Radicalized poet Podcast: Recent Episodes
Bill Gannett
We are crying to our lord and master without peer:all but his long curly hair is small and cheap beer.
We have lit a candle to his blazing presence,and written many a ghazal about his essence.
We can’t help but sob a big puddle yet again:whatever we have to say ruins paper and pen!
We have nothing at all to say that can exalt him;our best praise bumps along like a bloody hymn.
We mumble to find a phrase that doesn’t quite snarl;it turns out our loving is nothing but a quarrel!
We would shut up and forget all about such love-if we didn’t think someone else deserved a shove!
To be sure, Darvish is inspired by two buck chuck;but we have to say, all but the beloved bloody sucks!
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Green grows the heart’s longing, vines on fireBreathing your name in love’s ascending gyre.
Green grows the longing heart skyward, brightTongues of flame praising the sweet Word of light.
Your name, your bright name is our dawn laughterThat rises and resounds to announce the Master.
Starlight dreams its way into sleeping stone,Becomes the gold hammered into your throne.
The car that carries you across the skySings your bright name of mercy as it flies.
Meher is light spilling infinite blissOn all galaxies throughout the universe.
The tangle of wild roses in Darvish’s heartHave bloodied him with thorn and graceful art.
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Where the way and where the path that arrives at your feet?Open the door and open the heart that we abide in love street.
We have heard, no man has increased his height by taking thought;We have heard, silence is genius that can never be taught.
The sun rises, the sun sets, and the mind whirls ’round and ’round;And my beloved glides through the night, full, without a sound.
I hold out my empty skull as a wine bowl for her to fill;Maybe, maybe this raging will be drowned, and become still.
But by the beloved’s glance, the door to del is slammed shut;the heart will never reveal spirit, but chase some tawdry slut.
Master, fill the crystal skull with wine that opens the doorand ushers me to regale you, like a drunk, on the floor.
Darvish’s whining for a drink has become indiscreet;all his pounding has yet to open the door to love street.
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The Shiva lingam is the ancient Indian representation of God’s creativity. It is the basis for Shaivite religious worship. It represents Shiva’s divine dick. Now, this is not at all embarrassing to the Indian spiritual mind. God, of course, must have a dick. After all, where did man get his dick, if not from God?
Now, in keeping with all things modern, especially in the fag end of the Kali Yuga, the symbolism has been reversed and weaponized. The phallic rocket and missile have come to denote the acme of man’s capacity for- not creativity, but destruction. Infinite destruction, in fact, as in thermonuclear destruction.
Thus, modern man apes God: Civilized, rational, completely intelligent man, apes God.
Man’s dick has come to represent the possibility of global annihilation. In other words, man’s dick has become spiritually impotent and completely destructive instead of a creative instrument for the expression of God’s will.
Yet, world population has increased from an historic average of 200 million to almost 8 billion, in little over 200 years, in celebration of the end of the Kali Yuga. Indeed, man’s dick has been ever so busy mimicking God’s creativity that it has been exalted as an all powerful rocket that will first destroy the Earth, and then allow for our modern priests to escape to the heavens.
Wow! What an almighty dick!
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The thirty raucous birdsin search of wise Simorgh,wandered mountain and valleyto sing with single tongue.
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The Prophet smiles at all the warring tribes,even though ridiculed by their many jibes.
Christ laughs at the crown of thorns on his head:because of Mercy, he has only grace to shed.
Majnun cried and cried for his lost Layla,and became perfect in mad love’s leela.
Francesco, the greatest saint in historybecame the Word through holy poetry.
The Eternal Living Ancient One is nowthe One in our hearts to whom we bow.
All the Prophets and Masters of the pastdefer to the present Avatar, back at last.
This-time Savior is full of such robust humor,that Darvish finds his old forms stale rumor.
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How the world cries for pie-in-the-sky and stellar bliss,but no heaven or star ship can match the Friend’s kiss.
God high in the empyrean is the distant father-deaf and dumb until embraced as our very brother.
We have forgotten that God walks the earth as a man,his body an infinite mercy revealing his plan.
He is the brother and Friend who attracts his companionsto share in the work that is his daily crucifixion.
We have put him back in the sky, quoting some tired bookand invented rockets to go have an inquiring look.
The prophets and masters are like the stars at night-beyond measure, showering grace upon man’s sight.
Darvish loves Meher whose name means mercy and Sun,whose friendship declares to the universe, we are One.
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I have a dream of hoof beats pounding in the air,a horse with wings and sword that defeats despair.
The hoof beat and proud neigh of my lord and master-my heart jumps a beat, then gallops even faster!
White Kalki is coming to remove filth and ignorance,and truth and justice all across the earth dispense.
Tenth in line of saviors for this Kali Yuga age,the purity of truth is his compassionate rage.
Kalki has come to re-establish basic honesty;what now passes for such is perfect travesty.
Corporate Big Fist has his hand in every humble pie:we have become devoted to the greed of our own lies.
The White Horse avatar has come to fulfill our dreams;Darvish longs to ride along heart’s living stream.
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Too late, too bad, all is lost:Big Fist is angry and dissed. But love rises and exclaimsTyranny falls before his Name.
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The wind of the Word arrivesIn silence, and wakes the rose.Petals tremble, blush and laughWith joy, and sweet love disclose.
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In America, the voice of the rich is loud and clear-In this land of the almighty dollar, worship fear!
The gilded beast commands our lives with suavity:We praise his brightness with cultured depravity.
That we would become devoted to naked greedIs no wonder. We ate the apple that cursed our seed.
Now our shame is the three piece corporate suit.It has robbed our integrity and labor’s honest fruit.
The serpent coiled in the tree whispers: “dividend”.This is what rationalizes heinous crime without end.
The corporation is a wondrous tit full of lucre,That the CEO sucks from the exiled worker.
Darvish longs for the return of “Small is Beautiful”.The beast is wounded, and such a huge, ugly idol!
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We hunger for the shards of light flashing from your eye;May they wound our dark mind with brilliance until we die!
Who, if we cried, would hear us among the many gods?The busy deities are such dull and slow-thinking clods.
One moment of your presence removes all spiritual doubt:The sons and daughters of man stand and your praises shout!
We have no objection to the pious praying for us-We are the proud scions of light illuminating dust!
Our lord and master is the beloved of lover’s lane;We offer at his lovely feet all of our burning pain.
The candle flickering in the altar’s niche, is our spiritRising and prostrating with each inspired love-lyric.
Darvish has no thought or feeling left to shape into song:The candle’s breath expires, and the flame to the Friend belongs.
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The Word was born to reveal love’s Silence,And heal the tyrannical mind of violence.
The Ancient One came in the black of night;By dawn, he was lost to our longing sight.
He was abandoned on that hill of pain,Left for the wind to share his sighs of pain.
One held by his open arms would not leave;She kept him company as did the thieves.
Love washed his body and hid him away:He would rise in her arms on the third day.
The Roman cross consumed his memory,But the Christ lived to gainsay history.
Darvish says the Word is wondrous mercy,That heals the mind of infinite cruelty.
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In the beginning, God was sleeping and heaved a sighThat breathed me into being with the gasp of my first cry:
I am born as gas! And thus began my cosmic journey-To suffer all form in time, and from all form in time be free.
Gas is nothing but space, and without boundary;To establish identity, however, this is a quandary.
I fell in love with dull rock and all its many edges;I hugged myself intensely down through the ages.
At last, my self-regard wore away to reveal some light;I became shiny metal- don’t think this advance was slight!
After millions of years, and I had become pure gold,I longed to reach for the Sun as a puddle of mold.
This was more than brilliant, you see, because as vegetable,I could breathe and twitch a bit, and become more colorful.
After eons as all kinds of plants, I still longed to move.As a worm inching about, I found, I had lots to prove.
In short, my life as a reptile was rather cold and snaky:I never had the slightest regard for my dinner’s plea!
But when I became a fish, I learned how to swim,Although the deep dark depths of ocean got pretty dim.
At last, after I had become an acrobatic dolphin,I yearned to get my wings, and began to start flying.
Ages after ages flew by as this and that kind of bird:I got really tired of basically the same aerial mood.
Then, I began to grunt and discovered animal bliss;I soon fell in love with my sharp, ferocious kiss.
Ages crawled, then clambered, pranced and raced by;At last I was a chimpanzee, gesticulating with my cries.
Don’t laugh- I was about to master the syllable:After many millions of years, I would start to babble!
O happy day, when I first found out about human speech-I could draw upon all I had learned, and begin to teach.
Darvish, shut your mouth- you’re not quite believable.Please fall at the feet of the dear Master, most lovable!
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The path to the beloved Master in love streetends with song rising in praise of his lotus feet.
We know we have arrived when the tune of our songresounds in our hearts like a divine palace gong.
It was your whim at first that turned star into stoneand with a billion year evolved mind into a rune.
Now the articulate question of “who am I”grinds for another billion year until mind dies.
The path of song brings us back to the state of dustthat falls and rests on your feet in loving trust.
We will then at last forever sing your bright nameas a star in heaven that shouts your eternal fame.
O Darvish, our journey is vast and without enduntil our song expires in praise of the Friend.
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The ocean way is a trackless path with no shore,An infinite horizon where the mind is insecure.
All our desperate search for stable identityVomits with longing for permanent solidity.
