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The Sheikh who played with children
by Rumi (Jelaluddin Muhammad Balkhi)
A certain young man was asking around,
“I need to find a wise person. I have a problem.”
A bystander said, “There’s no one with intelligence
in our town except that man over there
playing with the children,
the one riding the stick-horse.
He has keen, fiery insight and vast dignity
like the night sky, but he conceals it
in the madness of child’s play.”
The young seeker approached the children, “Dear
father,
you who have become as a child, tell me a secret.”
“Go away. This is not a day
for secrets.”
“But please! Ride your horse this way,
just for a minute.”
The sheikh play-galloped over.
“Speak quickly. I can’t hold this one still for long.
Whoops. Don’t let him kick you.
This is a wild one!”
The young man felt he couldn’t ask his serious
question
in the crazy atmosphere, so he joked,
“I need to get married.
Is there someone suitable on this street?”
“There are three kinds of women in the world.
Two are griefs, and one is a treasure to the soul.
The first, when you marry her, is all yours.
The second is half-yours, and the third
is not yours at all.
Now get out of here,
before this horse kicks you in the head! Easy now!”
The sheikh rode off among the children.
The young man shouted, “Tell me more about the kinds of women!”
The sheikh, on his cane horse, came closer,
“The virgin of your first love is all yours.
She will make you feel happy and free. A childless widow
is the second. She will be half-yours. The third,
who is nothing to you, is a married woman with a child.
By her first husband she had a child, and all her love
goes into that child. She will have no connection with you.
Now watch out.
Back away.
I’m going to turn this rascal around!”
He gave a loud whoop and rode back,
calling the children around him.
“One more question, Master!”
The sheikh circled
“What is it? Quickly! That rider over there needs me.
I think I’m in love.”
“What is this playing that you do?
Why do you hide your intelligence so?”
“The people here
want to put me in charge. They want me to be
judge, magistrate, and interpreter of all the texts.
The knowing I have doesn’t want that. It wants
to enjoy itself.
I am a plantation of sugarcane, and at the same time
I’m eating the sweetness.”
Knowledge that is acquired
is not like this. Those who have it worry if
audiences like it or not.
It’s a bait for popularity.
Disputational knowing wants customers.
It has no soul.
Robust and energetic
before a responsive crowd, it slumps when no one is there.
The only real customer is God.
Chew quietly
your sweet sugarcane of God-love, and stay
playfully childish.
Your face
will turn rosy with illumination
like the redbud of flowers.
Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.
All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.
Translated from the Persian by Coleman Barks
The pickaxe
by Rumi (Jelaluddin Muhammad Balkhi)
Some commentary on “I was a hidden treasure,
and I desired to be known”: tear down
this house. A hundred thousand new houses
can be built from the transparent yellow carnelian
buried beneath it, and the only way to get to that
is to do the work of demolishing and then
digging under the foundations. With that value
in hand all the new construction will be done
without effort. And anyway, sooner or later this house
will fall on its own. The jewel treasure will be
uncovered, but it won’t be yours then. The buried
wealth is your pay for doing the demolition,
the pick and shovel work. If you wait and just
let it happen, you’d bite your hand and say,
“I didn’t do as I should have.” This
is a rented house. You don’t own the deed.
You have a lease, and you’ve set up a little shop,
where you barely make a living sewing patches
on torn clothing. Yet only a few feet underneath
are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnelian.
Quick! Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.
You’ve got to quit this seamstress work.
What does the patch-sewing mean, you ask. Eating
and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body
is always getting torn. You patch it with food,
and other restless ego-satisfactions. Rip up
one board from the shop floor and look into
the basement. You’ll see two glints in the dirt.
Translated from the Persian by Coleman Barks
The Oldest Profession
by M.K. Chavez
She finds it difficult to breathe on all fours,
she’s been hanging
like christ and her lungs are full.
She spews lust
at the guests,
they eat it
like pigs.
The heat of the spotlight
has burned her skin
to papyrus, she draws blood
back from the vein, writes
on the wall,
that she's pretty
and that it ought to be
worth something.
