this is what i call ecstasy...

a flow

so very light

It is as if I have wings

to take me ...

through the night ...

this is what i call ecstasy...

a flow

so very light

It is as if I have wings

to take me ...

through the night ...

words of ecstasy...

a flow

so very light

they feel like wings

carrying me ...

in the night ...

not sure what happened here ...

an error?

or a reminder

calling me ...

to go so much deeper ...

in this tightness ...

between good and evil ...

leaving me bewildered ...

captured by the image of my muslim's friend stressed call ...

to let me know ...

how this simple man who looked after her house so many times ...

had chosen to hang himself

in the middle of the night ...

in the backyard of her home ...

Surgery
a Quietude
all thoughts
are suspended
you lie on a table
surrounded by people
who have taken the
Hippocratic Oath
you take a siesta
time stands still
your mind rests
your body IS
and YOU
will always
BE

"When you feel your lips becoming infinite
and sweet, like the moon in the sky,
when you feel that spaciousness inside,
Shams of Tabriz will be there too.

The sun is love. The lover,
a speck circling the sun.

A spring wind comes to dance
any branch that isn't dead.

Something opens our wings.Something
makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us.
We taste only sacredness.

Held like this,to draw in milk,
no will,tasting clouds of milk,
never so content.

I stand up, and this one of me
turns into a hundred of me.
They say I circle around you.
Nonsense.I circle around me"....Rummmi

Be quiet dude

LOL Taomaster,

That was witty!

Dear Arsenio,

Your beautiful poems make me conjecture that you might have been a Sufi in a previous lifetime. Or maybe you are one even in this one. :)

I wanted to share a couple of Mulla Nasruddin (who I think was a Sufi) anecdotes, but since the Open Thread of the week is not open yet, am posting it here. Hope you won't mind.

Cheers!
Navin

THE LONG VIEW

Mulla Nasruddin was a minister at the Sultan's court. One day, the Sultan decided all his ministers were incompetent and ordered their execution. The Mulla said, "Very well, your excellency, but I was working on a program to teach your camel to sing like a nightingale." The Sultan, intrigued, ordered the Mulla spared. On his way home that night, the Mulla was asked by his apprentice, "Why did you say that? There's no way you can teach a camel to sing like a nightingale." The Mulla said, "Well, my son, let's think. I am an old man. The Sultan is an old man. The camel is quite old as well. Who can say how long Allah will let us live? Besides, the Sultan has a bad memory, and who knows... given enough time, I may yet be able to teach his camel to sing."

Interpretations

*Take the long view
*He only said he would make the camel sing, he didn't say he will make him sing *well*.
*There's always hope.
*When under the power of someone with absolute authority, the only way to be safe is to manipulate that person into wanting to not harm you.

--------------------

UPRIGHTNESS

Mulla Nasruddin found a diamond by the roadside, but, according to law, finders become keepers only if they first announced their find in the centre of the marketplace on three separate occasions. Now, Nasruddin was too religious-minded to disregard the law and too greedy to run the risk of parting with his find. So on three consecutive nights when he was sure that everyone was fast asleep he went to the centre of the marketplace and there announced in a soft voice, "I have found a diamond on the road that leads to the town. Anyone knowing who the owner is should contact me at once." No one was wiser for the Mulla’s words, of course, except for one man who happened to be standing at his window on the third night and heard the Mulla mumble something. When he attempted to find out what it was, Nasruddin replied, "I am in no way obliged to tell you. But this much I shall say: Being a religious man, I went out there at night to pronounce certain words in fulfilment of the law."

Interpretations

*People follow the letter of the law, but not the spirit.
*You are who you are when no one is watching.

Cheers!
Navin

Spun from a mind
unique and complex,
each line is a leaf
on a fractal tree.
When your white wings fly through
to ruffle the leaves,
the tree
remains what it is.

...and that is why your four versions work, too.

Another approximate fractal is the relationship between sleep, peace, death.