Such immensity of rolling water and salty airGives rise to rich and redolent black despair.
There is no remedy but to die. Long to dieTo every thought, desire and nauseating lie!
Love is all dying to precious posturing beforeThe pitiless sky, and the ocean’s angry roar.
Our only Friend is to trust in our oblivion:By grace, the Mind will drown in pure elation.
Darvish retches with style as proved by his verse.No one else writes ghazals so dark- and humorous!
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The darkening blue of failing light brightens the mind-We lift our eyes to a beauty that doesn’t blind.
The moon saves us from the wicked brilliance of day;Our mood shifts to the muted light of shadow play.
The beloved has become fully agreeable;Her face is now magnificently visible.
She will wink and flirt all the way to early dawn;God save us from any kind of impudent yawn!
The long, cool night will be full of delightful play-You ask about tomorrow? Well, let come what may!
Darvish cries out with a sharp stab of anxiety;His flushed face fears an onset of sobriety.
As her pale face and black curls fade from sight,The early dawn explodes with burning shards of light!
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We have become superb robots of base desire;Our conditioned thinking is machine inspired!
We are most obedient to depraved craving;The pure and simple is no longer worth saving.
We are more enthralled by a neon Vegas choir,Than we are by the simple worship of holy fire.
Nature used to be a direct analogy for God;The elements now are no more than a silly fad.
Let’s applaud the spectacular ongoing regress,Of the sickness we unfortunately call progress.
We must be drunk for us to so badly stumble;We cry out in pain as the world starts to crumble.
Darvish, the lord and master suffers beyond belief;His infinite love and mercy will bring us relief.
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I am pleased to be ranked with the great poets of old;I can nod with the best of them, even Homer I’m told.
I jingle some of my best verse when in the beyond state-rarely does a poet receive such a gift as his fate!
Believe me, snoring has it’s own special rhythmic genius:it has a duration that changes brilliantly when cursed.
In fact, I do all my best thinking when fast asleep;my ideas become vast, profound and quite deep!
The dawn’s cold breeze slapped my face, and I woke with a start;I became confused and stuttered, then gave out a big shout!
Why, I had nothing to say- my mind was completely blank!And I had no one and nothing except myself to thank!
Enough! Darvish, your snoring has been most entertaining;but now your sleepwalking has started me complaining!
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Congealed sanskaras gyre into the timeless now:Each breath contains all of time in the eternal Tao.
The dark clamor of unlived desire chokes my throat,And twists and subverts song of pure and golden note.
I lean and loaf by bubbling spring and envy observesHow water caresses stone, earth and grass with verve.
The frozen past that melts in the present to reveal fate,Is only altered by the fire of love that destroys hate.
Where my love and where the days lost in her hair?Tears blind me to all except dark lonely despair.
This dance in which the lost partner can’t be found,Makes me whirl to a timeless beat round and round.
Darvish breathes the Friend’s name with each breath,And courts the lovely grace of the mind’s blessed death.
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I long to lose all my senses in your thick curly hair;what bliss to be lost in scented curls so rich and rare!
I long to lose my breath in lips of eternal promise-no death can rival the heaven of your supernal kiss.
How to find the immaculate purity of my own being;how to see the eye which is the source of all seeing?
These eyes of stone sunken in sockets will turn to dustthousands of times before the heart surrenders in trust.
No pain grinds so fine -and slowly, as the Desire-Mind.Where is that grace that bestows sight to the Heart-blind?
I forget everything to run my fingers through your hair-what joy to caress my life back from dull-blind despair!
Darvish has lost all his good sense in hopeless desirefor the Friend. His eyes of stone flicker with cold fire.
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The lover longs for the beloved in flesh and blood;love is never so loving as the beloved’s own bod.
Your absence is a tease we would rather live without;but for your presence, we suffer separation’s doubt!
Our master does not live in some gilded picture book,but in the light of his eyes which animates each look.
There are many things we should forsake- like Big Fist;we know that by your sovereign purity alone, we exist!
The cruelty we suffer at the hand of corporate greed,is removed when we surrender at your feet all need.
Last night, I found the bottle to renew my oath again:that love for love’s sake alone removes all bitter pain.
The day will return when I find myself on love street,when Darvish’s longing and the beloved once again meet.
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We long to drown in the loud sounding sea;We long to swallow our pathetic pleas.
Help us find the courage of our convictionsto surrender the last of our lousy fictions.
Master, give us the talent to cut our throatsinging your praise with a graceful last note.
Without your help, how can we ever die?Without your complicity, how can we try!
Please don’t abandon us to our own hate;Please destroy this mind before it’s too late!
We have no more sincere wish than to meetour end by your own hand, at your own feet!
Darvish for all time has one bitter regret:That but for grace he can’t himself forget!
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The black snake winds around the Missouriand chokes the Sioux Nation with misery.
Black venom slithers across sacred land,but Water Protectors make a last stand.
Bullets and burning gas- grenades explode;Big Fist shoots water canon in bitter cold.
Protectors hold fast, covered with red ice:Love is strong medicine against avarice.
The treaties lie broken like twisted bodieswhose spirits rise in strong and pure cries.
The Big White Chief living in Washington-has his heart gone black with forked tongue?
Darvish sings to the wind: carry my songto those to whom truth and courage belong.
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The vigor of youth allures many to an early death;much better to surrender all illusion with each breath.
Iskandar’s teacher was from the brilliant academy;but desire goaded him on to ludicrous victory.
Such dominion over foreign lands is risky at best;the defeated subject hates rulers of distant conquest.
This young nation worships the myth of class freedom,having sought to keep half the world in financial serfdom.
Now corporate big fist pursues profit above all else:the quarterly dividend has been supremely blessed!
Sometimes reckless youth longs to choke on puerile desire,and on its own suffocating and tragic end conspire.
The foolish never believe that one day they will die;Darvish must remember to always renounce me and my.
notes: brilliant academy= Plato’s academy, with Aristotleas his successor, who tutored Alexander the Great (Iskandar).
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When were we ever drunk but with his lovely name-our sobriety only deserves your righteous blame.
We are indignant with all the usual double thinks-we remain true to our singular bootleg drink.
We know about prohibition, how it made Big Fist rich,and how priest hoarded spirit, to make church a b***h.
Uncork the bottle, and our wet lips will proclaim,there is no god but god, and drink is his real name!
We have nothing more to say to the good preacher,he also is one of god’s dear and dumb creatures.
Let him growl on and on about bad behavior,the bottle’s gurgling speech is our blessed savior.
Darvish was partying all day and far into the night;by dawn, his flushed face was radiant with pure light.
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Step after step we track you searching for some sign;The salt of our tears burns our throat as your sweet wine.
We bear your living presence in our longing heart-But your curls and dancing eyes, we can’t live without!
Farhad dug through rock to one day find his Shireen;We breathe your name in hope that beauty’s form be seen.
Pale dawn broke and washed the eyes with shards of lightWith the promise to blind desire to all but your sight.
We know we must renounce the lie of our own fiction;We know we must die to our every conception.
The Friend’s warm hand will reach out and touch ours,When breath strings his name into a garland of flowers.
With each step Darvish finds a clue in the wise earth;Breathing, he longs to die and in his tears find rebirth.
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Last night the rose blushed in scarlet hue, but todayshe doesn’t know me- she has nothing at all to say .
Love was so brilliant at first, her sweat radiantperfume that filled my life, her wet lips all deft play.
Her lips were all mine, my mind beyond all thoughtof today, and the tsunami of tears’ waves’ way.
That I held you in tight embrace was most lovely,but now, now I am gasping with the sea’s salt spray.
What tale would more increase my rival’s great delightthan this, that my rose is furled in the spring of May?
Get lost, all of you, voyeurs of my empty arms-I have nothing at all but despair to display!
Listen to Darvish, how he sings his beautiful songto the Silent love who has nothing, nothing to say!
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I am the slave of the Perfect Master who is without birth;I am devoted to the Friend of joyous and robust mirth.
Only the saint remembers the dull pain of sleeping stone-the world snarls and gnashes over raw and bloody bone.
By grace of His glance, and millions of hungry lives,the soul leaves the beast-cage and at man-form arrives.
Now he snarls but mostly whines with articulate speech;he walks on two legs and with vanity begins to preach.
O the pride of man as he imagines that he now can think,when he has only just realized that his turd in fact stinks.
Now begins the long journey of grinding mind back to dust,and of submitting to God as Beauty in rapt, loving trust.
Darvish has fallen in love with the Master of Masters,whose divine sense of humor transfigures all disasters.
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Big Fist and the gods of doublethink command our praise;we have become devoted to flag waving all our days.
The corporation now wears a crown as a religious right,with the grasping public gasping with spiritual malaise.
How did we come to live upside down in a garbage can;how come to cherish trash as treasure in such a daze?
Shock and Awe has so concussed us with patriotism,we drool our anthem in the smoky brain’s dull haze.
Long live the divine king of blind and naked aggression;long live the royal greed of Democracy’s cannon blaze!
Darvish, as the fireworks of misbegotten zeal explode,the Silence of love prepares to break and bless our ways.
Yes, the wrath of God Man’s Silence will soon break the spellof the noise of doublethink, and mend and bless our ways.
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Hi-Po the hippo was abandoned as a baby;Mr Hippo became his unwitting daddy.
