Six Degrees of Separation; Seven Degrees of Love

This book is only available in America (or in the UK from me in person) and while better read in that form  - https://www.sheriarbooks.org/product/6-degrees-of-separation/ (a beautiful publication)- I reproduce it here exactly as published. I think it's my best work, certainly my best love poetry/most mystical. The verse is entirely formal, being extended sequences of ghazals and sonnets - and two villanelles - ie lyrical and intensely distilled. 

6 Degrees Of Separation; 7 Degrees of Love

By Gareth Calway

 

Lyric Poems After Auschwitz

‘No lyric poetry after Auschwitz’ Theodor Adorno 1949

Dedication

These poems would not have been possible without the guidance of several amazing women, the first four capable of running countries single-handed. Lady Dorothy Hopkinson – the idea of a book of verse which tackled the meaning of life, the Universe and Everything was hers – and Dr Goher both impressed on me how vital marriage and family is to a poet. Mani and Meheru Irani encouraged me to value the clown (with his ‘divine gift of making people laugh’) as the equal of ‘the composer.’ Closer to home, Aude Gotto published me when thousands wouldn’t. And my wife Melanie said Yes to 36 years (so far) of me banging on about it all.

 

A. The Calling

The mystical love poet Seemab wrote a ghazal couplet so perfect his Master made him one with God, even though he was ineligibly between incarnations at the time. 

"Either peel off the layers of wounds of the heart and throw them out of sight

Or accept the wounds (of separation from the Beloved) as positive indications of love."  Seemab 

‘The Calling’ is a dialogue of Eastern ghazal and Western sonnet addressed to a Divine Beloved. Whatever my reader takes ‘Divine Beloved’ to be, it is. (For me, it is Meher Baba, 1894-1969, whom I have followed – in a private detective’s overcoat and trilby – since 1979 and whom I feel I have known since the beginning of time.) The creative opposition of ‘The Calling’ is between the ancient Eastern wisdom of the heart and the fearless workings of a Western mind impatient with any kind of fundamentalism. One chants, the other chats. The form of the ghazal suspends time; that of the sonnet drives forward through it. Led by the heart, they gradually converge to a point. 

1.   Slices of Infinity

O love! I offer my patience, persistent, brave to the end;

This fickle loving so stiff-scared of life and death, I’ll amend.

I’ll hold your course through the quicksand, the place to learn to accept

The shifting world as it needs must; accept its ways cannot mend.

I’ll cry our love from the rooftops, embrace the hate of the street,

The cold attrition of thick skins, and won’t accuse or defend.

I’ll fly the rose of this love-truth you’ve gentled deep in my heart

And stand alone if I have to, no matter how I’m condemned.

Tomorrow’s reduced into worries; the past can never be changed;

Would gnaw my mind sick with what wasn’t or isn’t or won’t be my friend.

A fretful mind’s like a buzz-saw, it hacks the joy from our lives

But such release as we let go and follow heart to its end!

Mind pirouettes as it works out - six limbo-dancing degrees -

A high school leap to a first kiss is how the wise heart ascends.

The Way of Love is a tightrope, it’s pitched above the mundane -

This circus whirl of allurements my mind is poised to transcend.

O ghazal-measure, love’s gashed foot is guiding you drunkenly slow;

What heartbeat struggles to follow will race a head and pretend.

O head, love’s list of perfections is giving you vertigo,

O love, I offer my patience; the stiff neck will break that won’t bend.

*

Which makes it hard to call you Beloved

And mean it. What maker wouldn’t die

Though, for a song as free as a sea-bird’s,

Where the flooded mind’s sewering gutter

Drains to the pure ocean of the heart?

And if I could raise one genuine salt tear

I would: land lovers cry you sea-tales but 

Love without salt is not love. It's just wet.

And what can I give you that isn't yours?

Only impossible things. Equipoise

Forbearance, freedom from worry,

Selfless service, cheerfulness! God, I'm so full

Of the opposites of these. Isn't there

Something easier? something I can do? 

 

 

2. Beyond Doing

"My heart sought … a pearl beyond the shell of existence and time....." Hafiz

I catch your eye out of space-time, a breathless poise out of mind;

A pearl I lost and have long sought, but never dreamed I could find.

I dance with you in my mind’s eye, and pour a rose for your mouth,

Or sip your kiss at a drunk's bar where vision comes to the blind.

My head is fogged but my heart’s clear, I’m lost in love without trace:

I can’t make sense of your bright Smile, the bill you leave me to sign.

I thought this Shiraz was bak sheesh, I guzzled all of it down.

Next time you're feeling so generous, don't cast your pearls before swine!

My restless deserts of non-love create mirages of joy

That leave the lips of my soul dry, oases trapped in my mind.

My days are lost in not doing the doing I still want to do 

If love could be my un-doing; my ‘not’ being love could unwind.

This love that calls me is so true, I lose my grip on the false:

A jungle of parroting jungle where lovers hunt but don’t find.

This love that calls me is so true, my heart is aching to steal

A pearl for you from my life's shell, a nightingale from the wind.

This love that calls me is so true, a heavenly moon in June

And bunch of red roses comes calling; I want to leave me behind.

O love, your morning is so bright, 'I love you' loses its ‘I’

And 'you' in long nights of longing, my blazed Eye leading the blind.

*

Your holy eyes are brighter than the sun.

Don't almost make the day begin, do.

Still I know what Shakespeare (and Rex 

Harrison) mean: you can't buy Absolutes,

Nor beg sonnets of them, only credos.

The ‘I’ cannot bear much Reality:

And to see Sun face to face, or claim to,

Merely blinds us to the squinted stars -

Like 'His eyes twinkle at some holy joke

That He bears the punch of: He swans ahead

Of the in-crowd and knows where He's going:

He is God in Persian form; what Majnu

Saw in Leila’s Eye. He is the woman 

I long for. He is the man I could be.'

 

3. Beyond Form 

There's an infinite number of ways 

To rephrase the maze of your gaze. 

Broken face 

Unbroken Grace 

Awoken. 

Your eyes worn again and frayed 

Have seen much better todays. 

Shrouded sight 

Unshrouded Light 

Unclouded. 

Your tongue held but pealing praise

Tolled through my works and days.

Wounded bird

Unwounded Word

Re-sounded.

Your agonies blown with a kiss

Laughing stops of a silent bliss: 

Muted stave

Unmuted Wave

Free-fluted.

There’s a feeling of flinty God

In your ‘have faith, I’ll help you’ nod.

Hopeless plight

Unhopeless Might

Uncopeless.

The Iris of Love in your gaze, 

A Sun of days’ rays in its blaze. 

