a cloud

A cloud never says:
"I am dark and grotesque. I am useless."
It never utters a word. It never complains.

It just breaks open and pours into a sparkling, abundant rain
when it can no longer carry its own weight

Body and heart

Such is your friendship. radiant one:
Through the caves of confusion,
where there was no single ray of light,
You guided me.
You're a guide - extraordinaire.
I wanted your closeness, to flirt with you.
You came to the dance floor of existence
where we tangoed and whirled and spun
until we fell down and forgot where we were.
Such is your friendship, radiant one.
Such is your gorgeousness.
But when you gave me your body and heart.
How can I possibly put this
into a language?

YOU and I are ONE

beloved
for years, so many years
words have been barriers.
now
i removed the words
and
YOU and I are ONE.

start all over

a thousand suns convened today to sing you, beautiful one.
the song was sublime
enormous was the light.
so enormous that it was almost
impossible to hide even the tiniest
secrets of the heart's longing.
Who can turn away from this song?
Who can turn away?
the silence was vaster than the sea
and the heart became more beautiful, more shining than ever
where the world awakens to her own essence
like reptiles we take off our old skins
and start all over.

whenever you're ready

There was a man who fed on dry bread almost most of his life time. One night while he was sound asleep, a bee buzzed into his ears and woke him up. He was annoyed because he did not understand her at all. The bee kept buzzing and flying around in the house. When he followed her, he saw a bowl full of honey sitting on his eating table. "I have made it just for you. Eat it." The bee assured the man. Not knowing what he was doing, he dipped his bread into the bowl and ate it. He was too confused and happy, he did not know what to say yet his throat shouted to the bee: Where have you been all this time? The bee said: No rush my friend. Everything comes to you whenever you're ready, whenever you're fully prepared. A wild rose blooms only after tasting the sun's sweetness.

the sun

Why do you grieve, dear one
for the candle the wind has blown out?
The wind knows what she is doing, for sure.
Step out of your rooms confines and see
The entire sun shining for you.

The road

Remember this:- Journey begins on a road, the road into your heart or the one that winds to your shopping mall. whichever it is, we need a GPS or someone to guide us in the beginning. As we grow up and expand, we drop the GPS or the navigator because we know where we are going. We become the road or the road becomes us or the road even disappears for we no longer need it.

energy exchange

Energy exchanged
between us
on the cosmic level
in the depth of silence
carries a great light that
awakens the sun within us,
The sun that could lit
the whole planet earth.
The sun whose songs
could move through
the wombs of thousand oceans.

the miracle

with groans in the waters,
pulse of the earth
breath of the sky
sigh of the moon, I also expand and contract a zillion times a day.
The miracle is not in contracting or expanding.
the miracle is
the one inside you who watches all these happening.
the miracle is the part of you
that stands tall and still
even when all your hopes and dreams seem to be falling to pieces.

when the mouth parts

Somethings in the heart is very strong
Somethings in the heart
They want to be said,
They want to be shouted.
Somethings in the heart of a dove…
But when the mouth parts,
Only one word comes forth.
LOVE.

the sun's envy

when you come to me dear friend
come to me.
with an open heart.
the same way you face your sun-moon-saturated smiles
Face your fragilities too,my friend.
No part of you needs to be veiled nor hidden from yourself
for whatever is hidden, whatever is covered up
will show up in your dreams to keep you awake all night.
Once your heart opens up, dear one
You dance like a wheat-grass
tended by a passionate farmer
You sing  like  robin.
when you come to me
with an open heart, dear friend.
you become the sun's envy.



--

the mind's chatter

How perfectly we merge
into eachothers furrows...
how our presence heals deep, wide wounds,
Stops the mind's chatter.
This beauty of intelligent design
stops the mind's chatter.
like serene books sitting on the shelves,
like pebbles in the beach, like berries on trees...
How sacred is this knowing of oneness!
how my hills divinely fit into your gorges,
my firmness into your tender tissues..
there is more than enough space in the heart, for all of us.
how my sorrows bore into your soul moving you into awakening...
stops the mind's chatter.


this love where your wings are also mine,
this love that spills perfume into your heart
crosses thousand bridges and stops the mind's chatter.
You know, dear one,
we are not just the building tools for a house
we're the light, the life essence and the music
filling every corner of the house.
the entire mountain is made of tiny grains called love.
we are those grains, dear friend, holding the mountain.
we are the blocks and the mud holding a house together.
your beauty my friend, your beauty stops the mind's chatter.

In the heart

Last evening, sitting in the living room silently,
I gazed at the door constantly for a short while
and the door opened.
It was a friend.
I looked at the window and the window opened.
It was the evening breeze.
I looked inside and realized that
whatever was opening and whoever was opening
it was in the heart.