Mrs Hippo yearned to keep the baby boyLeft on their doorstep, but he wanted no such joy.
This cute baby hippo inspired his decisionThat little boys belong at the Police Station!
But on the way there, Hi-Po began to kick and scream;Curious hippos wondered, why is Mr. Hippo so mean?
Police began to chase the furious Mr Hippo,Now running with the basket holding Hi-Po.
Mr Hippo got arrested for kidnapping;But the unhappy baby was kicking and crying.
The inquiring Captain could not hear himself think;He ordered the baby coddled, and poured a drink.
No one could make the baby shut up, not evenMrs Hippo who confirmed her husband’s Reason.
Until the devil was placed in Mr Hippo’s arms,And became an angel by his musical charm.
Darvish heard he brought home the hippo baby,And a rocking horse, red wagon, ball and puppy.
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Dark is the night until your rising faceDispels this blackness with joyous grace.Long have we waited for you as the starsWheel by, at last your rosy cheeks to kiss.
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The master has said most of the world will perish;Don’t let this bamboozle you, but his name cherish.
Earth, millions and millions of times passes awayInto nothing; But the mind survives gross decay.
And takes birth again and again a billion timeuntil mind and soul become one and the same.
When the mind drowns in the ocean of divine soul,mind is destroyed at last, and God becomes the goal.
Only love survives times great shifts with elegance:Stone dreams of animal longing for human embrace.
When you breathe your last, remember the beloved;All other desire is but tepid and insipid.
Darvish says the world is a place to forge longingfor the Master’s name with poetry and singing.
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Mary carries the Word within her womb to safety-soon the world will be delivered from captivity.
Giddi-up donkey, through the wind and rain and snow.A wondrous Christ-child’s cry yearns to grace bestow!
The wandering Stars combine luminous astral virtuesto mirror the Ancient One’s holy radiant nature.
All the doors that close in Joseph and Mary’s facelead to the manger for Nature’s open embrace.
The Magi come bearing gifts for the King of Kings,whose beauty is the glory that inspires men to sing.
Christ is the promise that releases prayer in the heart,by which Darvish is free from the tyranny of thought.
Giddi-up donkey, through the wind and rain and snow:the heavens weep in joy for Man and Earth below!
line in italics by Robert Rouse.
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The Ancient One has come again with his long curly hair,With nothing but his message of divine love to declare.
Baba’s John was the aged fakir with bright rosy cheek;She gave him the kiss that tore away his veil, so to speak.
Merwan was drowned in the ocean of such infinite bliss,He would bang his head on stone to regain gross consciousness.
He would wrap his bruised head with a turban for a bandage,To conceal the agony that he was now Love’s hostage.
His dinner he would take to his room and hide in a drawer,Until his quick mother Shireen found it with an uproar!
The Yogi-King wrapped in a burlap rag threw the VajraThat bestowed the Knowledge of his fate as Avatara.
Yes, Darvish sings his ghazal of joy on this Christmas morn:The Ancient One with long curly hair has again been born!
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I long to visit the cool Arctic before it meltsAway in a heat wave that inspires fascist dolts.
The end of the world is coming faster than you thinkIn a flood of stupidity that will drown the quick.
Unless you can learn the Irish heel and toe it,And drink from the crystal cup of the beloved.
Aye, we can dance and sing as the world retires,And celebrate the sweet song that never expires.
Let us the people sing a song of longing loveFor the beauty that endures as the world dissolves.
Love will rise and sing as flowers of pure libertyFrom the heat of heartless and fascist tyranny.
When tears of ice at last flow down Darvish’s face,The Master will bless his song with coolest grace.
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From dawn to dusk the earth is weeping tears of iceFor the denial of the Prophet’s suffering for all of us.
From dawn to dusk the earth is burning in shameThat the now-Christ remains unknown- without name.
Now is the anguish of earth that the Ancient OneWalks upon her breast, but is shunned by everyone.
Now is the anguish that those who accepted himHave for a golden calf sold- and rejected him.
O the earth weeps and the earth burns for all our sinsThat we have not embraced and surrendered to him.
We will walk and walk through this water and fireUntil in our remembrance at his feet we expire.
Darvish sings a song that only few can hear;It is a song of fire and ice in a diamond tear.
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We walk and walk with the friend by our sideand the pain of our love and longing hide.
We have no voice to be joyful aboutbut your silence to nourish as our lot.
The flame of love lit a fire in our heartwhich has come to wholly define our art.
Like sandalwood, we place your name in fireand your fragrance be all that we desire.
We have no hope but the promise of painand your remembrance again and again.
We have no where to go and nothing to sayin this wandering; This is how we pray.
Darvish has this complaint about the friend:He is always present, but never found.
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The problem with our present Age is that it has lost all bearings. Our Machine Age, aka the fag end of the Kali Yuga, is so infatuated with the idea of Progress that it has obliterated all reference to what we can call primordial integrity.
The four Ages in both Greek and Indian cosmological thought reference a progressive degradation of spiritual possibility. The Golden Age degrades into the Silver, then the Bronze and finally the Iron Age. We are now in the late Iron Age, and have no cogent memory of the previous Ages. It’s as if they never existed. In fact, according to the perverted logic of the Iron Age, things have never been better. The late Iron Age or the Machine Age has defined itself as the Age of Progress, which is the absolute inversion of spiritual fact.
People commonly think that the present age represents the climax of development over many thousands of years. This has everything to do with the exaltation of technology, which represents power. People commonly think that power represents development. People commonly think that the telephone, for example, represents an advancement over previous means of communication. Early man, it is stated, could only grunt his thoughts- let alone articulate them. But modern man can not only articulate his thoughts, but he can transmit them over vast distances via the power of technology. Modern man is thus an obviously superior being.
This framing of the evolution of man as a progressive development over time has been completely seductive. Practically everyone believes it. Only crazy people believe that the past represents anything other than an anticipation of our present development: man has never been so smart and never so capable as he is today.
Science has become the religion of the Machine Age. Science is defined as the continuously advanced investigation of the universe; we know more and more over time about who and what we are. But in fact, we know less and less. Human understanding develops a more and more abstracted knowledge of the universe which is illustrated by the advancing power of technology. The power of technology comes to define an increasingly impoverished knowledge of man as spirit.
We live in a time in which the advancement of analytical thought as illustrated in science and technology defines the supreme development of man. This very development of science and technology which defines Progress is of course destroying the planet. Our exalted God, the idol of Progress, is strangulating us. But none can believe that this is really happening. Most people believe we will invent a solution to outwit impending catastrophe. Most people believe we are way too smart to commit global ecocide and suicide. Most people believe that Progress will not fail us.
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The well of remembrance draws not from memory,but from the fount of Silence that is creativity.
Do you remember, do you forget, the stillness of roseunfolding? Such is how the longing spirit boldly grows.
Bolbol, singing from the divan’s ancient pristine page–your song is always singing from its timeless cage!
I see Hafez in the Garden’s corner, emerald tendrilstwining his tunic richly with brocade of ruby frills.
Lost to all in flashing verdant green, and widening red,the Poet’s smile reveals laughter from beyond the dead.
Sing Hafez, sing again the song that destroys time. Singme awake with the love that has forever crowned you King.
O Darvish, how you cry with the pain left by sharp thorn,which has written your song in blood, and left you forlorn.
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At dawn, when Khosrow of the east planted his flag in the hills,My friend tapped on the door of the hopeful with the hand of mercy.
With the dawn, the sun of heaven became luminous,And then rose and laughed brightly at all vainglory.
Last night, when the beloved rose among us to dance,He loosened his curly hair to strike his lovers’ breasts.
With heart’s blood, I washed my hands at once of all virtueWhen his wine-filled glance called the sober to prayer.
What sword taught his heart this practice of deceit,That when first drawn, the watchmen of night were struck!
The poor heart fancied a horseman, who disappeared;O lord, protect it from the love of an army of riders!
For the life and color of his cheek, what blood and soul we gave;When hand first drew his form, the life of lovers was effaced.
By my woolen cloak, how might I secure the cruel beloved?The one whose eyelashes like daggers pierce and shred me!
We regard the rolling dice of the shah’s success and prosperity-Grant the heart’s desire of Hafez, who reads the fortune of the rich.
King of kings Muzaffar, defender of faith and kingdom,Whose flood of generosity has mocked the spring rains;
From that hour when, by his hand, the wine cup was ennobled,Our age drinks the cup of joy to the life of wine-lovers.
Victory flashed from his head-severing sword on that dayWhen, like the star-burning sun, he alone cut down hundreds.
By god’s grace, my heart-prayer is for his lasting life and kingdom,even as heaven has minted this royal coin in the world of time.
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O men of heart- for God’s sake, I’m losing it-this pain of having the hidden secret revealed!
We are a ship broken and beaten: rise up good wind-may we see again our familiar friend of old!
For ten days heaven’s mercy is story and magic;O friend, count as a great boon kindness toward friends!
Last night the nightingale sang for our circle of rose and wine-stagger to your feet, you drunks, and drink the morning glass!
A bowl of wine is Alexander’s mirror. Look-that you may see the affairs of Dara’s kingdom!
O Lord of grace, in gratitude for your well-being,inquire each day of the helpless dervish.
The comfort of the two worlds lies in these two sayings:to friends kindness, and to enemies civility.