Fading hour

Unfading Flower

Unfailing… 

*

What a picture of Love you are in age,

My God, but you’re not – some courtly mistress

Whose loose sonnet form I could dress, or undress;

- My own; I went half way round the world

To find another poet kneeling in my place

And there are thousands more giving me chase;

- In the flesh at all, let alone with me,

Lost for, beyond, and too love-found for words

And yet I call you and am struggling still

Tongue-tied to please you with some Seemab-sense

That stampedes  the world into heart-choking crowds

Of strangers; and your born-again lambkins

To their church of your churchless forbearance

As I howl out your voice, the heart itself beating.

 

4. Writing For The New Humanity

‘Instead of practising the humility and compassion (the Avatar) taught, man has waged crusades in His name.’ (Meher Baba)

(to Emma)

If, instead of cowing a sheepish congregation,

You can beef so divinely it makes them feel human;

If you can tongue the bell that rings the heart’s word

And tolls heaven back to Earth, like the Eden in every bird;

If you can string learning’s bow to the arrow of intuition

Yet keep a faith eye-open wide to critical reason

And score your heart in bloody staves and swear it aloud

To the backwards-saddled, blinkered holy-cattle crowd;

If you can shake the hand of the Am-Dram-thank-you-ham

Who lifts your tragic laurels with his prat ‘Fall of Man’;

If you’re wise to the One-Book-brain of Simple Simon 

Yet lost in the heart of a rose, not the tongue of a shaman;

If you can hack your stake to an instrument that plays

A song beyond itself, not a reed that measures praise;

And forget yourself, and the long quest to get it,

In one delicious self-annihilating lyric;

If you can be humble earth moulded to any shape 

Yet turn Sahara's thirst to the peace of a frozen lake

And reflect the stars and the divine desperation

Of the living suicide and the shore-pounding ocean

And blow away the nightclub's Mafioso ultras

With a faith in the voice of love like Frank Sinatra’s;

If you can send a loose sonnet to Love School and teach her

Seven steps to heaven but not come on like a preacher;

If you can experience the vast Wisdom of Faith

In what the married man and woman see face to face;

If you can follow Hafiz , not twist as others have

God’s mouth  to a trap of lies, against you, and still laugh; 

The hart of love will lead you lamb-like to the Psalter

And, which is more, you’ll be a woman, my daughter.

*

 

The diamond is the hardest natural thing,

Its brilliance and sparkle unsurpassed,

Forged in hidden depths, its bright steadfast

Fire is Love’s unbroken Light radiating

In spectral colours through dull stone; life’s bling

Is scratch-surface showy but doesn’t last;

Sixty years can crystallise present with past,

Nations, parties, faiths, young and old hearts dancing.

  

We leave you the fixed multi-faceted lightning

Of cleaving together; the shared labours of love;

Love’s divining mallet in the groove;

The married One’s brilliant bonded crystal;

The diamond-crested waves of shore-shattering 

Ocean that drowned our hearts and took our all.

5. Beyond Belief

And when you gave, then turned away, your ocean eyes, I knew

My heart would break in waves there on the rocks of losing you.

I didn’t ask for this; I only breathed without belief

Unconscious idle prayers: I never dreamed you’d make them true.

My life’s in ruins now; I can’t go home, nor to your door:

In bar and hermit chapel, all I taste is missing you.

I talk about you all the time and think I’ve made some sense

But if my words can’t bring you near....what good can they do?

My days were full of waiting for your Christ feet at my door.

They’re empty now the dove in hand is just the bird that flew.

You touched me once; I closed my eyes; your warmth was like a fire;

I let it smoulder gently: now it blasts my heart in two.

O lover, don’t complain, “this never lost is never found”

The world will think you’re crazy and besides it’s kind of true.

*

The day we met  I stepped inside your door

To say goodbye forever, so hell bent

On every kind of unemployment,

Schoolboy-giggling at work so heaven-sure

But you hugged me senseless to the floor,

Saying heaven on earth was what you meant

Which rang an old school bell and testament

To the word on the street I was searching for.

Gaining heart, I crossed my city of the dead 

To Easter Thursday chancing on Your grave

Dated the day I was born and lay down.

‘What’s lost in the wasteland is found there,’ it said 

‘Who loses himself for love will be saved,’

‘Who dies lives’ and my heart, lost to you, was found.

 

6. Beyond Words

Baba , what can I say to please You?

What tuneless song could I try to sing?

What note can I strive for to reach You?

In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.

Baba, what can I do to keep You?

Close to my heart as it beats out my time?

Close in the crowds where I speak with You?

In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.

Baba, what can I think of to praise You?

If I mastered expression in everything?

If I measured Your Grace in a poem for You?

In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.

Baba, what deepest bow could raise You?

Were the depths of humility sounded?

Were my debt to You found and expounded for You?

In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.

Baba, what heights of beauty could touch You?

Could the world rest in laurels at my feet?

Could I sing like Orpheus in the deep for You?

In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.

Baba, what kind of love could I utter You?

Would my drop were an Ocean pouring?

Would my life were an answer to Your calling for You?

In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.

Baba, what can I know to impress You?

Should all of my moments come clear?

Should all my inspirations come together for You?

In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.

Baba, what kind of sense can I make for You?

Can I open my heart and reveal it ALL?

Can I seek to know Your Word and express it for You?

In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.

Beloved, these questions I ask of You,

Yet Love asks no questions, and answers none.

I am lost, but in love I am lost in You.

In Your Presence my failings mean nothing.

*

This business of loving You in silence,

Not exhibiting it in wasteful words

That pay Love lip service instead of blood,

Talking the talk not the bleeding art;

Performing the arti instead of the heart;

The LOOK AT ME ME ME I LOVE YOU SHOW!

Insult to real Love which doesn’t even know

It loves, still less makes a song and dance:

Well, that’s impossible for a poet

But makes perfect non-sense: the humble bow

At your feet as the audience applauds

Is not why you’re here nor why I do it:

It’s to love you in them and pray you bestow 

On me in return your love’s All in all.

 

7. The Calling 

Love’s not for Sunday schoolgirls ; her rose beam

Is blood on soles not blushing peach and cream.

God gave us religion to kherque  and vest our egos

And showbiz to smash them to smithereens.

This calling in the wilderness, so far,

So near, so very faint, so heartbreak-keen.

This art and soul and song and dance on wings, 

My vision died for, made a perfect scene.

Love’s deva peak, his heaven come to earth:

The angels weep to see or haven’t seen.

Art’s risen Adam-dawn and dewy Eve:

The breaking silence of the broken dream.

O Leila, he’s your Majnu lost to you

In boundless love, your Ocean in the stream.

Oh Majnu, she’s your heaven-scent pursued

To hell and back to where she’s always been.

*

 

To have turned to the East is then to be 

Conscious of the fever behind the plan,

Mindful of the terror behind the calm,

Eyeful of darkness in lit Western cities;

Now I’m called at last to God’s own country

Disbelieving in switch and tap and fan,

A Western, hygienic, jetted Dis-Man

Orientated by your love of me.

Your holy germ is taking me places

Which have no painless position to lie.