The music knows her face

The heart has arrived at the point where no explanation is needed to get to the truth. Even as I walk, the earth under my feet has known the wedding between the sky and myself and all beings surrounding me. She has always known this secret. This is not polygyny nor polyandry. It is a relationship that is aware of itself. It is a music that knows her face. If you've a passion for a morning walk, how can you stop the dews from kissing your feet? How can you escape from a crisp, morning wind caressing your warm arm? One can write an encyclopedia describing the history and the chemistry of honeymaking and the entire process. But I want you to open the bee hive and taste the honey with your own mouth. And you know what happens then? You search for words, you look for your margins, where the ocean starts and where you end, you cannot find them anywhere. All you can find is stillness. All you can find is love.

Old spider

Like an old spider
I weave existence together
hair by hair
strand by stand,

Oh dear friend!
I want you to be fully here with me
in this love affair  and 
 not worry to understand.

This forgetting is remembering you

 I have to confess, beloved one, for zillion times again. You see, I keep forgetting  the things I see or hear about. This is the body's way of communicating in great clarity, body's way of cleansing itself from past dregs. So bear with me, elegant one, if I forget the things you tell me because this forgetting is a sacred walk in the woods. This forgetting is remembering you. It is remembering your sweetness, remembering the thousand oceans in your eyes.

How much?

Existence said to me this morning
Do you love me?
I said, Yes my dear. I love you so very much.
How very much? she wanted to know.
I put my hands on my chest and said
As much as my heart can contain you.
How about the part of me
that remains outside your heart?
She said.
My heart is a shoreless ocean.
beginningless, endless, infinite song.
No part of you remains outside. I said.
She started dancing. I joined her.

delicious lunatic

Smiling for a camera and laughing with me is not the same, most beautiful one. When you laugh with me, you are actually breaking into tiny gems of raindrops, bursting into songs charged with thousand star lights. You transform into a delicious lunatic and care less about what people might think.

.

Remember me

I am the child
in your heart.
Naked, fearless and radiant like the beam of light, .
The way the sky looks,
Look inside and remember me
when you remember abundance.

combing love

To be open with you, dear friend, this meeting is magical, this meeting with you is very magical to me. Truth has finally shared herself  and I am  already sated with the limitation of my own survival skills.  Everything I have so far acquired has melted away like salt in a warm water.  I can now stand in the storm or walk through a tornado without a protection, I can walk in the torrential rain without the raincoat. Yes. I can now relax and do nothing other than kneading light into your bones, combing love into your hair.



--

You're already a masterpiece poem

You're already a masterpiece poem. why do you need approval from others?

You're an eternal song of divine creation, Stop searching. Instead sing in my heart dear friend. Sing!
Drop all your attempts to be understood, to be accepted, to be loved by others
Light can only be felt and enjoyed beyond skin-deep, beyond all forms. When you know you're already love, you will also know fear and worries and anguish are no longer profitable enterprises to you.

Here

Music moves through us
poetry moves through us
silence moves through us
Noise moves through us
Light and darkness move through us
but we are always here.
We have been always here
even before we were named
way before we were born
Before poems and before darkness
We have been always here.

Don't tell me

Don't tell me you're honey that lacks sweetness, the ocean that is
thirsty for water, the sun that hungers for light. Don't tell me you're a
king who goes begging for alms, a farmer starving for food, the moon crying for

a smile, a flower bereft of a perfume. Don't tell me my friend.

Remember the flower

We live million days in a day.
some days
we wake up to the morning breeze
and we open up to all wonders
some days mornings and evenings wake up within us.
In this beauty, we all die.
Every-body should die after flowering
We scatter our perfume around
in the form of a trillion light-waves.
We are not actually dying. The same way the wine spills from the bottle
We just leave our vessel because we can no longer be contained in it.
We climb the ladder to the higher dimension.
we are free now.. and remember the flower
which you're.
Remember the flower.

Thousand times a day

Who said
it is a wastage of time to repeat delicious things?
Not at all, for me, for the walls of time does not exist in reality.
That’s why, most fragrant one, I wanna repeat you thousand times.
That’s why I wanna sing you and kiss you and hold you
Thousand times a day.

When you breath

most eloquent one:
what is in the words

what is in the silence?
whether you say something
or nothing,
your voice is the light
ripping through light.
Your hands brim with love
and when you touch me
I grow into an ocean-wave.
or a skylark or an oak tree filled with a thousand new birthing.

when you breath, believe me,
mountains melt under my feet and evening breeze
whispers to me:
Dance!Dance my friend without fear!
When you breath
The desert in me turns into a delicious bread,
into a sweet goat milk.
and I awaken into my own fragrance
that has been missing for so many past lives,
when you breath.

You never say a word

You move me back and forth back and forth; You make me sing and dance. You touch me and I cry and laugh. I whistle and shout to share your brilliance, to scatter your perfume around. You make me write love poems. When all these happen. You just listen. You never say a word.