I was not allowed to enter the street of good repute;if you don’t approve- go try and re-write my fate!
The daughter of the bitter grape called the mother of evil,is more sweet and pleasant to us than the kisses of virgins.
In a tight-fisted time, seek pleasure and drunkenness-for the alchemy of life can make a beggar a king!
The graceful speakers of Persian are the givers of life-saqi- bestow the good news on the old men of Fars!
Hafez did not himself wear this wine stained cloak;O sheik of pure, starched gown- please do forgive us!
notes: Alexander and Dara= ancient Greek & Persian kings.kisses of virgins= such attentions await the faithful in heaven.
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Rama draws back his bow and lets go his arrow;O were it my Soul liberated from life’s sorrow!
I long to incur that blessing full of such wrathThat my valiant death kisses his feet with mirth.
Ravana was a b*d after my own black heart;He cut a deal with Mercy that was wholly art:
The Demon-King stole Rama’s beloved SitaTo die by his hand with the gift of Amrita!
O lucky Rakshasa to have deserved the graceTo be killed by the King of the Ikshvaku race!
Tonight the Lord returns with radiant SitaTo the immense happiness of all Ayodhya.
The candle in Darvish’s heart weeps these tearsOf joy that Rama has vanquished Sita’s fears.
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There are few things about which we are more certain:love has always guided us from behind the curtain.
Love it was that sang its song on that very first day,when the sea delivered us with our cry for a refrain.
We have found out that one kiss can never be enough:we complain as your lips vanish- this was not the bargain!
We are never so inspired as by our own hunger;and never so ardent as when searching for your lane.
Our strategy must be to somehow surrender our loss-there is no way to win this struggle for love’s gain!
The more we long for you, the further away you recede;crazy does not begin to describe the heart’s pain.
Darvish is desperate and cries out for help- he is drowning:your lips have become the shores of a vast, mighty ocean!
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Green grows the heart’s longing, vines on fireBreathing your name in love’s ascending gyre.
Green grows the longing heart skyward, brightTongues of flame praising the sweet Word of light.
Your name, your bright name is our dawn laughterThat rises and resounds to announce the Master.
Starlight dreams its way into sleeping stone,Becomes the gold hammered into your throne.
The car that carries you across the skySings your bright name of mercy as it flies.
Meher is light spilling infinite blissOn all galaxies throughout the universe.
The tangle of wild roses in Darvish’s heartHave bloodied him with thorn and graceful art.
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However old, heart worn and feeble I’ve become,Whenever I think of you, I again become young.
Thank God, that whatever I have asked of Him,I have always been fortunate in kindness won.
O young rose bush, enjoy your vast fortune because IHave become in your shade the Bulbul of the world’s garden.
At first, I had no idea of life’s vagaries. But becauseOf the school of sorrow, I’ve since become learned.
My lot in life has entrusted me to the Wine-House,Despite all the twisted detours of Life’s turns.
It’s not that I’m old in time, but that the faithless FriendLike time itself, has passed me by and aged me with scorn.
The door of Truth was opened to me on that day,When I joined the court of the wise Magian!
On the royal road of timeless grace to the throne of bliss,It was by the wineglass I desired the heart’s Friend.
From the moment the anarchy of your glance struck me,I became safe from the terror of Time’s end.
Last night, the Preserver gave good news, saying, “O Hafez,Come back, I guarantee the forgiveness of all your sin!”
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On this day, the New Life began to never end:The God-Man lives this Life with His companions.
But not as God- only as Man and elder brotherDoes he walk and beg incognito as the Friend.
“No Sheikh, no Brahmin, and no Guru, no disciple:We have no caste, creed or religion to defend!”
“The companions must cheerfully accept everythingAs the will of God, and drive desire from the mind.”
“We have become dead men and women walkingWho live in the Now, and on no one but God depend.”
“This helplessness and hopelessness is our joy-We renounce all the confusion that fear commands.”
“Our only loyalty is to the oath that swears:Never let go the Truth of the Friend’s daaman!”
By grace alone, Darvish walks the path of dustTo Manonash, to find the Love of that Pure-Land.
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Today, the eternal beloved our sweet lordleft his body and released the divine Word.
His Silence held us in his loving embraceand broken, exiled us to long for his grace.
Now, he has forsaken us but lives in the heartand speaks to us, promising never will he part.
Long, long ago we made a covenant with God:our loyalty is to the Prophet- signed in blood.
We are the ones who cling to his kamli coat;We are the ones who praise with golden note.
The Word that was made flesh and now releasedbeats within us, lives on our lips, never to cease.
Darvish sings, O glorious eternal Ancient Oneyour divine Name is our bright transcendent Sun.
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The two seas meet where the fish flewFrom Moses’ pocket to freedom;Khezr appears to the lost JewAnd leads him on to his Kingdom.
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In the heart lies a blocked spring longing to flow:
Feeling can reveal what the mind will never know.
Intellect dresses the truth in gaudy clothes,
but beauty is veracious like an opening rose.
Bliss is sweet water shaded from the cruel sun,
while hot reason gets sun stroke and is undone.
How long this anguish of swallowing our thought,
to relieve the parched pain of love’s long drought?
Only the Perfect Master can strip the mind free
of pretension, and reveal soul’s innate purity.
The naked waters of truth will slake my thirst,
when all desire is derided as an ugly curse.
The angry sun beats down on this desert march,
as Darvish’s song rises in his desperate search.
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O ascetic of pure nature- don’t blame the rend!
The sins of others won’t be held against you.
Whether I am good or bad- go battle yourself;
In the end, every man reaps the crop he sows.
Drunk or sober, everyone is in search of the friend,
And everyplace, temple or mosque, is the house of love.
My head in submission to the wine-house door of brick-
If the pretender doesn’t get this, say “thick as a brick”!
Do not make me lose hope of past acts of timeless grace!
How do you know, behind her veil, lovely from hideous?
It’s not only that I fell out of pious solitude-
My father, Adam, let paradise slip from his hands!
If your nature is this- great, it’s your good nature, and
If your mind is such- excellent, it’s your good mind!
Hafez, if on the day of your death you raise a glass-
From the wine-house alley, at once you go to heaven!
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Israel is the tail that wags the rabid American dog;O my God, we have plunged into Jewish fascist fog.
Where is the light, the love that renounces hate;O my God, where is the courage to change our fate?
O my God, where are you, our citadel of pure Zion?We are lost in the wilderness of racist oblivion.
Help us, guide us, to the Sanctuary of pure love;Help us to renounce the white supremacist shove.
The one pure state of racial and religious zealwill never be forged, but only as hate anneal.
Israel is history clamoring for exile to endin a stolen land where time and trauma blend.
Darvish says America is devoted to a finalityin which race and religion become banality.
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The dawn breeze brought news of the crying rend:
He was all the night searching for the friend.
From bar to bar he stumbled with graphic speech;
No fool for long was beyond his wit’s reach!
The lover with long black hair he couldn’t find;
She was there teasing him, but he was blind.
Blind, blind drunk grasping for her in empty air,
Longing to run his fingers through her curly hair.
The scent of sandalwood was in his mind;
It is what the beloved wears when divine.
With wild and bloodshot eyes he looks for her;
He doesn’t care the world is a passing blur.
This dawn, the sound of the moaning lover,
Told Darvish the rend’s pain wasn’t over.
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I dream repeatedly of your laughing presence,
but cannot wake to find your love street residence.
The light from your flashing eye ever teases me;
Yet when I look again, you are much too busy.
How do I finagle an invite to the dance?
How do I make good on your sweet amorous glance?
God help us to believe in our own ridiculous pain;
And may we never hoard our huge enduring blame!
God help us to box it up and give it to him:
The ocean of purity accepts all our sin.
The lord and master’s humor is quite infinite,
and his laugh and smile equally definite.
Darvish was stumbling after a bottle of wine,
when the master offered a single drop divine!
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Monkey see, monkey do is the usual banality.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
I can’t remember- but how do you wipe your ass?
Wait- please forgive me, I don’t mean to be crass!
We can always learn from each other. Are you right
Or left handed? I hope you clean from behind. Quite!
Only humans have evolved to be able to teach.
Monkeys, try as they might, have not learned speech!
So tell me, do you squat or sit on porcelain throne?
Do you humbly release, or strain to command: “done”?
Don’t gesticulate with such simian confusion:
This is a straightforward and ordinary question!
Darvish can’t remember such a dull-witted lot.
Sometimes, even the bright and quick can’t be taught.
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I raise my glass to the only divine lover;
I drink to the dregs the wine he may offer.
There is no taste I prefer to his presence;
my eyes have no light save his effulgence.
I have no motion but for his rhythm:
all life springs from his ancient whim.
Hunger gnaws daily until beauty’s embrace-
all thirst is for sight of his compassionate face.
My tears are a lake I would gladly drown in,
but for the pity induced by such a sin.
My only hope is the pain of despair:
I will not find him until I forsake all care.
Darvish has no friend but the deep blue sky;
Yet, what he loves, always remains close by.
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No man knows his father, says the poet Homer;
All epic struggle seeks to discover one’s donor.
“Who am I” was the original conception:
All subsequent answers have been a deception.
This initial whim is full of great frustration:
Life after life renews the answer to one question.
We all long to return to where it all began:
The mother of all wombs and the cosmic bang!