I escape to my mind but it won't stop

Pitching me backwards through haggling faces,

Six degrees of separation unwound-up,

Fried, shivered skins: all the layers of ‘I’. 

 

 

8. Not We But One 

(for my wife)

Those who say that marriage is safe, they ought to marry you:

So many years of roses’ thorns, and still no getting through.

I hurt you more than any can when seeming not to love

The heart for whom I live and die; believe me, love, I do.

I talk as if I know the score, can sing the words, but still

I love you far too much for me, not near enough for you.

I flirted with your daring once, and called your beauty mine,

Unwarned then of a charge so high, so wild, so overdue.

It takes too long to cleave together, marry all to one,

But if I kiss-you-quick goodbye, I cleave myself in two.

Since love is war, a heart attack, between the good and bad,

I’d offer to surrender: but I’m fighting me not you.

O head and heart if you should wed, don’t boast your Crown of Thorns:

The Rose’ll think you’re ready - that’ll be the end of you.

*

 

Not ours, my love, the teen-dream green-screen songs

And films n’ soaps n’ mills n' boons n’ ads

Of 'hunters' living with their mums and dads,

The twenty-something dramas, dinging-dongs,

The sizzling catalogues of straps and thongs,

The Darcys, Juliets and golden lads

In modern strip from tales in which the cads

Are fifty-odd like us and cause all wrongs.

Our story didn't end like these above

In frozen celebrations, wedding dress;

We raised a daughter into Phase and Next,

We're grownups grown together, more or less,

Our romance is a realistic text:

A dangerous, married, grail-quest of true love.

 

9. Love School 

Forbidden other half, who elevates

My depths and takes my breath, 

Elusive scent I seek through scorching

Desert day and iced night-ravine,

Up precipice and swirling peak 

To fall and breathe my last at last – 

Her Everest source in Me. (‘The Musk Deer.’)

This Leila I love is a chantress, her mouth like a painted rose,

Her ringed hands fly out of time's rut and pluck my harp of its woes.

This Leila I love is a dancer, unfastened hair like a tide, 

Her body held in a soft flame of stillness, freed in a pose.

This Leila I love is a priestess who trails her heaven scent

To hell and back round a navel the musk-deer   endlessly roves. 

This Leila I love is a goddess, whose neck is softer than sky,

She turns to me like a planet, and everything else explodes.

O Majnu, this quest is your own end, you're lost and that's why you win,

You’re stripped of even your held breath and kiss what God alone knows.

*

 

Our lips blown apart on the wind like a bee

From the flower’s haven, he lives, eats, drinks

And solely breathes and as sleeplessly thinks

Only of me for whose rival he’d die,

If wedding that rival made me happy -

Happy alone in this cleaving that links

Our broken heart as punctured souls wince

In divided union’s blissful agony.

But when his prayer is crushed between our lips

And kisses come inside me like a bee's

And draw my honey from me, every drop,

A stillness comes upon me as of ships

That tall and stately slide beneath the sea's

Uncharted depths. "Oh God," I whisper, "stop...." 

 

10. The Word on the Street and the Love Craft

The Harbour Boat Inn’s going hammer and tongue,

Six sheets to the wind and all hell going on.

Its tavern crowd shuts up, hearing my song,

By the die-for chorus, it’s singing along.

     

I sing the six degrees of our separation

And the one leap of faith to your seventh heaven.

 

I don’t want the 3 worlds, I want to destroy them,

Reverse the equation, our long division.

 

I don’t want mind’s relics, prayers, altars, hokum

Except as remembrance of love’s oblivion.

 

But don’t smash them up, you God-crazed fools,

Blast them out of your mind to kingdom come.

  

Six sheets to the wind, with all hell going on,

Love blows me away; I blink and I’ve gone.

*

And so at last it’s only you, my Friend,

The same old testament between these lines,

No other matter in these quiet signs

But You, no spirit, sense or start or end: 

You gift the giver and your gift transcends

The fairest words, the subtlest rhymes:

A love-struck silence speaking volumes chimes

The un-forgotten lost soul chord, and sends:

What do you give the One who has it all?

What else, a Christmas  book my hurt has made

From broken beat and strings and love as blind

As snowflakes on the wind, a debt repaid

A seven-petalled rose; love’s answered call;

The All in all I gave my all to find.

 

B. Dr Who Am I and The Zen Trails of Hafiz 

A Divine Comedy

 

‘Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz’ is an astro-knight grail quest of self-discovery for the twenty first century.

Join Dr Who Am I and Lt O Who Ru and their Persian Air flight guide Hafiz on the Last Flight to Heaven as they follow the clues left by missing agent 00Heaven - (Adam in a) Bond. 

The object of the game is to find the grail and save the world before Khuber, the possessor of all riches, destroys it.

The only way to heaven is through a nightmare Bank Holiday Weekend in hell, where you unwind 6 degrees of separation – hell - and find yourself through seven degrees of love. 

*

Dante (1265-1321) was guided through hell by the poet Virgil. He wrote the book as far as the Get Away From It All And Find Yourself Easter Weekend Break was concerned. In this update for the 21st century, I am guided through hell and heaven by Hafiz (the Persian poet Khajeh Shamsoddin Mohammed Hafez-e Shirazi, 1320-1390)

Dante’s hell is founded on ice. In this Divine Comedy, re-imagined for a post-Hitler, post-Freudian age, hell’s mouth is a windy anus and its bottom is petrified deep excrement. The bowels of hell are the Somme/Auschwitz/Hiroshima wastelands, breathing the poison gas of the most anally retentive control freaks of all time. 

This is no game for the faint hearted! But only out of such a velt-sturm travail can a new humanity emerge.

Hell bottom is reached through 6 degrees of separation from God and each other. Yet its foundation stone floor of solidified might is also the gate to heaven. To enter heaven, you have to break through this stone floor. Only love has the energy to do this. 

In order of descent: The Subhuman is-

Upper Hell (Hell 1 and 2) 

Hell Central (Hell 3 and 4) 

Hell Bottom (Hell 5 and 6)

In order of ascent: The Human is-

Eden 000. (The Love Suit) and

Heavens 001-007. (7 degrees of love)

Hells 1-6 (6 degrees of separation) are the layers of the Ego. Ego-hell is human evolution - our ancestral mineral, vegetable and animal past lingering on and consolidated through ages of (sub) human action. We do what we were and are what we did - forever. How on earth do we break this vicious cycle? 

The hell described in ‘Dr Who Am I and The Zen Trails of Hafiz’ is within you. But heaven is also within you. Love. Your flight guide Hafiz speaks.

