LOOKING FOR GOOD FISH


Why complain about life
If you are looking for good fish
And have followed some idiot
Into the middle of the copper market?

Why go crazy
If you are looking for fine silk
And you keep rubbing your hands against
Burlap and hemp sacks?

If your heart really needs to touch a face
That is filled with abundance
Then why didn’t you come to this
Old Man sooner?

For my cheek is the universe’s cloister
And if you can make your prayers sweet enough
Tonight

Then Hafiz will lean over and offer you
All the warmth in my body
In case God is busy
Doing something else
Somewhere.

Why complain if you are looking
To quench your spirit’s longing
And have followed a rat into a desert.

If your soul really needs to touch a face
That is always filled with compassion
And tenderness
Then why.

Why my dear
Did you not come to your friend Hafiz
Sooner?


-Hafiz-

ahh Hafiz soothes me

Welcome Souls Tears

Thank you ArtGurl

Hafiz....

It has been a long time since I dipped into his welcoming waters...

Thank you, ArtGurl

Artgurl thanks so much for this thread.

I come here to breat deep and be refreshed.

Inhale slowly so that I can get the most.

Exale slowly so I can digest what I inhaled.

I FEEL BETTER NOW.

Oceans - Lovely to see you here

AB - I am so pleased you come back to mull the words over again.

TIRED OF SPEAKING SWEETLY

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,

Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”

Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.

-Hafiz-

A ROOT IN EACH ACT AND CREATURE

The sun’s eyes are painting fields again.

Its lashes with expert strokes
Are sweeping across the land.

A great palette of light has embraced
This earth.

Hafiz, if just a little clay and water
Mixed in His bowl
Can yield such exquisite scents, sights,
Music – and whirling forms –

What unspeakable wonders must await with
The commencement of unfolding
Of the infinite number of petals
That are the
Soul.

What excitement will renew your body
When we all begin to see
That His heart resides in
Everything?

God has a root in each act and creature
That He draws His mysterious
Devine life from.

His eyes are painting fields again.

The Beloved with His own hands is tending,
Raising like a precious child,
Himself in
You.

-Hafiz-

IMAGINATION DOES NOT EXIST


You should come close to me tonight wayfarer
For I will be celebrating you.

Your beauty still causes me madness,
Keeps the neighbors complaining
When I start shouting in the middle of the night
Because I can’t bear all this joy.

I will be giving birth to suns.
I will be holding forests upside down
Gently shaking soft animals from trees and burrows
Into my lap.

What you conceive as imagination
Does not exist for me.

Whatever you can do in a dream
Or on your mind-canvas

My hands can pull – alive – from my coat pocket.

But let’s not talk about my divine world,

For what I most want to know
Tonight is:

All about
You.

-Hafiz-

THROW ME ON A SCALE

Today love has completely gutted me.
I am lying in the market like a
Filleted grouper,

Speechless,
Every desire and sinew absolutely silent
But I am still so fresh.

Everything is now the same to me.
Listen:

The touch of a beautiful woman
As she lifts me near,
Drawing my scent into her body;
She thinks about taking me home.

The touch of a wondrous fly
Drinking my vital fluids
Through a strange shaped lute,

The sun laying its radiant gaze against my cheek,
Human voices and the breeze from a passing
Horse’s tail,

All send miraculous currents into
My world.

God’s beauty has split me wide open.
Throw Hafiz on a scale,
Wrap me in cloth,
Bring me home.

Lift a piece of my knowledge to your lips
So I can melt inside of you
And sing.

-Hafiz-

THE HATCHECK GIRL

Why
Are there
So few in the court
Of a perfect
Saint?

Because
Every time you are near Him
You have to leave pieces
Of your
Ego

With
The hatcheck
Girl

Who won’t give them
Back –

O
O
O
U
C
H
.

-Hafiz-

So drawn to the works of Hafiz, I had to learn more about him. Like so
many other great people he was often rebuked, excluded and even expelled
by his own people, his land. A journey he took, with many twists and
turns, and while his poetry, his words, that he claims were divine
inspiration, are often declared to have no peers, it was not this that
gave him grief. It was religion. In his beliefs, there was no
compromise, no bending to the dictates of those who 'ruled' the realm of
the faith he claimed.

As I was reading, I kept thinking of several who post here at JSH, and I
see so many who have the same spirit. I have reviewed several of the
writings you have shared here Artgurl, and I can see a kinship between
some of these writings and certain people here at JSH.

It gives me more understanding of these poems, when I relate them to
those I've met here. This was something I had not counted on. It's
made my heart smile.

Ahhhh Red! How wonderful!

I agree. Perhaps that too is why I feel a resonance with some of the
posters here.

Thank you.

THE EAR THAT WAS SOLD TO A FISH


It is true.
I once had an ear that got sold to a fish.
Lean back: I will be glad to tell you all about
How it Happened,
But first I must digress a bit,
Perhaps way beyond any logical sequence
Of events
We may ever again have piece together.

Let’s see,
We could start anywhere,
With any word,
In this fertile luminous world in which I live.

What is the first letter of your alphabet?

A,
O—
That will be just fine.

Art is the conversation between lovers.
Art offers an opening for the heart.
True art makes the divine silence in the soul
Break into applause.

Art is, at last, the knowledge of
Where we are standing –
Where we are standing
In this Wonderland
When we rip off all our clothes
And this blind man’s patch, veil,
That got tied across our brow.

We are partners straddling the universe.
Someone inside of us
Has one foot
Upon each resplendent pole.
Someone inside of us is now kissing
The hand of God
And wants to share with us
That grand news.

You will find yourself knee-deep in ecstasy
When all your talents to love
Have reached their heights.

Hafiz, time, space, and boredom
Are just passing fads.
All your pain, worry, sorrow
Will someday apologize and confess
They were a great lie.

Let’s see
O yes,
Look how we got distracted,
“Beyond logical events.”
I remember we were talking about:
The Ear That Got Sold to a Fish.

It is true
The moon once put a price
Upon my head
And then hired a gang of
Young thugs.
It seems the Beloved felt
I had been telling too many secrets,
Giving too much of His precious wine
Away for free.

So I got called before a fat burly judge,
But I pleaded my own case well.
I said,

“It is all the fault of prayer,
it has filled me with divine treasures
that I love to loosly spend.”

So,
I bought a ticket for my eye
Upon that White Sky Bird
That never touches ground,

And I bribed an ancient deep-sea fish
To buy my ear and drown.

Now whenever the Beloved whispers
Or even slightly moves
I get a scouting report
That a thousand saints could envy
And would pawn their hearts to know.

Hafiz has become
One of the greatest spies upon God
This world has ever seen.

That is why the moon once got rough.
That is why that fat burly judge
Once crowded all of heaven into a small jury box.

God knowingly did risk my case becoming famous
If I won.
I think He really wanted my name
To spread forever wide.

Have you ever contemplated the thought
As I once did,
That the Beloved already knew, already knew,
Everything long before,
So long before we were ever born.

But now to end this drunken song
With its essence in refrain:

Art is the conversation between lovers.

True art awakes the
Extraordinary
Ovation.


-Hafiz-

Here, at last, my weary heart finds rest.

Ahh and Hafiz welcomes me home

this is so cool!!!


i tried to put Rumi here next to you dear love...


but they threw me to the poets!!!

I followed the sweet smell of honey and found you there.

The resonance is lovely!

I Know The Way You Can Get

I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.

That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!