You are sleeping

You are sleeping
Tongue is tied
Words are frozen
Eyes are closing

You’re lying still
Cannot move
Sounds are fading
Touch is cold

Feelings receding
Memories disappearing
They surround you
You wink and say goodbye

You are at peace

You are at peace
Tongue is tied
Words are frozen
Eyes are closing

You’re lying still
Cannot move
Sounds are fading
Touch is cold

Feelings receding
Memories disappearing
They surround you
You wink and say goodbye

The purity of Love
is the embrace
of Heaven
Every moment
Eyes and Heart
Open

"I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died,"

heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air --
Between the Heaves of Storm --

The Eyes around -- had wrung them dry --
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset -- when the King
Be witnessed -- in the Room --

I willed my Keepsakes--Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable -- and then it was
There interposed a Fly --

With Blue -- uncertain stumbling Buzz --
Between the light -- and me --
And then the Windows failed -- and then
I could not see to see –

Emily Dickinson

Words are now like munitions without war,
stored in useless piles, devoid of sentences.
Arsenio

Words have the power to both destroy and heal.
When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.
Buddha

Dear Arsenio,
Words involve the world. Words involve others. Words are our involvement in the world.
Thanks for the poem.
Love,
Donatella

"I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died,"

An interpretation by CHARLES R. ANDERSON

In writing her best poems [Emily Dickinson] was never at the mercy of her emotions or of the official rhetoric. She mastered her themes by controlling her language. She could achieve a novel significance, for example, by starting with a death scene that implies the orthodox questions and then turning the meaning against itself by the strategy of surprise answers. . . . ["I heard a Fly buzz—when I died"] operates in terms of all the standard religious assumptions of her New England, but with a difference. They are explicitly gathered up in one phrase for the moment of death, with distinct Biblical overtones, 'that last Onset—when the King / Be witnessed—in the Room.' But how is he witnessed?
As the poet dramatizes herself in a deathbed scene, with family and friends gathered round, her heightened senses report the crisis in flat domestic terms that bring to the reader's mind each of the traditional questions only to deny them without even asking them. Her last words were squandered in distributing her 'Keepsakes,' trivial tokens of this life rather than messages from the other. The only sound of heavenly music, or of wings taking flight, was the 'Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz' of a fly that filled her dying ear. Instead of a final vision of the hereafter, this world simply faded from her eyes: the light in the windows failed and then she 'could not see to see.' The King witnessed in his power is physical death, not God. To take this poem literally as an attempted inside view of the gradual extinction of consciousness and the beginning of the soul's flight into eternity would be to distort its meaning, for this is not an imaginative projection of her own death. In structure, in language, in imagery it is simply an ironic reversal of the conventional attitudes of her time and place toward the significance of the moment of death. Yet mystery is evoked by a single word, that extraordinarily interposed color 'Blue.'
To misread such a poem would be to misunderstand the whole cast of Dickinson's mind. Few poets saw more clearly the boundary between what can and what cannot be comprehended, and so held the mind within its proper limitations.

But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best
To use myself in jest
Thus by fained deaths to die.

John Donne

Thanks, Sachin for acting and sharing your proverb with WORDS.
:)
Love,
Donatella

Dear Rehan,
Both words and actions are our involvement with the world and therefore they relate to the world :)
But they both reflect our level of consciousness...

Sometimes

Arsenio: I love this poem. I wish my mind was tranquil, quiet, as a shoreless, windless sea, with no thought waves to disturb it. I wish my thoughts took a deep siesta, most of the time, and woke up briefly to help me with day to day work. I would like to see my mind drown in the flood of SERENITY.

Thank you Arsenio and God bless.

fresporta, Brenda Hillman has edited Emily Dickinson's poems too. She calls Emily,"The spiritual mother of American poetry". I like,"I heard a Fly buzz-when I died-".Thank you for sharing the comment by Charles Anderson.Namaskar.

Dear Arsenio,
Just a little while ago,
I had tears in my eyes,
I let them slip freely down my cheek.
I had come in from another late night walk,
and sat under a half - bright lamp,
in a darkened room - silent, but full of emotion.
Loss
brings tears too easily,
and often to me
this past week.

I shrug off words heaped in my mind,
careless in a jumble
I find what I seeking,
contentment in the action
of a kiss,
deep,
a caress so
tight.
for this moment now
is right.

With love,
~ Kate