 “Welcome to the last flight to heaven. If you go as Christ to the sky clothed in simple purity then your light shall rise and become as a hundred rays connect to the sun. Safety procedures. There are no safety procedures. God protect your mark of beauty from the evil eye’s effect. By that beauty the moon and sun are held in check. We are now about to take off for Manonash, which is the annihilation of the self, so please unfasten your seatbelts and hold on to your partner as we go through the six degrees of separation towards the seven degrees of love. Though the deluge shall arrive and threaten everything alive, Hafiz is there to be your guide and see you through the typhoon’s eye. Despair not.

Dante’s hell is situated under the earth because it is sub-human. His Eden is on the earth, albeit at the antipodes and on the other side of hell. Owing to the effect of the evil eye, the only way to heaven is down through what Dante called hell, purgatory and on into the core of our being.

Inner space is not like outer space. The deeper you go, the higher you fly. Which is why Dante took off for heaven from the bottom of the world.  Welcome aboard the divine game. Prepare for lift off…”

 

1 The Night Train – the 1st Degree of Separation

Now was the day departing, and the air

Embrown’d with shadows…        Inferno

The night train West voids a soiled brown note and leaves the downfall station; 

Goodbye Cruel World - a vague wind of God and evacuation.

The Zoo-break heart-freeze sin-beasts of Dante shadow the Circle Line,

Paddle up shit creeks out in the Styx to Dis-on-Vacation.

Spine-chilling out dark half glasses of Daily Hell, Bank Holiday

Messiahs Dis-May my heart; Dis Troy, dim Dante’s Vision. 

Blind scentless furies and self Dis-abusers hawk heart Dis-ease

As the Dis Mall burns: Dis-balled Cinderellas; Dis-simulations. 

The OM begs the Quest. “Who’s this bare-cheeked ass we know from Adam

To demand six Paradise dream vacations each damned mission?”

The name is Bond. Adam in a Bond. The actor who can’t go on.

Wash off this do-do, Not Dis Not Dis, this anal retention.

God save me from Dis-consolation Dis-course; Fifty Shades 

Of Grave; the pinched shrill of Avant-God; t’Verb Made Flush on Turd programme.             

God save me from Hind-dos and don’ts! Is Lam allowed? Sikh-hide-whizzed-Om-

Wham-bam Faith – Balaam’s ass hawing from the heart of its bottom.

God save me from the timidity of pagans; who captain

Log-on, boldly trek the stars then dog-collar and Dis-infect them. 

God save me from my Dis-tinted spectacles’ bewitching

Bewildering shadows of Dis-appointment Dis-guised as Eden. 

Hell isn’t other people…….It’s ourselves, our self-fulfilling 

Cock-up conspiracy clouds; our I-land’s alien nation.

Marx says to do is to be; Sartre to be is to do, Sinatra

Do be do be do this ‘Not’ only Love dares to tease undone.

Who to do or not to do? to be or not to be? Who’s that

At the tunnel’s end? Death. I embrace your oblivion. 

Goodbye Cruel Who-do, Goodbye Dis Consort, Ill Winds & Humdrum,

Do do that Voodoo, Voodoo that do do. Let Voodoo - be done! (a shot) 

This Dante Flying Manual’s Dis-turbed by Dis-Association, O Who Ru! 

It’s Dhervish, Doctor Who Am I. You’ve got to Orientate it. …Whirl it to the East! To Bliss-Association. To the Light! 

But that’s upside down…. Ah! I see. … So 00Heaven’s not dead?

Adam in a Bond? No, but we are unless we can follow his trail.

And I see you speak whirling Dhervish? What’s a bright girl like you doing on a Persian Air baggage check?

Don’t be fooled by appearances. I was NASA’s top astronaut. Only the boys upstairs wouldn’t let women fly moon missions.

Because you might make love on Venus not war on Mars? 

Yes! But it takes a real man to come out of his shell and see past the dolly bird to the real woman as you do, Doctor, through her own eyes. 

And a real woman to see the real man, through his, O Who Ru. But no doubt your Persian appearance Dis-stressed them?

In that Easter before the Summer of Love, not so much. 

Ah, more Orientated, tolerant, Eastern-friendly times? 

That and the blonde wig and whiteface I wore back then. Well, shall we save the planet?

I thought the White House was doing that? 

Western Air no longer runs a last flight to heaven. Too many terrorists and not enough baggage room. So I took the Eye of the Hurricane of Love to Persian Air. On a wing and a prayer. 

No trouble selling heaven to God’s Own Country?

Every last flight is absolutely packed. 

(The performance script of Dis station announcements heard behind the ghazal on the recording, beginning ‘The 007 to Bliss has been cancelled…’ and ending ‘Please remain seated for Fundamentalism On Edge’ may be read in full on the ‘6 Degrees of Separation; 7 Degrees of Love’ page of www.garethcalway.co.uk) 

2. The Waste Land. (The 2nd degree of separation)

Faith, give this Who-Man, this Whither from Maybe, inspiration.

Love’s ailing craft tardis-drones in its base like a dying swan

 

“Earth has been Wasted,” the Wounded King twitters, “the Grail removed

Deep into Inner Space, angels retreating from mass destruction.”

 

“Find me the Grail and the Earth will be Saved,” the Grail Maiden sighs,

Dying, “and I’ll be your May Queen forever.” “All else is vacuum.”

“Nothing so real that Der Auschwitz Gott’s infinite unreeling

Hand – sparrows, ants, all – does not unteach through Love's intuition.”

Death croaks my Name: he’ll engrave it in Hell’s grinning Gate, DEATH

THE FINAL FRONTIER. “But Love is the I’s uncreation.”

"Ego’s the aggregate of ages of ignorant action

Dying to Love," tweets a Love that evolves Involution.

 

“Who? who are you?” jabs your talon…“I’m Nothing, without loving

You. All I am’s what I do and can’t undo to unbecome.” 

Cloaking daggers, my spying cuck-Who’s little ‘I’ is so 

Deep under cover his original mission’s forgotten.

Whistles blow, “Dance off your seven-veils in a honky tonk underworld

Thrilling romance of divinest Whodunnit detection.”

 

“Who!!! Who!!!” as platforms are lashed into bubbles by Biblical

Rain, “Find Nirvana from Auschwitz!!!” You Whooot through the station.

 

3. Auschwitz  (The 3rd degree of separation)

After Auschwitz, what heart lyrical?

After our Heimweh of everyday hell, what rose-desk and quill?

Trenched in fury, contempt, fossilised,

Petrified, faith-robbed, heart-beat, numbed, exploited: dark art be still.

Through the barbed wire, your Smile radiates,

Making my thorniest garland thrive; your bloom makes me ill.

Our affair’s hopeless. Stop asking a

Man to start dying of love whom all his life’s trained to kill.

Yours a Zeitgeist of such subtlety,

Stopping the cork is futile, against the triumphant will.

Yours to take home the heart’s ultimate 

Victory, conquer the blitzed out ‘I’, the real Self fulfil.

Master a heart-race past all dreaming of,

Lebensraum wine by the Ocean- ah, but who’ll pay the bill?

Answer, “Heart speech is love’s melody.