Don’t bother with tracing your adoption service;
We are all ragged orphans crying out for bliss.
Sad Darvish feels abandoned by his creator,
as he receives an embrace from his dear savior!
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From the very beginning, and until the very end,
The one worthy of grace holds the cup of desire as friend.
That very moment I was about to repent of wine,
I said, “remorse will be the only fruit off this vine.”
I threw the lilly white prayer rug over my back;
Would rose red, like that of wine, make a Moslem cloak?
With out the lamp of the cup, my solitary seat is beyond sight;
Look- the back alley of the people of heart must have light!
Forget the jeweled cup, but nurture the sublime desire-
To the Rend, the water of the grape is rarest ruby fire!
Although our work appears a muddle, don’t think it easy-
Indeed, begging is the pride of Sultans in this country.
If you desire good name, O heart, don’t talk with the loose-
My dear, proof of ignorance lies with the seduced!
Spring, good friends and reciting poetry among us,
To not seize the wine cup from the beloved- what a loss!
Yesterday, a friend said, “Hafez drinks in secret”;
My dear, that is no crime when better done in private!
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The fire of digestion is God’s gift to proud man;
Without a good s**t, man lives his life on the can.
Prometheus stole the fire that bound him to rock;
Daily, the eagle tears his liver and courage mocks.
To digest experience is the human condition:
To not crap it out- the most foul and original sin!
Think of your friends who suffer from constipation:
How many of them confide about such with elation?
The root of honesty is never to strain for the truth.
It should be smooth and easy, never hard or uncouth.
Agni is a precious fire that must be well tended;
Neglect it, and your bowels will be terribly offended.
This present age is a time of unnatural behavior:
The toilet has become our throne and holy savior!
Darvish praises the god of culture for his sacrifice:
To squat and take a perfect s**t- is worth the price!
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On the ranks of the Rend cast your glance- better than this!
Beat a path to the winehouse’ door- better than this!
In all truth, I swear that the grace your lip commands
Is excellent, but a bit more would be- better than this!
To he whose thought loosens the world’s knots- say:
In this subtle matter, marshal a view- better than this!
What shall I do but give my heart to that precious youth:
The mother of time has not a son- better than this!
My advisor said, what, other than grief, does love possess;
Go, O learned one, what great skill is- better than this?
When I say, drink the glass and kiss the saqi’s lips,
Listen, my dear, because no one says it- better than this!
The sweetest branch of sugar cane is Hafez’s pen. Take it-
For in this garden you will find no fruit- better than this!
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The Kali Yuga, the last of the four cosmological cyclic ages, represents the end of Nature. In the ancient Greek telling, the Ages devolve from Gold to Silver to Bronze to Iron. The Kali Yuga is the Iron Age, the Age of the Machine. In the Indian telling, the cow of dharma (righteousness) has but one leg left to stand upon; in the first or Golden Age, it had all four legs to stand upon; but existence has now become tenuous, doubtful- extremely precarious, and ridden with evil. Life itself is about to collapse.
As the Kali Yuga or Iron/ Machine Age approaches its denouement, Nature increasingly becomes a commodity that is bought, sold and exploited until, at the end of the Kali Yuga, it begins to break down and become destroyed- until it becomes incapable of sustaining life in any normal and natural manner.
This is the time we now live in. Technology and the cult of Progress- the ideology of the Machine Age, no longer believes in, or has any use for, Nature. Nature has been completely abandoned in favor of diabolical reason- the inversion of true intellect.
William Blake, writing at the beginning of the Industrial Age, was the first Western poet and prophet to articulate the degeneration we are now collapsing into. The cult of Progress now earnestly embraces collective suicide. This is our glorious and emphatic Kool-Aid party to end all parties!
But even as Nature is humiliated and exploited, ravaged, and the close of the Kali Yuga approaches in the dissolution of the Universe in mahapralaya, divine love is the bridge into a New World and Golden Age that will triumph brilliantly.
Jerusalem
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
William Blake
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The eternal living ancient one is your best Friend;
He is the one on whom life after life you can depend.
He is more loyal to you than your own faithful shadow,
Who never fails to deny you in the twilight of crows.
It is his brightness that gives the Sun such royal lustre,
Which light is but a gross brilliance and dull impostor.
We thirst for the truth because it is also supreme bliss;
Anything less is both a foul lie and treacherous kiss.
But how can the humanity of his charm be described?
His human qualities cannot be so easily transcribed.
It is not that he is only glorious and fantastic,
But that he is simply and naturally authentic.
When Darvish walks in silent companionship,
He finds the Friend beside him sharing his friendship.
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From dawn to dusk the earth is weeping tears of ice
For the denial of the Prophet’s suffering for all of us.
From dawn to dusk the earth is burning in shame
That the now-Christ remains unknown- without name.
Now is the anguish of earth that the Ancient One
Walks upon her breast, but is shunned by everyone.
Now is the anguish that those who accepted him
Have for a golden calf sold- and rejected him.
O the earth weeps and the earth burns for all our sins
That we have not embraced and surrendered to him.
We will walk and walk through this water and fire
Until in our remembrance at his feet we expire.
Darvish sings a song that only few can hear;
It is a song of fire and ice in a diamond tear.
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Don’t think for a moment that God does not hear your prayer-
his answer lies in the anguish that only patient love can bear.
It’s a rough road to crawl and crawl to the feet of the Friend
when the broken glass of ignorance colors all ambition.
All great lovers with self respect keep this advice in mind:
death to one’s own ego but to one’s enemies, be kind!
“I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to become known”;
O when will my many lives for this ancient whim atone?
Where is the Medic who can bandage bloody hands and feet,
and beseech the heart to believe in lies saccharine and sweet?
We are the proverbial lambs led on to their slaughter
that we rejoice in the Master’s humor and wry laughter.
Darvish laughs and laughs but cries at one and the same time
because of this love ridiculous yet richly sublime.
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All I know is what I read in the bogus news:
this world and the next belong to Zionist Jews.
The jihadist will survive with bomb sewn in belly,
in new-found paradise graced with petroleum jelly.
Righteous Hindu will live forever mumbling Rig Veda,
proclaiming the eternal religion of Hindutva.
Faux Christian will rise on the one true Plastic Cross,
choiring for all time that white corporatist is boss.
Religious zeal will tuck us all into bed at night,
so we can dream of a world perfected by fright.
We will all wake up in pure radioactive heaven-
but some wearin’ hazmat suits- the rest a gaspin’.
Darvish believes in a god who gets him so drunk,
he becomes as faithless and stateless as a skunk.
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We long to breathe pure air and drink sweet water,
Cook and warm by clean fire, and eat good tucker.
There was a time the sacred elements spoke of god,
But we forgot that language with a passing nod.
We are fluent now with digital-techno speak,
And the natural man is a rare and bloody freak.
All our needs and wants are now wrapped in plastic,
To package and promote what makes the mind spastic.
Our thinking is like fireworks exploding in a room:
Full of weird sulfurous color celebrating doom.
Big Fist is pleased with our huge corporate success;
The few are filthy rich and the rest full of distress.
Darvish remembers the new-ancient remedy,
Of how God’s name turns great pain into comedy!
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Freedom is just another word to break our teeth upon;
Mouthing such marble slogans insults the downtrodden!
We are so thoroughly brainwashed of all intelligence,
Politics has nothing at all to do with common sense.
We must admit we have no agenda greater than greed;
It pays so very well, we delight to watch spirit bleed.
Thirty pieces of silver buys a cross to hang the Christ;
Bloody good deal for the son of man at such a price!
Mowlanna cried the long night to see his lost, divine sun;
All became blackness until heart's longing began to spin.
The deepest and most terrible anguish is full of gold,
Even when the Friend for this rotting world is cheaply sold.
Darvish does not have the tears to placate God's burning ire;
The sweet cool waters of love's mercy will dampen the fire.
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The only prayer of the heart is the master’s name:
To beg this or that from him is a twisted game.
To pay another to petition the Ancient One,
Is to forego his embrace and presence shun.
No relic compares to the spiritual power
Of the heart repeating his name at all hours.
Light a candle in the niche of your remembrance,
And let his name rise and resound with pure cadence.
The wolf in sheep’s clothing ba-ba’s for another,
As the lambs are led on and on to their slaughter.
The Master has said: surrender your bloody mind
At my feet, not to huckster halfwits glib and blind!
Darvish enjoys his conversations with the Friend;
Would he have a hack compose his ghazals for him?
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Some things are so obvious, but somehow remain obscure:
God is infinite and one, and all his prophets are pure.
That we have to think about this is not encouraging;
One feels so important to make remarks disparaging!
The fact is, not only is God infinite truth and love,
But he lives in the heart as one's very own treasure trove.
Yes, it is true, not every single, bloody aspirant,
Will buy a shovel and keep on digging 'til he finds it!
Few of us fall in love with back-breaking manual work-
Why not pay a Mexican dirt wages, with a rich smirk!
Last night I heard a dog barking at the big, yellow moon;
It was snarling about having lost a bright silver spoon.
Darvish, thank God for your name and that your muscles all ache;
Clearly, these are two things much better never to fake!
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Last night, the bird of complaint sang a song:
“I sing to reveal that it is for love I long.”
Today, ocean waves caress my aching face-
My tears of pain are washed without a trace.