I am the river

I’m the river

that snores

The river that moans. The river that roars…

Every sound of its roar is my breath.

Its rise and its fall is a sign of life

In the depth of my bone

It is the color of my curiosity.

My courage and my cowardice.

Every bit of its flow is my hope, my strength

Tears of my bliss, whisper of my love.

Magic of creativity. My singing age.

I’m the mountain.

Every part of its rise

And every minute of its silence

Is my song that’s not sang yet.

My denied freedom, my hushed liberty.

Every speechless stone is my deep sleep.

I’m the Sun, the Sky, the Moon, the galaxies.. the milky way…

Their every twinkle, their every stare,

Their every frown, their every smile

Their every caress is my wakefullness.

Their divine warmth is my longing for newness.

I’m the woods

Every single wood is the renewal of my physical body

The song of the beasts in the wood is my heartbeat,

The shade of every single tree is my serenity

I’m themeadow, the moors

Every single blade of leaves is my flesh under my skin

Every grass is my blood cell.

The flowers in the grass are laugher and sorrow in my heart.

Every road that crosses unending glassfield

Is part of me that sings with light.

My presence. The awareness of the Now

I’m a farmer.

His bellowing bulls, his bleating sheep

His frolicking horses and kicking mules

Are the age of innocence.

The cord between a cow and the calf

And the milk in between is immortal tenderness

Of my mother.

The serene thatched, lonely houses

Are my purple moments

when I meet the formless, the ageless. The nameless

I’m the winds.

Every sound of its whistle

Is the poem I am composing.

Every groan of its might is

The symphony of this poem

And every sigh of its fury is my suppressed feelings.

I’m the earth.

Her hills and her gorges are my silent tongue.

Every speck of her dust is my beautiful death

My buried intensities. My spent hours, my evenings.

Light enters me through your smile

And it departs from me though your sobs

And it returns to me again through your silence

Through everyone of you,

I learn how to live

And through everyone of you

I practice the art of dying.
                                         [2000, Shegger, Ethiopia]

                                              
                                   
                                        

Pristine eloquence

Before you were trained  how to smile
you had the smile deep inside you
that bursts like waterfall.
The moon would not say to you:
I have shone for you all night, dear friend
except  for the moments when  the clouds
got in the way.
I have shone for you all night.
It is your turn now
to wash my feet and serve meal all day.
The moon would never say that to you.
When you smile for someone
don't put a price tag on your lips or your eyes.

A thing of pristine eloquence

cannot be purchased with money.
It is only accessed with the heart's longing.

The burning

A dry tree branch that was flung onto the fire was popping and bursting and crackling in great Pain. A tremendous noise came out of him. The fire stopped burning for a while and asked the tree if it hurts. The tree said:

Burning is not fun at all. But what hurts most is the separation from my mother, the source.

The skin

after so much exposure to the heat of the sun and the cold,
after so much expansion and contruction,
beaten and thrashed ruthlessly, Stretched and nailed to the ground
drenched in chemicals,
The raw, moist skin from a sheep, turns into a drum
to make such a sweet sound!

more sweeteners

I taste life's song in my tongue, echoing against the hills of yearning. I see her dances in the eyes of every human being I come in contact with. Oh, how delicious, dear friend? How delicious is this existence when you're here! How sweet! Beloved friend: Do we still need more sweeteners in our foods, when life herself is so sweet? Do we, dear friend?

Oh Heart

Oh heart! This moment I feel like a firefly hovering and dancing around you all my glowing at night, all my splendor is not to pay back for your beauty. It is only to reflect your elegance into the dark

Come fill me

I am
A vessel
clean and empty
and I don't have stories to tell.
Come fill me beloved one.

Come fill me with your light.

If you're hungry for the sea

If you're really, truly hungry for the sea
Don't spatter the water
by the shore and frighten the quails;
Delve into the sea and lose your mind
in the core of your longing,

into the heart of your calling.
Taste, this burning, this nectar of love
with your soul's tongue.

All your life

when you
Connect with the ancient longing,
the ancient music,
that is you,
when you
Remove your gloves and feel the earth's heartbeat,
that is you,
trees would shake off the dew
from their branches and smile back.
The tigers in the forest become your companions.
They would offer you to ride on their backs.
Mountains move in and out with your breath
The sky swaddles you in his wings
like your mom did when you were child.
You become that child again.
You're here as well as everywhere.
Swimming with the fish, in the coral reefs
or on the moutaintop, dancing with the winds
You would look around
and say to yourself:
Where have my worries gone?
Where has my fear gone?
where have my problems gone?
You see?
this is the beauty
you have been looking for
all your life.
This is the beauty.