Tune in. My rhythm will work yours free as no other will.”

Love’s the sole song so stop glorying,

Gold Lyre, graves underfoot? But the future’s buried there still.

Hell 4. Hiroshima. (The 4th degree of separation)

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ  (Genesis Ii)

Energy exploding from critical mass,

Stasis to kinesis, Noun into Verb,

What God never finished has come to pass.

A chain reaction until All is past

Into fissions whose Noun forever reverbs,

Energy exploding from critical mass.

Atomised, fission-fused corporate Mass, 

The core Fascist State, removed by its Verb: 

What God never finished has come to pass.

Antithesis, thesis, synthesis, gas.

The Sun of its nuclear parts disturbed, 

Energy exploding from critical mass.

Jericho’s heart ignites – mushrooms- shocks - blasts -

Fire-balls – consummates - Death-dusts - its suburbs:  

What God never finished has come to pass.

The End of Beginning, the First that Lasts,

In dust-settled walls scorching the Proverbs:

‘Energy exploding from critical mass;

 What God never finished has come to pass.’

 

Hell 5. The Tyranny of Dead Forms  (The 5th degree of separation)

 

OM calls Q, ‘This hopeless Solo Bond, this drop out from Ocean,

Make his homeless-bound vessel the Ark of Evolution.

God’s original design meets my final solution.

I’m a shocked shell of trench gas, a bubble of poison.

Here all dreams and desires, finest feelings and great thoughts

Turn to stone in unendingly spine-chilling boredom.

Here my mettle is tested, it endures a fatigue

That would crack up a spacecraft of sun-tempered tungsten.

Cauliflowering growths turn me, root over brain-stem,

To the scream of a vegetable torn from its Eden.

I am crawling with maggots, alive with arachnids,

From my pelvis’s pain-crack I mother a python.

Now my brain twists to tentacles, squirming in shelled dread

Making jelly of heroes, my mouth fanging open.

If I dream I’m a beak flying out of this world,

I am clawed back, like carrion, my catches unsung.

Am an animal, tortured to hurt beyond hide, heart, howl

Or the jaw-grip of reason, to chew Love’s conundrum.

Man’s petrified mightbes, ands, buts – there’s no truth here:

Just a brain in a flood-tank, a drop in an ocean.

Wingless Angel, you’re half-trained but bone-fossil-armoured:

Agent Who-do Do-be do-be isn’t you, so have done. 

Hell 6  Solidified Might  (Stone) (The 6th  degree of separation)

Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.

Birth of the deadliest thing on the planet,

The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.

Damn all these currents of feeling that kiss

And wear me, so much, with their wetness, or grit,

Solidified might, past-imperfect as is. 

Silence, a stare, are my anaesthetists.

I freeze out pressure, heat. I won’t admit

The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.

Sunshine, tears, won’t melt my heart like Ice’s,

I’m dead hard. Whatever moves, I’ll kill it,

Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.

I went to pieces once; perhaps round this

More grainy core, less brittle, I can fit

The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.

Made of dead reactions, buried stresses,

Grist to milling Earth, I’ll never quit

Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.

The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.

000. The Love Suit (A Love That Involves Evolution)

e quindi uscimmo, a riveder le stelle.  Purgatorio

Ah! I stand up – and straighten, show backbone and nerve

Like a human, breathe oxygen, swivel and swerve.

But this suit is unearthly, plays tricks with my brain,

Only Judo Islamic Christ Love-Zen will serve.

And the training is purgatory, flesh is not fixed;

I’m a gay-straight, man-woman, black-Eskimo Serb.

I’m the Wandering Who at the bottom of hell.

I can’t Adam and Eve how my crossovers curve.

Now the pantomime king – now the whore - of this world:

Any body that fits what the bit-parts deserve.

Lost in infinite space under multiple moons,

Super-alien brainwaves, Plutonic reserve.

Lost in time since it started and lost again now

Where the dinosaurs jump back and death-waves reverb.

Testing nuclear winter-wear moon boots, on ash,

Walking global-warmed wastes, sweating acid and derv.

Brought to Earth for a master, a mind-blasting love,

I am drilled, by purgation, to plant and preserve.

In this Inner Space love-suit, this Onesie fits All,

My identity shell cracks and heart hits a nerve.

Human being’s the grave-bed of wanting doing;

Love its flower and fragrance, lift off and surge. 

Now I climb up this launch pad I’ve built for my craft

On this dying blue planet I’m pledged to conserve.

Middle wayfaring pilot, you’re programmed to fly

Seven planes to a love star no ‘I’ can observe.

Welcome to heaven. Please drive carefully.

You are strongly advised to stay on the lovecraft at each station stop. Only the seventh heaven (God) is real – the odyssey is much quicker if you don't wander off.  

Heaven 001: Starry Eyed

Kas nadnist kih manzilgah-I-maqsud kujast

In qadar hast kih bang-jarasi miayad (Hafiz)

*Where the real dwelling of the Divine Beloved is, is not clear

Only that I hear the sound of bells (from the travelling caravans)”

Such celestial music! Are we dreaming, like those sleepwalkers?

Yes. But we’re awake. We are our dreams come true.

So- this is the uniform of my dreams? 

Yes. Because you like to be in control!

But you like me in it?

You’re my dream girl!

Is that a bell or my heart ringing? Where are we? Oh, it’s a school! And you’re my dream teacher!

Let the lesson begin!

So I death-plunge to a black hole, in a wild spin, out of space, 

With my mind jazzed, but my heart stays on its flight path to your Face.

Crossing dream land’s timeless rainbow which my Earth-eyes sweep for gold:

Wept effulgence of the star-cheeked, laughing gas tears, of your Face.

 

I’m absorbing unabsorbed-in astral heaven’s purple haze,

Passing fairs’ kaleidoscopics of my shadow on your Face.

I pass ghost-ships on my wild wings lifting dream-high, stellar-fast,

Over planets tipped at light-speed down the bright planes of your Face.

Dazzling Path-knights rocket-science round some ace-high of their own;

My craft orbits round a Sun-heart with the image of your Face.

In this dream-town of a heaven, hidden angels are the birds

Pouring tree-song down like sunshine on a heart rung by your Face.

Singing fragrance– yet I’m held fast by the long shot of an Eye

So enchanting even sirens can’t distract me from your Face.

Smashing star-eyed with its earth-nose through Love’s cataract of lights

And my craft’s gone - but I’m still here, speeding heartlong to your Face… 

O Kaleidoscope in Love-fall, O bright tunnel’s Lighted end,

Trust this sixth sense hyper-realing round the five Oned by that Face.

*

 

The divinest new teacher has come to our school.

In a swirling of stars, I eclipse every rule.

As his brilliant dark look unblinds my mind's eye

To his heart-piercing question, I glow like a fool.

I am deaf to the end of his first lesson bell;

All the bells in my heart are in tune with his call.

