“…It’s almost time for the public announcement. I won’t deny I’m excited: I’ve been hanging around in the background of my own story for too long, and although it’s still a little while before I can take over, it’s nice to get a look in. So, with a sense of high expectation, I follow the pointing finger in the sky and look down on my parents’ neighborhood, upon bicycles, upon street-vendors touting roasted gram in twists of paper, upon the hip-jutting, hand-holding street loafers, upon flying scraps of paper and little clustered whirlwinds of flies around the sweetmeat stalls…all of it foreshortened by my high-in-the-sky point of view…”

- Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children

“…Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts…” -Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

I am beginning to start wondering about a term that is used to describe the Persian poet Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) which is “…an ecstatic…” I wonder how close an ‘ecstatic’ energy from the 13th Century compares to what we have been taught to recognize in the 21st cent. as ‘divine’, which for me is close to
an ‘inspired’ artistic state, and fits within a more generally philosophical term a.k.a. the ‘transcendental.’

http://www.khamush.com/daily.htm

DAILY POEMS FROM RUMI

I arrived once again, like the spring breeze;
I rose like the sun visible to all.
I am the Sun in mid-summer, contrary to the old season;
I have brought liveliness and joy to gardens.
A thousand ring doves are searching for me in their songs.
A thousand nightingales and parrots are flying in my directions.
The news of my arrival reached the fish in the sea;
The ferment of the sea created a thousand waves.

(Divan 1140:1-4)

from fences and valleys to reclaiming my breath,
as it wafts towards plush, patiently, present
carefully dissolving my aches along a 20 block walk through Times Square
in this city that has ceased to be a center
A phrase I have heard more than once
and the footsteps that bring me to a gateway,
along a groove that opened a tin box of teas
with men that hold grapes above my lips and lie with me as I eat them
Steering desire into something that doesn’t bruise my skin and scuff my heart
as I warm my hands with a state that rises daily, like the sun

2008 litl d

Thrown up against the dying end of heaven
Beating with the zero of my blood
Home to see my baby coming home
Falling like a stone or like a dove

Hard as any stone brought down in wishes
Bright as any flower made to bloom and blaze and
Falling to the ground like China dishes
Our love is only teaching us to fall

And I fall to you
Down from here
Like a shadow thrown
Love the bluest blade
Cuts deepest from the dark
Of all we own

Balanced on a sliver shot through the blacking
Hung up as if by God’s unreckoned string
Brave enough for leaving brave enough
For coming home with what my tiny heart can bring

And I kissed onto the concrete from out of dreaming
Pulled the ground against me like a shroud
Fevered as a child my body burning
Burning just to lay your body down

And I fall to you
Down from here
Like a shadow thrown
Love the bluest blade
Cuts deepest from the dark
Of all we own

2004 Jeffrey Foucalt

i am sitting at my laptop, thinking of all the good times i had when i was in THE Land of Five rivers. (PUNJAB). My mind was an emotional turmoil. i wanted to scream as loud as i possibly could to let out all these strange thoughts that were clogging my head and keeping me from thinking straight. I couldn’t scream though because……. i guess one scream just wont help me clear out my mind. So i turn to “you-tube” in an attempt to find something, anything that will help me smile or calm my thoughts down. Bingo!! i found a way, and that way is QAWALI, By Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The greatest qawali singer to have ever walked this planet. Listening to his songs brought a feeling of warmth to my heart and tears to my eyes. His voice is nothing but pure magic. “ishq da rutba ishq hi jane” only LOVE knows the ways of LOVE.

“…There’s no more room for angels
To dance or even stand
Upon this pin entangled
Bleeding sugar from our hands…”

“…astrophysicists say that we are made of old stars from the time of the Big Bang…”

“…When I look at my hand, I know that I am made of old stars
I am a very tiny part of a vast universe…”

“…reality is full of evidence of the universe’s origins and the beginning of time…”

“…There’s no more room for angels
To dance or even stand
Upon this pin entangled
Bleeding sugar from our hands…”

the young’s attention spans are short and my heart is young for sure

so many shapes of light so many times
shadows forming tents I never found
awakened flip books thumbing a pile of chicks
dandelion tufts before they are blown away
to seed the ground for spring

love is fierce and quick to fly
an openness that old stars bring
lasting with a longing
enjoying falling even if the fall is free
it brings me to the universe where desire gives me
a test of my new found bravery

“…There’s no more room for angels
To dance or even stand
Upon this pin entangled
Bleeding sugar from our hands…”

I am made of old stars

Diane Ludin 2008
with remix of bits of from ‘stripping cane’ by Jeffrey Foucault and an interview with Dorothea Rockburn.

The release of atomic power has changed
These shells contain a wish that has yet to be determined.
these shells have been carefully carried from my sister’s ocean.
One side pale and fastened with its crumbling past
The other side perfect and settled with an exemplary emptiness

they are too tiny to contain the sound of my sisters ocean but
they can be aliases to stories of the joy fed by peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
they are shortcuts to the sanctuaries I have been building for generations to come

The change in atomic power will be with words that secure a course to a softer humanity,
that overcome the rage of an unhappy father whisking past the memory of flames in a child’s eyes as she watched her house burn alone, in the middle of the night

That very same atomic change is steady with the power your body and history offers
It lies in the dreams that welcome the becoming of such a simply, joyful man as fully as my heart has…

This atomic change looks like the phoenix in my minds eye that arises out of the ashes
with wings that fill my sails as I address my life changes
steering towards the release of atomic power that yields a new humanity.

Diane Ludin 2008