Ishq

My poems deal with the universal language of mystical love poetry, and several have already been translated into Arabic, for they draw on both Christian, Indian Bhakti, and Sufi traditions.

Because your sighs have fermented my blood

I need no wine.

My name on your lips is the longest Sura.

I begin the Night Journey in your eyes

toward a wild desert fragrance.

The only revelation is my face

reflected in your gaze.

Keep this window open.

Do not turn your emptiness to glass

lest you profane the Prophet

and make seeing an eye again.

When I do not gaze you,

my eye is an idol.

Even the thought of the Beloved is an idol

without the Beloved's kiss.

Therefor, ignore the picture in your skull:

like a lover's map, it was sketched by trembling.

Look instead to grounded seeds, and in them

the hollow before conception

where zero became two

in the bright space of unknowing.

We are each others' search

for what's between mirrors,

that wilderness of purity.

You, the last veil of my desire

and I, the veil within that,

translucent, blue, the color of a yearning sky.

Spin quickly now before the Other vanishes

so we may catch God at the center of whirling.

You lit me on the wick of your eye:

there I danced as seeing.

From the golden oil in my bones, I kindled you,

a soul for my soul, gushing through my hollow places

and my wounds.

Anoint me now! Drip down this broken necklace

of seven dangling pearls.

From throat to thigh, unite the sea and setting sun.

Of purple curtains in the King's chamber we may speak,

but never of what happens on the other side!

When dawn comes, we'll whisper

which of us was stillness, which the dancer.