I’m as deaf to the world as love’s wonderstruck bell

Swung to heaven by Krishna and dying to fall.

I must hand him my pages of error and shame

With the angels a choir in my ears, high and cool.

Though you're dazed by my radiance: striking its chord

Is his liturgy ‘Love is the key to it all.’

To just drift through these corridors - echoing, bright -

Where his presence has lingered, is blissful, is cruel.

“Loving far-sighted Pupil, distracted, see Me.”

And his laser cuts straight to my heart, like a jewel.

 

Heaven 002: Enlightenment: A Living Heaven Twinned With Hell

Ciguyamat kih bimaykhanish dush mast o kharab

Surush-I alam-I ghaybam cih muzhdiha dadast (Hafiz)

*How can I tell you that last night in the tavern, intoxicated and unsteady as I was, great glad tidings were brought me by the angel of the hidden world.' 

I’m out of my brain with joy. Are we dead?

Alive among the dead. All they can do is watch and remember, rejoice and regret. A thousand fold. We make new things happen. 

What’s that smell?

Sinners unthinking their sins. Stay clear. They can’t.

A Roman candle – both ends – a seized handful of lightning,

She fires through the heavens like light streams off an angel’s wing.

So mighty and subtle, a charge off of yin and yang,

The craft’s me, and I’m her: love-fuelled, she flies to every whim.

The Maimed King’s white-robed daughter, her eyes red with strange desire,

Steers dreamland below – wakes life from dead Earth - by wishing.

Above dreams, I see hereafter’s warp-speed joy and pain: trance 

Of soul-sending bliss; agony of sins’ un-thinking.

Debt-ridden sinners redeem themselves in galloping hells:

Thick sins in deep shit, thin in shallow - below my high living.

Six hundred and sixty six rockets shoot over like stars:

Flight paths clear of congestion and endless delaying.

It’s not sober in heaven, Calypso measures pour down;

Pure spirit unstopped by flesh; wild uncorporate singing.

I’ve pub-crawled from the plane into this heavenly city,

Tavern drinking to an Absent Friend I should be meeting.

Stuck. A Catherine Wheelspin Lotus to Nowhere. Fast. I’ve stalled

The mission, the Earth and its peril, the Master’s calling.

“O God-dazzled, leave this dream, which is heavenly shadow

Of Grail light, and follow Me where such wish-life is nothing.”

*

Through a thousand years I've loved him more and more,

On these blazing scents, I burn to reach his core.

On a breathless trail, my gnosis free of flesh,

Now his fresh white rose is all I’m breathing for.

Just to think of Him releases love’s perfume,

Makes the pure light clear and tunes me to the score.

Flying high above the wedding of my dreams,

Queen of Second Heaven, give me more and more!

 

Ah! his Satellite re-navigates my car

Ah! my I-pod blows as main-lane engines roar.

"Now the ruined choir of faith, it springs to life.

Love’s the faith!" he beams, "which nothing can ignore."

All the power from his ring I hold in hand,

Through the fine torn veil my eyes are burned the more.

Novice, feed this pealing kiss, this heaven fire

And let Now's fine essence linger, ever more…

Heaven 003: Ruling The Gods (State of the Ark)

 Cih rah mizanad in mutib-I muqam shinas

Kih dar miyan-I ghazal qul-I ashina avard (Hafiz)

“What perturbation and distress this musician with knowledge of spiritual states and stages is causing his listeners (lovers) by interpolating in the midst of his performance the words of the Divine Beloved.”

Ye gods, where’s this?

Olympus. Meru. The control centre of the Cosmos. Abode of the angels and gods, devas and fairies. Only there’s a problem.

A problem?

They’ve lost control. …Have you changed your hair? 

Is Aphrodite the Goddess of Love?! Yes! 

My god, you’re beautiful!

So you’ve finally noticed!  Yes I AM! Whoooooo!  And I’m going out there.

No, O Who Ru! There’s so much chaos you might be lost for a million years.

Let me go, geek!

Look out!

Zeus serves notice, via Hermes, I can mind-read his no show:

“Earth’s off axis, mind wreaks chaos, and it mocks gods’ control!! 

“Man-made death-tides, quakes, winds, burn-outs, heat, light, sound – once all

Neptune-swayed, magic-spelled, angel-buttressed: now they blow.

“Past my epoch, my four cycles, a million years

Hurling thunderbolts and miracles, I let it go.

"Gone my long reign and its vapour’s subtle shape-shifting Cloud;

Breath of God’s shadow falling as rain, my own shadow.

“King of angels, I, yet angels and gods looking down

Pray for low birth to ascend where we high spirits go. 

“Man yet king god, I return to the earth as a star;

Raise the standard of what men may become, the hero.

“Man and not god, with my lightning confined in a sword,

Earthed, to die there like a man, pass the third heaven so.

“Like St Michael, ageless angel, took one lifetime as a man

To be God the day his body died, so let me below...”

Oh, beloved, do not offer me that bliss of the gods:

Three hundred and thirty million angels who bow.

I, who loved you in dark exile on the Earth for one smile;

Power over power: where even angels fear to go.

“Shipwrecked Angel, flight deck sinking, high Olympus in flood,

Aim your love-Ark at a peak only Lucifers ‘No’.”

*

What does that mean? That only Lucifers have divine knowledge?

Neither divine knowledge nor divine bliss, only divine power. Words play tricks – a god is not God; Lucifer is not Light; No is not Gnosis. 

Because Lucifer said No to Love at its peak? Saved himself and so lost himself?

Yes.

I’m the deva but my wild love must come back to succour Earth

Just to skivvy for his stern will, serve and suffer and give birth.

I'm the star girl in this chorus, primadonna without child,

Femininity exquisite, casting spells with slender girth.

Now this love-babe takes my spotlight, makes my heart soar with its cry,

“Give me True Love or I’ll die here in this Waste Land, Mother Earth.”

From Olympus, love must wing down, past a harp chord in a cloud

Of some cheap scent, past a dreamland, to this child’s play, to have worth.

Swollen bliss-eyed sweet enchantment, by his love cord held in thrall

To this raped world, warred and tortured, that would breast-milk all I’m worth.

Indra's goddess, all that's force-fed isn't True Love and will fail. 

Let your lightning faery wishes, wafts of ambrose, fall to Earth.

 

**************************************************************

Heaven 004: At The Khuber Pass: Facing The Death Star In His Lucifer Starship

Tu dastgu shu ay khizr I pay khujastih, kih man

Piyadih miravam o hamrahan savaranand (Hafiz)

“O august master, lead me by the hand because I am traversing the Path on foot (helplessly) as compared with other companions who are riding along it.”

This is the highest I’ve ever been. Look! - all the kingdoms of the three worlds.   And they’re all mine!

Careful, that’s Khuber talking. The possessor of all riches.

Whoo! WHOOP! … Who’s that goon flagging me down?