Only the infinity I touch can give me comfort.
(Blue sky, your void is nothing but pure hurt!)
The melody of the breaking heart inspires drink.
Only by the grace of wine, do we cease to think.
The tang of your surf slaps me awake, to cry:
O God, death by drowning is the way to die!
All my pain is heard in the ocean’s mighty roar.
What we love rises and crashes more and more.
Bolbol, sing again your song full of despair.
Darvish’s life chokes and gasps beyond all care!
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We shout as cracks widen under our feet,
Shards of glass fly along the broken street.
All the many promises we promised to keep,
Pile into one another in a bloody heap.
Eyes wide shut stare at the falling ground;
Feet climb the air and earth can’t be found.
All this a premonition of the anxious mind:
We are transfixed by fears that undermine!
Death is no small disaster to our ego-fiction,
When each frame suffers review and elision.
The I-Maker is our brilliant original sin;
Every subsequent lie is second rate spin!
Darvish can’t improve on his enormous falsity:
Too many fears fracture Love’s sweet Unity.
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The Magian Elder has long black curly hair;
His forehead shines with a light that removes all despair.
Zoroaster was the first Avatar since the “big freeze,”
even if to modern learning this is one big huge tease.
It was he in the beginning who called us to his feet;
We were grunting in our bear skins as the ice beat retreat.
The holy fire he brought taught man we live by god alone:
It is by such blazing presence that divine love is known.
Fast forward to our present flickering electronic fire-
the TV we worship now is a squawking satanic choir!
The ice is still melting, sky high chunks many at a time;
We watch the news for the latest about this modern crime.
O Darvish, the Magian Elder, with his long black curly hair
has come back once again as the compassionate Meher.
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I raise my glass to the only divine lover;
I drink to the dregs the wine he may offer.
There is no taste I prefer to his presence;
my eyes have no light save his effulgence.
I have no motion but for his rhythm:
all life springs from his ancient whim.
Hunger gnaws daily until beauty’s embrace-
all thirst is for sight of his compassionate face.
My tears are a lake I would gladly drown in,
but for the pity induced by such a sin.
My only hope is the pain of despair:
I will not find him until I forsake all care.
Darvish has no friend but the deep blue sky;
Yet, what he loves, always remains close by.
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For a long time you have tied us up with expectation;
Why confuse the sincere with someone else’s condition?
You have not looked at me with the eye of approval;
Is this how you regard those devoted to the spiritual?
Since the dawn breeze sang a page of your beauty to rose and bird,
Only clamoring and cry and tearing of shirt has been heard.
For Vanity’s sake, best that you cover your arm and wrist,
As you dip your brush in the blood of your loving subject.
O dervish in brightly patched coat who seeks to taste Presence:
Strange, that you eye secrets from those learned in nonsense!
O eye and lamp, since you are the narcissus of vision’s garden,
Why hold your head heavy around me, the heart-broken?
The jewel from Jamshid’s Cup is mined from a different world;
Why do you search for it in the potter’s jug of clay, instead?
Although Rendi and drink define all our sin precisely,
The lover cries- none but you has brought about our slavery!
Hafez, do not give up your days of peace in self-reproach:
What hope can you have of this world so full of “such and such”.
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The dawn breeze kicks up the dust in lover’s lane;
My gritty speech praises the rend’s lonely pain.
I reach for the bottle rolling across the floor-
My arm can stretch so far, and then no more.
Where is the friend with long black curly hair,
To fill my glass with glances that end all despair?
The Sun of mercy has left us sobbing for his face-
His shadow blinds with blackness in lieu of grace.
We can’t see you with stone eyes sunken in sockets-
The days bless with pity, and infinite regrets.
What light we have escapes from a broken heart,
That guides us to believe in our hopeless art.
Darvish’s song bites with grit but still inspires:
One day, he will see by the light of love’s desire.
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Come sufi, and we will rip off the cloak of hypocrisy,
and draw an X defacing this portrait so prissy.
We pledge the alms and offerings of the monastery-
we will wash the cloak of deceit with winehouse sherry!
The secret of fate concealed by the invisible curtain-
drunk, we will tear the veil from its cheek to be certain.
We will jump out, tipsy with joy at the sufi’s banquet,
and plunder all, seizing wine and beauty to vet!
We will enjoy ourselves or, if not, die from regret
on the day the soul’s affairs are held to account.
Where the glance from her arched brow like a crescent,
for us to play the ball of time with a stick luminescent?
If, tomorrow, the garden of paradise is not granted to us,
servants and houris will be dragged out with great fuss!
Hafez, it is not our right to boast and be so smug-
why shove your foot out from under your own rug?
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Congealed sanskaras gyre into the timeless now:
Each breath contains all of time in the eternal Tao.
The dark clamor of unlived desire chokes my throat,
And twists and subverts song of pure and golden note.
I lean and loaf by bubbling spring and envy observes
How water caresses stone, earth and grass with verve.
The frozen past that melts in the present to reveal fate,
Is only altered by the fire of love that destroys hate.
Where my love and where the days lost in her hair?
Tears blind me to all except dark lonely despair.
This dance in which the lost partner can’t be found,
Makes me whirl to a timeless beat round and round.
Darvish breathes the Friend’s name with each breath,
And courts the lovely grace of the mind’s blessed death.
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Since the beginning, God’s own whim has always inspired us:
“Who am I” has nurtured our voice from stone to singing dust.
Our thirst has grown gradually to become our best friend;
It is on the glass of desire that all our hopes now depend.
Love at first was scarcely an intermittent drop;
Now each drink promises a bottle to be our lot.
It has come to this- we don’t know who we are unless drunk;
All but your laugh, smile, kiss and touch is trash- pure bunk!
We approach your grace with our empty glass held high;
We live with the one thought that by your mercy we die.
The dawn breeze brought the scent of strong Shirazi wine;
I resolved at once to all other aperitifs decline!
Darvish can no longer be sure who or what he is;
He has no doubt the beloved is truth, beauty and bliss!
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Israel is the tail that wags the rabid American dog;
O my God, we have plunged into Jewish fascist fog.
Where is the light, the love that renounces hate;
O my God, where is the courage to change our fate?
O my God, where are you, our citadel of pure Zion?
We are lost in the wilderness of racist oblivion.
Help us, guide us, to the Sanctuary of pure love;
Help us to renounce the white supremacist shove.
The one pure state of racial and religious zeal
will never be forged, but only as hate anneal.
Israel is history clamoring for exile to end
in a stolen land where time and trauma blend.
Darvish says America is devoted to a finality
in which race and religion become banality.
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The über rich have destroyed our middle class polity.
They are the king-makers in our guttered history.
The royals have returned with a refurbished crown:
Corporations now have the halo of personal charm.
America, it turns out, has exalted greed so much,
That a belching monster now has a princely touch!
How we love our bloated desires. We can’t wait
To cut the throat of our neighbor with tender hate!
We have socialized and speculated on our rage
With such finesse, we have gilded our own dotage.
The golden bull goes wild and gores us all. Darvish
Calls out to the Masters of heart: it is You we cherish!
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We have opened the door to our heart and let you in,
to find that we are the stranger and you are the friend.
Base desire has so clothed the mind, we have forgotten
our soul is beauty, but covered by clothes soiled and rotten.
The foul rags of the filthy mind are now so de jure,
we are loath to strip naked and all falsity abjure.
We have no hope of helping ourselves in this matter;
we so love our own modesty- ‘though it be in tatters!
Maybe a kind arsonist will douse us with petrol,
and swift courage will renounce pretension with vitriol?
Lord and master, forgive us for our dull stupidity,
that is only surpassed by our vain cupidity!
Darvish coyly glances at the beloved with a whim:
maybe he will hold his nose and completely undress him!
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Nietzsche had it right when he declared god is dead:
The Christian legacy had long since been put to bed.
The fervor of Patrick paddling the Ocean for Christ,
Has now become a mega church prosperity heist!
Not even Francesco can shore up this decrepit faith;
Institutional spirit has become a writhing wraith!
All of our fetid ideas of god must be buried,
And our rotten religious sentiments cremated.
Zarathustra has returned with his beautiful fire;
The unholy truths will be placed in a funeral pyre.
“God has become man, so that man may become god”-
This new ancient truth will soon become ultra mod!
Darvish has never been so happy that god is dead:
The silent God-Man lives and talks in our hearts instead!
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May the muddy waters clear to reveal your face;
May the mirror be polished to reflect your grace.
The wretched mind always makes the same mistake
Of forsaking the real and embracing the fake.
The desire of self-image is brick upon brick
Of wants imprisoned in walls ugly and thick.
We worship pure fire for political reasons:
The tyranny of mind must be burnt as treason.
The cry of our heart is torture we can survive,
So long as when cut out- at your feet it thrives!
How long will the world turn on its axis,
Before it wobbles and impales our praxis?
Darvish is weary of spinning time without end;
He longs for muddy waters to reveal the friend.
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No one knows the way of Mary, matchless lover;
With each breath, she anoints her beloved savior.
No one knows the way of Hallaj, Master of Truth;
His rolling head is forever full of joy and mirth.
No one knows the way of Mira, praising Krishna,
lost in song and dance for beloved Gopala.
No one knows the supreme way of San Francesco:
perfect poverty, suffering, longing and canto.