Virgin Eyes
by M.K. Chavez
There’s nothing to watch but the fields of little
girls,
the flames licking their thighs, melting
sweet things.
They’re falling
into dirt, onto asphalt.
Sticky, waiting for the kind
of boy
who would pick candy
up off the street and put it in his mouth.
the time i almost was a dad
by Wesley Eisold
i've aborted your kid
she told me
i meant to tell you before
though i slept with this kid called
joel while you were away
so perhaps it was his
but joel has herpes
so you'll still get
something out of this
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Tracing Jessica
by John Sweet
Undresses you slowly, sucks on your
fingertips, your nipples, and on Monday
you die. On Tuesday, your children are
hungry and, by Wednesday, the desert
has pushed up to the city's edge. The
floor of the trailer is covered with filth,
with spilled beer, with dogshit, and the
first cop out of the car takes a bullet in
the face. This is his picture on the
evening news, and this is his wife, and
these are his children and, when I call
you on Friday, no one answers. When
my son begins to cry, I can no longer
stand the sound of his voice. I will
need someone to blame for all of this.
radio static
by John Sweet
Up into the sky like animals fucking
on the hottest day of summer, with
windows breaking, dishes thrown against
walls, and if there is nothing to but the
deaths of 500,000 nameless strangers,
then there is nothing to see.
There is nothing to wear, and so we
move slowly through rooms where no one
loves us, rooms where no one knows us,
and I would burn my list of enemies
across your naked back and then kiss
every name. I would stop writing poems
if it would cure cancer.
Would tell you I loved you again.
Untitled Junk Ryhme I
by Zachary Hume
There's a hole in the center of my heart, the place
where I kept her.
My soul is escaping through it, following her as she walks away.
She smiled through the tears as she said good-bye to me, good-bye to
us.
It was a dream from the beginning, a vapor I wished to inhale and absorb.
There is a happier man somewhere, out there, tonight.
He is like me in appearance, normal and unimpressive.
He is like me in gestures, awkward and nervous.
He is better than me in her heart, better than me with her love.
I have no tears, no blood, no mind. I am dead now.
I died when she said
good-bye.
Song For An Affair That Never Quite Was
by William Taylor Jr.
She didn't like poetry
and she said my songs
were all too sad
we used to sit on the curb
outside the club
drinking wine from
plastic cups
I carried a pack of her
favorite cigarettes
even though I didn't
smoke
she had laughter like
like the ocean breaking
on the beach
at 4 a.m.
one night she asked
me if I loved her
and I said
maybe a little but I'll
get over it
with an exhale
of thin bluish smoke she
paused and said
good.
Alone
by Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
A disappointment to us all
by Kate Bernadette Benedict
It was a fiasco, a shambles,
your bid not taken, the deal dead,
no handshake, no door left open.
Your ears burn when you think of it,
your shoulders slump.
It was a disaster, a humiliation,
your voice cracking at high C,
your poem trite,
your skating clumsy,
speed and balance giving way
to vertigo and torpor.
Your play bombed.
The critics panned it, no one remembered it.
You spent months setting up the dominos
and they didn't fall.
You crammed and didn't graduate.
You primped and didn't scintillate.
You lost the tournament,
your composure,
the battle,
your probity,
the case.
She hated the gift you chose and took it back for money.
He hated the gift you chose and kept it in the drawer.
You touched her thigh in the T-Bird;
she sucked her breath and squirmed.
You had him over for caviar;
he fell asleep and snored.
It was mess,
a dud, a total washout.
You got the answers wrong,
you didn't get the questions.
You read the map and took the wrong turn
or you braked at the median.
The other drivers scowled.
You dunked the ball in the basket of the other team.
You scratched at pool
or sucked at bridge
or choked at tennis,
you disgraced yourself.
You fell from the womb ass first
with a blue cast to your complexion
and you will meet death
in a gauche accident
on the golf course, or in the bathtub,
or just croak naturally in a bed somewhere,
soiling it,
discombobulated,
bumbling into eternity
with perfect ineptitude.
On the birth of his son
By Su Tung-po (Su Shih)
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister.
Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley
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