The archangel Michael. Saving you from yourself.

Ha! I’m Omnipotent, the sun of morning. Everything I see is a mirror of my glory. What can Old Michael do? Send his minions to turn me to stone?

Yes. Like Jason out-snaked the Medusa. He’s holding that mirror. You’re a troll looking at the sun. 

Ha!

I see Lucifer didn’t fall – he was Pushed, by God's Whim;    

God’s full Power garlands my neck, Shiva’s cobra coiling.

Closely guarded Key to the spirit world – Top Secret Art 

Of Omnipotence, in the locked gate of heaven turning.

Nothing can stop him, this endless serpent, desire-unbridling

King of creation, his Potency can do anything.

King of all except himself, at black-hole tipping point of 

Falling every moment, roving-proud-Eyed, All-desiring.

Owning everything there is; Eyeing everything he owns, he 

Locks me with his black-hole glance, and into dust I’m crumbling.

Caught between two worlds, my screen’s locked on both, my ace fuel low.

Humming occult energy eclipses thought, risks Grail’s destroying. 

‘Lucifers’ have Omnipotent Divine Power, but no

Directions for use; a Joy-stick that’s stuck, controls missing.

Can Adam-in-a-bounden shake the Bond from bondage or

Will the bondage in the Bond in-stir and gorgon-eye him?

Fierce flaming Jalalis Shiv-combusted from light-winged merlins

Flown by lesser masters, roar up the limitless ceiling.

Light flows from within - without, above, below, all round me,

Streams behind, before, the white rose of a high noon’s shining.

Shielded thus, my vessel soars, high as an archangel’s sword

Sheathed in spells Morganna sings, Mother of All-healing.

Cutting edge, State of the Ark, clothed in pure Light, Christ to sky

Risen; as a hundred rays to the Sun connecting.

Voodoo isn’t Who; Who’s the Who-do left undone; Voodoo’s  legion, Who’s the One

Dragon-slaying, demon-laying, Dissing, Dissed and done Dissing.

Khuber’s Eye thinks Earth’s destruction, and the Earth’s doom starts there

Straight away: All-Anger, he wastes lands by thought’s dark willing.

He farts chaos, new worlds; usurps the afterlife, makes suicides

Enter different corpses, possesses men, beasts, haunts the living.

Voodoo peaks, HOT FEELING HARD-WIRED, ALL-SUBLIME-THOUGHT KISSING:

MMMMMMOI!... gone– thinks he’s stone now, lies flat on the floor in ruin. 

O ace, the King of Spades would club a diamond from your heart

But love’s the higher suit: sends your dark side Khuber-flushing.

*

Mortal blitzgrieg’s a mere shadow of my splendour but above

More than Pure Will’s Look of Thunder, Lash of Lightning, is our Love.

“Do not once,” warned my beloved, “try to conquer other selves.

If you conquer yours, you’ve conquered there the whole world in my Love.”

On a sword-edge bridge of thought deeds - to my Love’s wish or my own:

All the power of my glory; all the sweet fire of his Love.

In a dark night, He has left me crying blindly for his glare:

Turn the hell-scorch of this longing to the blazed pain of our Love!

In an agony of passion I could smash worlds into dust.

All my flash mind is exploding, in the space void of his Love.

Heaven 005: All In The Mind

Huzuri gar hami khvalu

Azu ghayib mashu (Hafiz)

'O Hafiz, if you desire the divine presence, then do not allow yourself to be absent'.

Phew that was ominously close. Like walking a sword-edge bridge across an abyss.

Not as close as this though. I can feel my mind emptying, all the blind alleys and false starts and ends clearing. It’s wonderful.

At last – I think I know who I am-m-m-m.

And how to get there. All those ideas we had to act out in a hostile universe-

Now we just think them-m-m-m! Back to the Source.

Mmm. Is that divine humming you or m-m-me? 

Mm?

Don’t stop!

It’s Buddha under a banyan tree, high as the sky but rooted.

Buddha with your face? M-m-my face.

Shh. Don’t m-m-make a sound – except...

Every sound, the prim-m-mal sound. 

Every feeling expressed in that one sound.

OMMM…

MMMM…

Fiery Light, uneclipsed, fills the sky

Thought unclouded now fixes my Eye.

Even Lucifer out-thought by this:

Power’s weakness is blown in the mind.

Realisation, the sight of Bliss,

Unchecked and fall-free once divined.

Mysteries are explained in a flash,

Let Omega be Alpha, X, Y!

Conceiving the First in the Last,

God’s endless beginning and why.

Not the Gnosis itself, the Gnostic:

All that’s thought, bad and good, low and high.

Not the Infinite singer, the music:

Dis this turbulent Bliss and you’ll fry.

The original OMMMMM MY GOD torch song

For a First Grand Mort that can’t die.

Cruising Mind Control, seer of signs,

Math magician, the sky in the Pi.

Meeting parallel universe lines:

Sin agreement: keep Kuber Ji High!

OMtorway to a vast city-plane;

Mind consumed in Soul’s melody.

Heaven science's Ivory Towers,

Angels' High Ed laboratory.

Keeping God's Eye on wayward minds;

Zapped ignosis, profanity.

Shining Eye you’re half closed to the shadow

Half unblinded by love’s certainty.

*

In a far land where my thoughts throng by like strangers, I’m at home:

Every dirt track, every silk step over marble, is His own.

There are twinned queues for his rich port, endless pulped forms left to fill:

Lovers’ thin bribes, like the beggared, seek a short cut to His dome.

To his doorway, I’m delivered by a rickshaw driven blind;

To His candle, in His still room, where all thoughts fly, I have flown.

All unravelled in His presence, all the heavens in a thought;

I am sight-drunk on the soul-bliss of the vision He has shown.

All this heartland made of cracked crags, which his ‘slaves' heave up the hill,

Every thought-bloom, all this love-light in my mind’s Eye, he has sown.

Were he Lord Ram, though his blood-foe, for his Sita I would die

Like King Ravana’s bold sister, wait an epoch for my groom.

Were he Albert, come to pay back all the love-dues Rama owed,

As Victoria, for that lost groom, in a grave dress I would moan.

Humming mantrum, Om and Empress of the thought world, hear his song:

“Do not seek, child, it’s your own veil, like a cobweb, must be blown!” 

Heaven 006: All In The Heart

Ma darpiyalih ak-i rukh-i yar didih im

Ay bikhabar zi lazzat-i shurb-i mudam-i ma (Hafiz.)

'We have seen the face of the Beloved reflected in the (heart's) cup

O ignorant one, no notion have you of the bliss we imbibe therefrom.'

This is agony. I’m looking at you and seeing a Me I can’t have.

So near and so far.

Everything!

And nothing.

Frodo stumbling through Mordor. Seeing Lothlorien in his mind’s eye

I’m going out of my mind. There’s a ring of fire where my mind’s eye used to be.