Tell me

If I say I am in love,
People won't understand me.
If I say I am drank,
The police would issue me a ticket.
If I say I am on fire,

They would call the firefighters.
If I shut up and mind my own business
I don't have any business
More important than you.
Tell me what to say, dear one.
Tell me.

Naked

What words can tell this beauty
when you're in this garment, dear friend?
What words?
But when you stand naked, fully naked,

the sun herself would envy you.
The moon cannot look at you for
your radiance would dazzle her eyes.
The sky would come down
to spread himself beneath your feet

when you stand fully naked.

These eyes

You tell me, most beloved one

What I can do with these eyes.

It matters not if I keep them wide open or shut;

I cannot stop you from entering.

Like rain enters rocks that are cracked

This entrance causes so much ruins.

Superficial borders are dismantled

and boundaries are crushed.

Freedom

 This
is what happens:
The very moment
You promote your grief into a heap of joy
Existence starts to clap her hands and 
 The daisies in the yard of your soul
begin to bloom.
Innocent tears from your eyes

wash down all your sorrow!
Ahhh! what freedom!

The harp

So much happens around me
They shove me
They rock me
They pull and push me.
They scream and shout at me
To get my attention.
Most beautiful one
How can I hear anything else right now
When you play the harp in side me?

saffron smile

All forms
Solid and seemingly
indestructible structures
enter the womb of time and dissolve.
And as if they've never existed, we forget all about them,
even the dust they left behind never tells a story.

for me in this moment
Nothing is more seducing, more fragrant
Than the saffron smile in your eyes.

The way a hint of butter
Enters a bowl of soup
The way light enters the day
I want to enter you and dissolve.

If at all

If at all
I have shared something
that has touched the petals in your heart;
that has brought you to a place of silence
that has reminded you of your own wings
You've long forgotten;
It is only inspired by this vastness of light
and grand beauty that
we all breath every day.
And this fragrance desires to fulfill
herself through us.

The union

While driving on highway 100, homeward last night. I heard a voice and looked up. the sky was birthing another full-grown sky. It was too large to see, too large to reach,  too deep to comprehend. The birthing was total and complete! The Silence was intense. It was not the silence that comes with a breakdown of a vacuum cleaner. It was the silence that is born when the sky is wedded to the earth, when hearts melt in love. Shreds of dark clouds race across mindlessly. Stripes of white cloud sailed freely. Stars blinked, emerged and vanished again as if playing peekaboo. Winds blew rapidly from one corner to another. These did not bother the silence of the sky. None of these seemed to worry her at all. She was just a watcher. She watched all the comings and the goings without getting involved, without judging or commenting. . As I watched this, something magical, something indescribable happened. The distance between the sky and where I stood dissolved. The separation between the sky and I no longer existed. I lost all my sense. The sky herself disappeared eventually and I disappeared too. Only this huge space, only this vast silence sang unbroken and uninterrupted. The union the heart yearns for has arrived.

All I hear is That

Like milk from cactus tree
Love is pouring around me

And inside me.
All I breath
All I see
All I touch
All I smell
All I hear
Is That.
How
has this found me, any way?
I don't know.

We have a date.

By the equator of heart's longing,
Between throbbing thighs of the full moon ,
At the center of human dreams,
We've a date beloved one.

If you come, I will meet you there.
If you don't come, I will meet you there.

Healing tree

I have long forgiven the axe as well as the hands that shoved the axe into my body.

Look at me, my friend. How forgiveness heals fully. Look deeper at my branches and roots. All the wounds are gone and what you can see now is only love. Love and acceptance. Believe me, all my residues are totally gone. The pain from my grievance and anger is gone. It was wearing me down and almost killing me more than the axe has killed parts of me. Yes, that was so tiring. Now I am totally free because the forgiveness is total. The love is total. Look how the wound is fully healed. Look how I am flowering again! Love for everyone. Acceptance for everyone even for those hurricanes and the axes. Love.She smiled through her flowers. Tears on her eyes looked like fresh dews on the grass. Tears of peace and forgiveness. They rolled down and touched the ground and turned into diamonds.

intoxication

We meet
in the streets or in the malls;
in the coffee shops or on facebook
and touch each other.
This touching
becomes an intoxication
This touching is a celebration
and not an accident.

Return of human sanity

The moon
Soft and tender moon
Entered my room
last night.
and left a trail in the morning.
I stepped on her footprint
and lost my mind.

Out in the street
I fell in love with everyone
and wanted kiss every hand,
Wanted to touch every feet I see.
Most people I met
Melted in this big love.
Only few tied their hands behind their backs
and shackled their feet with a barbed wire.
Beloved one,
This is
the return of human sanity.

It is time

It is time, dear friend

we evolve and  end human suffering
it is time we  bloom and outgrow our folly.-
who said the hands you hold is not divine?
who said the place where you stand now is not sacred?
who said the mouth you kiss is not holy?