Remember how I stepped up to participate in PSVL's Antinoan poem-a-month challenge? Well, here (finally!) is my poem for February. It's written in a form of my own which I call a trickling epic, an epic of dripdrops. I'm still not certain about my mastery of meter, so I would absolutely love it if any readers of mine would be willing to go through it and scan it and show me their work! Trickling epics, epics of dripdrops, owe much to Roman heroic/epic verse, Sancta Emily Dickinson, Japanese senryu, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
May this trickling epic, this epic of dripdrops, bring pleasure to you and to the great god Antinous to whom it is dedicated! VSLM
February
Or: It Only Took Me Eight Years to Learn This
Abraham explained, “Allah has said,
“Your calling my name is My reply.
Your longing for Me is My message to you.
All your attempts to reach Me
Are in reality My attempts to reach you.
Your fear and love are a noose to catch Me.
In the silence surrounding every call of “Allah”
Waits a thousand replies of “Here I am.”
~ Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Muse: does this wet month make clean?
dreams take fevers with sweat-flow?
godboy quotes words whirling Jalāl ad-Dīn
Rūmī once wrote -- no!
tumbling from
Rome-kissed mouth were the bless'd words
quick scribes scribbled like catching
blossoms which burst Spring flood from my back (herds
genital) -- names sing
we of those
meeting here -- life-price love-balms --
three come (Rumi, Allah, Shams) --
friends of Antinous join with few qualms --
palms to belov'd palms --
lips drum --
steps into Crossroads of Gods sound: branch thin
breaking on glad skin --
thorn'd rose
teaching me Pride -- new smiles, shared --
two feet fall when I take step:
rite made Lover, Belovéd, and curl-haired
god out of me -- yep,
hate's crumb:
eaten by mouth's teeth's tongue's werq
throat's gut's stomach's digestion,
broken down, built into nightsoil (rich murk).
out of the question:
keep on as
I had before. learn now, qween,
prayer's rule: loving myself means
same skill: loving Antinous, Nile's teen.
sweat is how you'll clean --
labor is
skin's saltnectar and, fragrant, its blooms smell --
students all, each cell
copied has
words from my mouth switchstruck sung
painpraise give all my names -- write
whirl-fast -- Scribe of the Secret's own red lung
(faster than hands might
copy it)
speaks: loud Rumi am I now
I (Shams), head unremoved, broad
voic'd tell: I have become, too, Allah. Thou
beautiful boy god,
darling his
(Caesar's) in death-dim inn room
work'd spell, stepp'd up to make tomb
kind -- I, worshipper, bride of myself, groom
now, for it's time: bloom!
Rome-lit
god taught: you I do love, if my
Self can I love. I
must dare
dream: learned Lib'ration's coy trait --
now what homework will come next?
learn (keen, sweet me) to Navigate
mysteries' new text --
once bit,
now twice eager to clasp boy
(god) back home to my breast -- joy
bursts forth -- glee's gleam comes to Initiates
who, like ol' doomed Troy,
ask "where?"
No comments:
Post a Comment