Step into it.

This face that burns upon my Eye in searing fiery gale:

More clear than any seen on Earth or heavenward trail.

The Lancelot shot down in flames, the highest craft of all: 

Conception deconstructed lifting Guinevere’s veil. 

‘I see your face in everything, but cannot leap the gulf

Between belief in what I see and being what I fail.’

It’s Leila’s I-consuming, never-ending, parted love 

For Majnu, her sole bleeding where his sole trod upon a nail.

He feels his wreck in her, a bliss that pierces his heart

And bleeds from hers like wounds of Passion’s holiest nail.

The agony of longing long, the ecstasy of pain

In hearts that See their grail through golden bars of a gaol!

Your Sun is Everything and there is nothing that is not the Sun:

My black hole All-consumed in one whole - yet shadows prevail. 

In sainted flames of love, with nothing else it can see 

It burns away in grief, this Eye that can’t have the Grail.

O Heart of Hearts, her Absent Heart is All to you now.

She’s in the Seventh Sun, where Lovers leap and visions...fail

*

Seeing is believing : glimpsed in youth my Love-sick Mazdah

Seen now dancing slim and strong at dawn in shining sadra.

Everywhere in everything and endlessly I see Him

Face to childlike mirrored face who calls me now his Radha.

No desire or energy or thought or trial exists now.

Only His in whom I feel and breathe and am my Master.

Archangelic heart to hearts, His hands as quick as feeling

Close my eyes to slower worlds: His larks lift spirit’s purdah.

Manhood wrecked with fasts and burdens, sacrifice, and service,

Pangs of separation – borrowed – God could work no harder.

Skyward-staring, fractured-limbed, in agony, He’s waving,

“Help my darling first,” – the purest feeling, mind’s un-masker.

Eye to Eye now, reading “One not we”, his feet I’m pressing.

Cuttings, curls, His silenced seed of withered joys I garner.

Heart of hearts, this lonely grief, these flames of lover’s longing

Finely veil you, and your opened Eye’s the All-Outsider. 

 

Heaven 007: Grail Accomplished

Sav bar tahira dama ha thon mire aya

Jab ankh khuli dikha apna hi gariban hai – (Asghar)

‘A hundred times I felt that I held your garment firmly in my hands; 

When I opened my eyes I was amazed to discover it was my own garment I was holding.'

Who are you?

The name is God. I AM God.

The Winter King. The Fisher King. The Wounded King… 

The Mother and Father of Creation.

We’re back where we started! Our real Identity.

We never left. It was all just smoke and mirrors, a mind game.

My mind’s gone. There’s nothing between us. (hug)

Oh God! Best feeling ever. 

Khush.

‘Khush’?

Happy.

Illumination’s burning Eye has gone, let darkness come,

A slip between the Grail and Lip, a black hole in the sun.

In total Darkness, total Light; in Nothingness, nirvana.

Who dared to love, now lover and beloved love as one.

I lift the Grail, the Holy Grail I always was and am

The musk the deer pursued, the winging moth and flame made one!

A golden rose, a thousand suns, a blaze of brimming light

Now overflows my lip with love: the Earth is stirred and shaken.

Brings Light to Earth and Earth to Light, un-maims the Wounded King,

Unwinter the Grail Maiden’s eyes, makes Maid and May King one.

The quest’s achieved, the Earth will live, heart’s wilderness is sown 

With seeds lost in the fruit it bears, the soul of all is won.

O Who of Whos, your heart has burst and pours on Winter’s Kingdom

Your cornucopic vessel’s rays: Who dared win love – has won!

*

This is God. On the highest of highs through the gulf of a tomb,

(This is God.) I’m on top of the worlds born of mind, spirit, womb.

I am not. Now the bubble has burst, there is nothing but sea:

This is God. I’m as drowned in His kiss as the bud in her bloom.

I’m in Love. All the pain in my heart’s disappeared like a dream:

This is God. I am dead to the worlds and awake to my swoon.

I am Him. Now the primal beloved and lover are one:

This is God. I’ve become Who I journeyed towards and from Whom.

Oh my love! He’s embraced me and brought me at last to himself:

This is God. Now I see there is only my Self in his room.

I’m the soul. “There’s no dark where there’s light, no unknown where one knows.”

This is God. Little mind has been razed with its search and its gloom.

O my God! You’re beyond the beyond but you’re found on the Earth.

This is Me, All in All, in the flesh: this perfection, this Home.

Notes: 

The form  of the entire ‘Dr Who Am I?’ sequence is the Persian ghazal, Hafiz’s favourite. A fiendish metre and rhyme scheme keeps the mind busy mastering its challenges, while the heart pours. Ghazals are meant to be sung (as were sonnets). In the ghazal form, a poet can combine poetry of dramatic and/or literary intensity with the lightness of love-lyrics. Constructed with spirit and discipline, and inspired by a beloved, they cast a love-spell.

Women topped the NASA tests in the 60s but didn't fly moon missions until the 80s due to ‘lack of combat experience.’ Dr Who Am I/Lt O Who Ru experiences each heaven in both genders.

 

The seven heavens are as described in ‘The Nothing and The Everything’ by Meher Baba/Bhau Kalchuri, published by Manifestation Inc, California, 1981. 

 

Back cover pic

Whooo ooo ooo?’ The author as Dr Who Am I and actress Taj Kandula as Lt O Who Ru in a performance of ‘Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz.’

 

 

Biog

Gareth Calway is a professional poet, novelist and playwright. He is the author-editor of best-selling  educational books for Harper Collins. His children’s novel for Collins about the slave trade (‘Bound for Jamaica’) was published in 2012. He also writes features for England’s largest regional daily newspaper The Eastern Daily Press.

‘Doin different, new ballads from the East of England’- 39 lyrics in collaboration with English folk musicians, telling stories from Boudicca to Edith Cavell - was recently published by Poppyland. 

Gareth’s theatre company (Room at the Hanse, based in the last remaining Hanseatic building in England – in King’s Lynn, Norfolk) stages plays about  Norfolk notables like Margery Kempe and William Sawtrey (the first man burned for his beliefs in England) in period settings. Gareth has recently completed a stage play about an Indian Messiah in Hollywood in 1932– ‘The Stranger.’

Many of the lyrics in ‘6 Degrees of Separation, 7 Degrees of Love’ have been put to music or made into dramatic performances, including ‘Love School’ (then called ‘Angel’) composed with Gabriella Tal in Meherabad, India, in 1994 and featuredon her exquisite CD ‘Graceful and Magnificent.’ A live version captured on cassette in the garden at Meherabad with all the ambience of that setting is available on Soundcloud.

You don’t have to be in love to enjoy these ghazals and sonnets but it probably helps! They are designed for private reading but also as lyrics for musicians to set to music and perform. Contact Gareth via www.garethcalway.co.uk for permission to do so or to post such versions (as audio or film) online.