No one sings and no one dances for the Now-Christ:
Religion is now a feel-good prosperity heist.
Come the day when all media is smashed, and song
Is the coin by which all strive to forgive all wrong.
Darvish agrees the revolution will not be televised-
Mary, Hallaj, Mira and Francis will be reprised.
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Green grows the heart’s longing, vines on fire
Breathing your name in love’s ascending gyre.
Green grows the longing heart skyward, bright
Tongues of flame praising the sweet Word of light.
Your name, your bright name is our dawn laughter
That rises and resounds to announce the Master.
Starlight dreams its way into sleeping stone,
Becomes the gold hammered into your throne.
The car that carries you across the sky
Sings your bright name of mercy as it flies.
Meher is light spilling infinite bliss
On all galaxies throughout the universe.
The tangle of wild roses in Darvish’s heart
Have bloodied him with thorn and graceful art.
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I walk up the hill
To hear the loud still
Voice of my master:
In your heart I dwell.
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Violence in America is as common as apple pie. Mass shootings are a daily event. A July 4th parade is targeted from a rooftop. Police violence and brutality are everyday certainties; a young unarmed black man fleeing police is gunned down by more than 60 bullets. And violence abroad fomented by a berserk foreign policy has also become a daily- but mostly unreported, event. Widespread gratuitous and socialized violence has taken over America. And all this has been dramatically true every day for especially the last twenty years.
Guns are everywhere here in America; more guns per capita than anywhere else in the world. The US has the world’s largest prison population; 25% of the world’s incarcerated are right here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The US has the world’s largest military budget by far; it is larger than the combined budgets of the next top ten state defense budgets. The US is continuously at war, projecting shock and awe, mostly in the name of the War Against Terror, from 800 military bases flung across the globe. More than 20 US veterans commit suicide every day.
The US has just started a new war in Ukraine by provoking Russia to invade that country. The war could have been avoided with careful diplomacy, but the US nixed diplomatic solutions in favor of a proxy war that fights Russia to the last Ukrainian. The US is already planning for a bigger and more consequential war with China.
The US has gone fully berserk in its adulation of Ares, god of war; god of violence in pursuit of empire. The US must dominate the world; it is compelled by its demons to conquer the world, and in the process lose its soul, sacrifice its soul, to rage and carnage, here in our schools, churches, sanctuaries and streets.
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The vigor of youth allures many to an early death;
much better to surrender all illusion with each breath.
Iskandar’s teacher was from the brilliant academy;
but desire goaded him on to ludicrous victory.
Such dominion over foreign lands is risky at best;
the defeated subject hates rulers of distant conquest.
This young nation worships the myth of class freedom,
having sought to keep half the world in financial serfdom.
Now corporate big fist pursues profit above all else:
the quarterly dividend has been supremely blessed!
Sometimes reckless youth longs to choke on puerile desire,
and on its own suffocating and tragic end conspire.
The foolish never believe that one day they will die;
Darvish must remember to always renounce me and my.
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Open the door, and let us in to embrace
Your reluctance to bestow your grace.
We have been banging with our tender fist,
And wonder why you our ardor still resist!
The Beloved, we have heard, is never so cruel,
As when she deigns to speak to a hapless fool.
We will take our chances with our audacity-
The worst we face is your cold, heartless pity.
The noose tightens and the neck constricts;
How much longer before the breath forfeits?
What a bright and cheery day to happily die,
To swing from an apple tree, and earth deny!
Hey, look Darvish- it’s not that bad. Someday
The door will open, and your Mind will sway!
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There comes a point of no return in the development of zeitgeist. The US has long since devolved into corporate state fascism. Eisenhower in 1961 warned the nation of this eventuality; Dr. MLK Jr. in 1967 prophesized that the nation would lose its soul if it did not abdicate greed, racism and militarism as represented in the War Against Vietnam. Many others have vigorously protested the same, but none so dramatically and eloquently as the greatest American, Dr. King.
Dr. King was a real Christian, a genuine activist, and a stellar prophet of the American tragedy. He accurately grokked the diabolical forces animating America. His vision of what was to come had nothing to do with identity politics or some ridiculous and pathetic bid for diversity. He did not speak merely as a Black seeking improved opportunity to cash in on corporatism and militarism: he rejected the entire American project for economic and political supremacy as racism. He saw it exactly for what it was.
The last twenty years represent a free fall into the Pit of virulent racism, greed and carnage. The ME and Islam have been configured as the devil to justify the uncontrollable greed and anger that animates corporate America and the deep state it has engendered. The corporation has no soul. E. F. Schumacher defined Wall Street as the “socialization of greed”; this was entirely prescient as he passed away many decades before the advent of the corporate sponsored “Terror Wars”. What we now witness is many, many times more catastrophic in its implications than even the War Against Vietnam.
We have plunged off the cliff of polite viciousness into raging unapologetic carnage. We don’t need to explain anything. We don’t need to apologize for anything. We are absolved of all crimes before they are committed. We are the most exceptional mother f*s of all time who don’t answer to anyone; except, that is, the Zionist lobbies.
Israel is the tail that wags the rabid American dog. There is no nation that exerts anything like the influence of Israel on US politics. The pro Israel lobbies have an unparalleled influence in Washington. They are like Moses delivering the Tablets from on high. Their word is sacrosanct. Now, this would be a racist trope were it not true; but it is true, and every single member of Congress knows it is true.
The American free fall into fascism is effected, more than any other reason, by the endorsement of Zionism. It is the supreme triumph of identity politics over American democracy. It is the supreme triumph of Orwellian kitsch to have America believe and support, as an eternal pledge, the triumph of religious and racial absolutism.
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I, the lost one, find my way to the ocean’s shore,
where none can hear my grief above the surf’s roar.
I would drown at once the sound of my own thought-
I would die now and forever to all that can be taught.
The ocean wave rises, threatens and then crashes;
spirit brightens as rolling water softly caresses.
All truth is revealed in the pure and virgin sand,
washed clean of all mark left by unnatural hand.
I read the scattered omens of shell, wood and stone:
only by the songbird’s cry can this blame be undone.
My grief shapes slowly into verse that disappears
along the curving ocean shore of bitter tears.
Darvish walks and walks to find the lost silence
that reveals again the beloved Master’s presence.
Line in italics by Francis Brabazon
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Make it new. Sing a song that revives the dead,
That creates gold from dull, black lifeless lead.
Sing a song that breathes life into a cadaver,
That rouses the spirit from corporate blather.
Rise up, and sing. Sing a lyric that wakes Hafez
From his divine slumber in beautiful Shiraz.
Wake up, and sing. Sing a song long lost to progress,
A song of rose that rises to bless with artful caress.
We will wake and sing a song that blesses death
To rise and shout with the dawn’s radiant breath.
Jesus will breathe in our mouths such joyous song
That the dead will rise in splendor and brilliant throng.
Yes, Darvish will rise from the multitude of dead
To become golden song transmuted from lead.
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The succession of bad ideas we call modern history
Is crowned by Consumerism in all its plastic glory.
The will to power of corporate and military greed
Has poisoned the people with cruel and false needs.
Big Fist occupies the throne with the beast by his side,
In whose solicitous snarling he eagerly confides:
“We are the greatest nation in the history of man-
All countries must pay tribute to our place in God’s Plan.”
Hubris, the ancients say, is the most deadly of sins,
And the only one the gods insist can’t be forgiven.
Rome must burn again and again to prove the truth,
That power and greed self-destruct without reproof.
Darvish gives thanks for fresh bread and a glass of wine;
The cruel marketing of thuggery he loudly declines.
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My service in the wine house began a long time ago,
in the robe of poverty working for those in the know.
I lie in ambush for the opportune moment to snare
the pheasant of graceful walk with the net of desire.
Our preacher doesn’t have a scent of the truth- I speak
my words also in his presence, not behind his back.
Like the falling and rising breeze, I run to the friend’s alley,
asking for help from fellow travelers in spiritual rally.
The dust from your street won’t endure pain such as this;
You have shown kindness, O idol- I will restrain my protests!
Her curls are a snare in the path, and her glance disaster;
Remember, O heart, all that I have told you about her.
O noble concealer of faults, veil the carping eye
from these brave thoughts of my solitary sighs.
I am the Hafez to the pious, and a drinker of dregs as well;
See the humor of how skillfully I play with people!
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A thousand times we have inscribed paper with your eternal name,
only to have shredded our efforts to praise you in bitter shame.
We long to sing glorious song that delights your grave expression,
and we cry to find the talent that intuits your intimations.
Beloved, it's not easy having you as our perfect master;
all our efforts to please you are often a perfect disaster!
We need your help in developing a convincing argument,
as to why we should not be in need of perfect atonement!
We have more faith in your forgiveness and divine sense of humor,
than in our bungling acts of sincerity and uninspired stupor!
All the many songs we have written and have never sung to you,
are longing to be revised and rehearsed until pleasing and true.
Beloved, sharpen our wit and love into a pure ghazal:
have mercy on Darvish's plea to light your face with dazzle!
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Rain, wash away fear and revive our lives;
we need to lift our feet past tired, old lies.
We have come to believe in our own doubt:
we chew on rage and stifle spirit’s shout.
The mind desperate to proclaim itself,
denies the stillness that nourishes health.
May the sun of royal love rise at dawn,
to our high praise of his radiant crown!
We are lost without the mercy of Meher’s light-
where is the grace of his compassionate sight?
The sound of his name is soft, caressing rain,
that invites his love to wash away all pain.
Darvish thanks the gracious earth for support,
and walks on with the friend’s name for comfort.
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I run from the rotting stench of my precious thought,
but cannot find the pure, sweet breeze of “I am not”!
The sweet grace of lord and master will set me free,
when I submit myself to grace and cease to be.
For now, God help us to learn the high circus arts,
like how to make a lion laugh and monkey fart.
Perhaps, the Master will be inclined to believe,
we are useful to his pleasure and deserve reprieve.
We hang out around his court by all contrived means,
and never with complaint about the refried beans.
We understand no man has ever petitioned love,
except at beauty’s feet with the Beloved tall above.
There are few things about which Darvish has no clue;
the most regrettable is how to his foul mind eschew.
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The theocrats are appealing as fragrant s**t;
The smug and self righteous are always a big hit!
Politicians who preach in the name of their God,
have fat cheeks full of foul crap instead of the Word.
The dull and stupid believe god is always right,
especially when the believer is told to fight.
God help us all when the religious become inspired;
We will by stinking chapter and verse be reviled.
The holy infidel is really our kindest friend-
may compassionate god send the great Khan again!
The Eternal Blue Sky is a fair and brilliant lord;
Either pay allegiance, or face the nomadic sword!
May all of our ugly rhetoric go up in flame:
Darvish longs for the pure breeze of the Beloved’s name.
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In our lost land of fast food and bad breath,
we pray for the rapture to bless our death!
Our resurrection will achieve liftoff.
we will look down on those below and scoff.
A mass ascension for the lucky few:
the refried Christian and repentant Jew.
The whole family will rise together,
to live with our holy Father forever.
We will eat the wonder bread of heaven
and never have to take a s**t again.
Our purity will grow and grow until,
we are satiated with divine swill.
Darvish does not want to witness and face
the grand implosion of such sweet grace!
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The modern period despite the belief that it represents progress is nonetheless highly susceptible to hypnosis, propaganda and totalitarian movements. Mass media and the anomie brought about by industrialization and mechanization are chiefly to blame.
The digital age has been synchronous with a dramatic rise in virulent nationalism especially in those countries given to the cult of technology and progress. The Anglosphere and those countries aligned with it have proven especially vulnerable to manufactured collective persuasion. China, Russia and India also come to mind. But the entire world to a greater or lesser degree has been deeply affected.
The United States is probably the world’s most successfully propagandized nation. This is not surprising given that until recently it reigned as undisputed world hegemon. This status quo has been upset by a resurgent Russia and an emergent China. The US is now struggling to reassert itself as the one and only indispensable nation- on the basis of propaganda and militarism.
This has given rise to a massive effort to control the narratives that inform the nation, largely on the basis of corporate state control of media shilling for a militarized foreign policy. There is practically no significant media outlet not owned by and thereby influenced or controlled by corporate transnational exploitation.
One of the main reasons for the greater susceptibility of the US to propaganda is long term industrialization, mechanization and alienation of its people from nature and family. Americans don’t have roots. They are a displaced people given to fantasies about who they are and where they come from. They live as if on an island with no need to engage the world culturally and linguistically; in fact they resent foreigners and hate foreign languages. They might well be the most poorly educated and anti-intellectual people in the world. Collectively, Americans fervently believe in one thing: power.
The collapse of America into anomie because of the vanishing American dream, or guaranteed consumerism, cannot be overstated. It’s like America has died. Industrialism has resulted in a fatal disconnection from nature. What percentage of Americans has ever milked a cow, or goat? The problem of urbanization, increasing separation from nature and the growing role of electronic imagery to represent not only nature but also human interaction is incalculable. American consciousness has been rewired to an astonishing degree in ways that almost everyone takes for granted and cannot explain.
The demoralized working class, abstraction, alienation, the problematic family, deep and widespread narcissism fueled by substance abuse and the cult of the digital device have resulted in a populace grasping for identity. The selfie is a national pastime.
The information age made possible by the internet is a Trojan horse. It is not possible for people to process data in the amounts bombarding them on a daily basis. It can be consumed but it can’t be digested. The result is increasing abstraction and a retreat into private realities. For elites, making money and the retreat into gated communities has become the preferred solution to extreme cognitive dissonance. There is no better illustration of the disconnect with nature than the complete inability to properly respond to global warming and decades of gratuitous racialized war and domestic violence. It’s like, really speaking, these aren’t problems.
America has become a petri dish for manipulation by the militarized corporate state due to its extreme disorientation. News is a commodity just like Coco Puffs. Serial disasters command headlines and news analysis is scripted for targeted audiences. All aspects of American life are predicated on marketing and consumerism which glorify fantasy.
The all powerful militarized corporate state has become our beneficent father who must be obeyed regardless of the party in power. This is the one thing all elites can agree on, and which the public is compelled to accept.
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We never lie so well but to preserve our thin honor;
We are never so earnest as when making a fast dollar.
Our freshest sincerity is out of a shiny tin can:
Vacuum packed spirit is a more durable scam!
The shelf life of our best ideas and emotions,
follows the market for authentic snake oil lotions.
The wild, wild west is with us on a runaway horse;
Screamin an’ hollerin is our state sponsored course.
God knows the devil loves to laugh through his dirty ass;
We wake up drunk to find out he’s been outclassed!
Jesus, this is a story more true than Jehosaphat,
who couldn’t jump over a fat snoring Democrat.
Darvish comes up short what to say about all this;
Sometimes the best way to relax is just take a long piss.
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Israel is the tail that wags the rabid American dog;
O my God, we have plunged into Jewish fascist fog.
Where is the light, the love that renounces hate;
O my God, where is the courage to change our fate?
O my God, where are you, our citadel of pure Zion?
We are lost in the wilderness of racist oblivion.
Help us, guide us, to the Sanctuary of pure love;
Help us to renounce the white supremacist shove.
The one pure state of racial and religious zeal
will never be forged, but only as hate anneal.
Israel is history clamoring for exile to end
in a stolen land where time and trauma blend.
Darvish says America is devoted to a finality
in which race and religion become banality.
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Where the way and where the path that arrives at your feet?
Open the door and open the heart that we abide in love street.
We have heard, no man has increased his height by taking thought;
We have heard, silence is genius that can never be taught.
The sun rises, the sun sets, and the mind whirls ’round and ’round;
And my beloved glides through the night, full, without a sound.
I hold out my empty skull as a wine bowl for her to fill;
Maybe, maybe this raging will be drowned, and become still.
But by the beloved’s glance, the door to del is slammed shut;
the heart will never reveal spirit, but chase some tawdry slut.
Master, fill the crystal skull with wine that opens the door
and ushers me to regale you, like a drunk, on the floor.
Darvish’s whining for a drink has become indiscreet;
all his pounding has yet to open the door to love street.
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The spirit of social justice does not come from the law. It comes from the love of truth and beauty. The genuine- and I mean genuine, regard for the Prophets and their message of love is the greatest impetus for social justice. The love of God in man alone fulfills heaven on earth.
The American Constitution and the Bill of Rights, for example, did nothing to prevent genocide and slavery as founding tragedies. And obviously, neither did Christianity. The objection that additional legislation strove to create a more perfect union is a weak argument at best- because state sponsored genocide and slavery and other social ills persist regardless. In fact, the argument can easily be made that legislation over time has done more to enshrine injustice than suppress it. After all, we live in a militarized fascist corporate state that has abolished genuine representative democracy and replaced it with oligarchy. The notional "more perfect union" has devolved steadily since at least the last 75 years. It is now nothing but trash.
It is time to stop talking about democratic ideals as if they existed. Democracy is dead.
The only remedy at this point is radical love for truth and beauty that completely rejects political posturing and the rhetoric of exhausted idealism. It is time to go rogue for the sake of God and man.
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Last night, in our circle of friends, the story was of your curls;
Into the heart of night, our talk was of how your hair unfurls.
The heart ran with blood from your eyelashes’ arrows,
Yet was longing for still more from the eyebrows’ bows.
May god forgive the breeze that delivered your presence;
Had it not- all that were left would be but senescence.
The world has no idea of love’s terror and tumult:
The sorcery of your glance is nought but bitter rout.
I, the astonished one, was among the safe and secure;
But you hairs’ twisted curls caught me with a scented lure.
Loosen my shirt until my heart is fully revealed;
my purity wholly derives from lying by your side.
Remember your promise, when you pass by Hafez’s corpse,
Who, as he left this world, was still desiring your lips.
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When we have been reduced to crying out for our food
we will then at last begin to believe in brotherhood.
When we refuse to support the Spy and War Machine
we can then march our politicians to the guillotine.
When we rise up and refuse to endorse doublespeak
we can then devote song to pure and holy lyric.
When we rise up and dance and dance to single malt
we can then kick arse of ev’ry bloody poly-dolt.
O Yes, CEO and general will be swiftly exiled
and with ten thousand joyous boot reviled.
This world a loss and Christmas punted to heaven
and dark mangled earth the romp of clever satan.
But now hungry Darvish reveals pure amber secret:
Sun rises in his glass and the friend bright and discreet.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit billgannett.substack.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit billgannett.substack.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit billgannett.substack.com