no record of the
other two schooners

They are probably goners

May God grant them honors

_________________________
5/13/12 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress)

by

Dear Reader

Dear Reader

Bismillah

I’m averse to drawing attention to physical ailments, but since a bit before writing God of the Sliver I‘ve been undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatment for base-of-tongue cancer, and poems have come in their fashion by Allah in the way my last year’s Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight poems came, that I posted here almost daily as they came. I’ve been debating whether to do the same with these poems during treatment, with some days naturally skipped, as standing with my Ecstatic Exchange “mission statement” (above below the blog title), and the truthfulness and usefulness of what comes through poetry in ease times and times of crisis. Our physical frailties and hopes and rope-holding to Allah’s Mercy in every situation being true for all of us, and with that in mind perhaps some of these poems may resonate, insha’Allah. So with your indulgence, the first two poems below in reverse order are the first, with Good Cheer Among the Cynics now placed as the third in its proper order as received.

I appreciate and thank you for your readership and your prayers. As the Prophet Muhammad said, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, “Take benefit of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your sickness, your wealth before your poverty, your free-time before your preoccupation, and your life before your death.”

Faced with a dire illness, I find a certain urgency in expression. But insha’Allah, I fully intend and pray to “foreclose” on these inside cellular interlopers, and live to tell the tale as their own tails recede and vanish quite away, all if Allah so deems. We come from Him, are His alone, and to Him we return.

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
__________________________

3 / GOOD CHEER AMONG THE CYNICS

Good Cheer came and
sat among the cynics

“What evidence do you have?” they asked
putting on snarl cougar masks and

long piggy moose faces

“None that you can see” sang Good Cheer
“though it land on you like a piano”

They sat still as a piano landed on them
proof of their position

even though it was playing a
gorgeous new sonata

“That darkness we see
lays on us like gabardine” they chanted

gleefully

“The darkness you see is only
a play of light” sang back Glee

There’s no end to this drama and the
back and forth between them

and the cynics have convincing
evidence on their side it’s true

but when the dust clears
do you see ruins or new shapes

and can anything God brings be
imperfect?

Even though the angels who bring things
look like they’ve been stung by wasps and

beaten up by psychopaths?

Conceive of a world
through this one

better than this one

Live in it

Stretch out your hand

and decorate it with
fairy lights

for all our own and
your own

wellbeing
___________________
5/11 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress, insha’Allah)

by

Poem: 2 / Angelic Shoes


The shoemaker saw that
angelic shoes miraculously

surrounded his feet
a perfect fit

The hoop flyer soared up and through
with the greatest of ease

the whole sky

opening its curtains so she could
land on her feet on the

other side in a
sea of clouds

The flautist floated his
breath through his flute and out the

open end
a whole symphony flowed

backed by a thousand-person choir in
blue tuxedos and flouncy blue gowns

There’s really no end to the
miracles once just a little one comes into focus

Once we see everything fluttering its
miraculous wings

elephants finally look down at us from their
domed heights with

benign approval having always
seen things this way from the

start

Dust rises as they move off and as its
dirt flakes fall back to earth they

spell out jungle scriptures of such
monumental delicacy whole

populations close their books and
act on their advice of

elegantly symmetrical crystals and
the generous boon given us of

atomic structures by God the Most
Generous Giver

until even the most inert ones on earth
are seen to be dancing
________________________________________________________
5/11/12 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress)

by

Poem: 1 / God of the Sliver


O God of the sliver that fells a giant
of the gnat that burrows into the

brain of Nimrod
(such a famous drilling to Glory)

Of a spiraling tornado that flattens towns
but is the DNA’s motion one

spinning spiral inside another

Of a bridge across water so dark
only the blind can cross it with

little consternation

God of antelope and antlers
squid and their inky shields

elephants and their lumbering bulk
humankind with every

weapon in the book
bent on self-destruction

Yet You’ve given into our hearts
the architectural structures of purest

incandescence to establish love zones of
total beneficence

on the sides of hills
in the midst of bomb blast

on this planet in its collision course with
endlessness and the Light You Light

O God Who’s put us in the
deep end to start with

and we must climb to the shallows
to stand knee deep with

saints in their beatitudes as the
churning waters of peacefulness

prevail
_______________________________________________
5/10/12 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress)