Latest samson edit; SAMSON:

"The sun is within me and so is the moon"
Author: Kabir

Hands, famed across the lands,

centuries later still—

though more for the final act performed in darkness,

than anything ever carried out in the light—

are embedded with minute

fragments of splintered bone,

a tribute

to the jaw of the jackass—

should have seen,

when eyes could still see,

the warning implicit in that weapon.

Hands swung

that beleaguered bone,

crunched the helmeted heads

of harassing Philistine soldiers,

who swung their iron swords

and dared attack in the narrow pass;

giving little thought to irony, I suppose,

as death greeted them in that dead bone.

Hands with flesh

that covers the renowned fingers,

warm even now, ridiculed as you are,

chained and kept far below, severed from

the yellow ball. The shadows capture

your shadowed thoughts,

memories of the light; burnished sun,

fire in muscles, firm earth beneath feet,

trapped in this place of darkness,

of dead soil and lost eyes; her hands,

the fever coursing regardless of betrayal.

Hands that have touched

spear and breast,

flicked nipple, drawn blood, crushed a hand,

fired a crop, caressed a cheek,

touch now

what eyes can no longer; in the trappings of the mind

images, mere echoes, flash, flicked by a god’s nimble fingers,

the ravaged mind, more rat than human,

repeatedly explains to itself,

as only a ravaged mind can,

how hazel eyes, while still able to be admired,

have led you to this place; in the dark, lost and mired.

Do you understand you forsook yourself,

followed the fallacy of the moon

whose weight is nothing

compared to the suns and whose light

is but a reflection, like the lake

that reveals

but has no reality?

Despite the sun

and the strength it willingly bestowed,

you gave the moon all your secrets,

standing proud in the swaying-curtained room,

the candle and the moon

dancing in the evening breeze,

allowing the blood-fed sickle

to shear your strands

and remove your strength

and now…

two hands, that once held, caressed and fought,

rest upon the pillars of the temple

and strive to bring everything down—

yourself

the persistent scent of the moon

duplicity—

seek to bury beneath the building’s rubble,

the shame of being blind when

the sun gave your eyes

all the light they ever required.

Samson (edited)

"The sun is within me and so is the moon"
Author: Kabir

Samson,

your hands, once famed across the Land,

and still now these centuries later,

though more for the final act performed in darkness,

than anything you ever carried out in the light…

Samson,

your hands, still embedded, minutely,

with fragments of splintered bone

from the jaw of the jackass—the rest of that body,

its flesh having long since rotted away,

the rib cage exposed as if grinning, daring Fate,

and losing the dare, obviously, rests in the desert,

a signpost to all life’s direction.

Samson,

how clearly you should have seen then,

when you still had eyes to see,

the warning implicit in your weapon,

but as you swung that beleaguered bone

and crunched the helmeted heads of the harassing

Philistine soldiers, who swung their iron swords

and dared attack you in the narrow pass,

you gave little thought to irony, I suppose.

Samson,

the flesh that covers your renowned fingers,

warm even now, ridiculed as you are,

chained and kept far from the yellow ball—

the shadows capturing your shadowed thoughts,

your memories of the light; the burnished sun,

the fire in your muscles, the firm earth beneath your feet,

not this place of darkness, of dead soil and lost eyes,

Delilah’s hands, a fever coursing still regardless

of her betrayal—flesh that has touched lips and breast,

flicked nipple, drawn blood, crushed a hand,

fired a crop, caressed a cheek, touch now

what your eyes can no longer see though you can still recall;

the images mere echoes, images that flash passed

as if flicked by a god’s nimble fingers,

and your ravaged mind, more rat now than human,

repeatedly explains to itself, as only a ravaged mind can,

how your hazel eyes, while they were still yours to admire,

have led you to this place; for in the dark, lost and mired,

you understand you forsook yourself, followed

instead the fallacy of the moon whose weight is nothing

compared to yours and whose light

is but a reflection, like the lake that reveals

but has no reality.

Yet Samson,

despite the sun and the strength it gave,

willingly, you gave the moon all your secrets,

stood proud in the darkened room, the candle dancing

in the evening breeze, and allowed the moon

to remove your strength and now

your two hands, hands that once held, caressed and fought,

rest upon the pillars of the temple

as you strive to bring everything down…

yourself, the moon

Delilah’s lingering scent and

most of all

Samson,

you seek to bury beneath the building’s rubble,

the shame of being blind when

the sun gave you all the light you ever needed.

The Burning Bush speaks to Moses and his lover

 

If you believe then

when you come together

your hearts will part, two

red seas shifting allegiance,

leaving the space between where your words,

your hopes, can enter and be swamped

by the years; drowning in shared moments,

the traversed desert gone now…

those cavernous nights spent alone, prowling

for meaning, for a light other

than the moon’s false reflection of possibility

finally buried beneath the deluge

of this experience.

And if you believe then

when you lay down your words, your experiences,

your fears, your hearts will merge from the river

and carry you together as if the you two

might be babes born in the basket

not knowing where you head,

only that at some point your journey

will free you from all that has gone before;

so that like migratory birds you might

fly across the unnamed oceans

and find shores distant from your humble beginnings.

And in your ears, as you soar

your merged hearts

sound like trumpets loud enough

to tumble the proud walls of Jericho.

The Ripples of Separation - edit 1

I think sometimes of that baby in the basket,

set loose from the bank, cast adrift
upon the life-bestowing Nile, its blue water,

the tall reeds along it high banks, the sacred Ibis

flying low, curious to see the crying child

all while the hot sun beat

(to the tune of the babe’s heart)

down upon his swaddled flesh

as his arms and his legs kicked and clutched

empty air where moments before

had been the warmth and security
of his mother’s breast.

The baby too young to understand
anything except being lost to the current,

little ripples of events joined

like voices in a crowd to create the whole,
of events he does not comprehend,
loss as heavy as a stone, though he does not understand,

the way I never did, standing in church

listening to sermons delivered in ancient Latin, he can only

feel the change in circumstances the way the basket

beneath him, shifts with the river’s alterations,

threatening to drag him
beneath;

never to know that his mother is lost
so that he might be saved, and this unknowing—

what knots were tied, mooring him

like a ship, tied and left to bob on the ocean,

hitting the pier, hearing gulls cry

and wishing to be soar with them

but trapped to remain tied to the one spot;

and what what lost to him?

The events that might have changed him if only

to save him his mother had not lost him

and he was never to know except in its absence?

and I wonder if later, finding himself

 in arms that embraced him, the breasts

pushed close, the warm of breath, of pulse neck,
he, unsettled by that water’s uncertain trip,
does not believe, not ever really –
and perhaps this is why as Moses
he could cast aside so much and chance
the words of a burning bush, the separation of the river
and the wandering in the desert –
that he deserves those arms and the love held within.

The Prodigal Son (a third edit)

The force that drew you home — each sunrise

you stood at a foreign window and watched

the returning sun, its rays hitting the sand,

as if the desert skin were a blind worm

wriggling its pink segments, slowly burrowing

into your heart and you emerge without expectation,

travel towards you father’s eager hand —was it stronger

than that which drove you to choose emigration?

And your brother, whose smile was lost

in the distant childhood that severed you both,

whose eyes stayed closed because he saw too clearly

your mother’s hand, how it lingered on your shoulder,

did he ever forgive you, who took for granted

all that he had not—forget your father’s words spoken

upon your return, what else could he utter to justify

his excitement as he spied you wandering up the road?

Did your mother’s eyes ever lose their sheen
of pain? Did cousins, once co-conspirators,
and family friends, always visiting, ever cease
that curious sideways glance in your direction?
And in the cloying heat of the many summer nights,
surrounded by familiar sounds, laying in your tossed bed,

as if a mariner trapped by contrary wind,

every time you exhale do you wish to again escape?

Abraham's Consequence:

Carry this wood for me son,

On your back, a burden

For I am so old now, born down

By Time and though I can still walk,

Yet my back permanently is stooped

And I cannot carry the weight of my youth.

Come my son, we have far to walk

And my footsteps have shrunk and fall

In the creases of your large strides.

Across the blighted terrain we must journey

Into the day and through the night

Until we reach the mountain’s crowning.

There we will burn a lamb (hush son

Don’t ask where the creature is now, anon

All will be revealed) innocent

As the day’s breaking of night

So that our sons and their son’s sons

Will spread across this empty planet.

…And here is the punch in my guts

I feel when I read this ancient text —

What did the son feel? oh we know about Abraham,

How he withstood the test

Ready to burn his only son at God’s behest —

But it’s the child’s mind I wonder about…

How must it have been…laying there

On that pile of gathered wood (that he himself had carried –

And here think of that other son and his carried wood)?

Wood drenched with a flammable liquid,

The father with a lighted torch, madness in Abraham’s eyes

For surely the test would bring us to that point —

What did Isaac think of God

As he lay upon his back

On the wood stack, the torch already alight,

The fire ready to leap across the gap;

What did he think of his father, Abraham,

Of himself cast as sacrificial lamb?

And did Isaac ever forgive—is it possible to have a choice,

Can a son can forgive his father

When his father listened to The Voice;

Took the son to the mountain peak

And prepared to set the son’s flesh to burn,

In the name of faith, a sacrifice?

Now imagine the tears shed on that walk home

Flowing freely down the crevasses of ancient Abraham—

He understood the damage done,

The reverberation to be felt through all the centuries;

Fathers and sons ceaselessly engaged

In the conflict between the lamb and the beast.

And this brings me to my point—

Nations make the same selection

And we call it war

The god of our nations, calling us to send

Our uniformed and lumbered children out into the world

And sacrifice them for the common good.

Abraham must surely have known

What his actions had set in motion;

And Isaac, was he filled now with an unexplainable angst,

A desire to lose the lamb and become a wolf,

Rend the father limb from limb

And replace the old order with the new?

Then there is the mother, left behind,

(And all this time it is still an immoveable fact),

Standing there at the opened door,

Her eyes drained from the day spent

Staring into a distance greater

Than any male god ever understood.

And in that face I see Mary

As Christ carried his wood

And the face of every mother

As their son marches off to war,

Lambs all of them caught in the fates

Of the old men’s making.

In that face I see my mother,

Standing as she so often did;

Her hands crinkling the venetian blinds,

Her teary eyes staring out

Into the darkest of night, waiting for her son

To return safely home once again.

Moses Displaced (edit 1)

 

This desert will entomb me.

Each grain of sand will consume me;

A feast of decay, a burial by decree.

This desert will not let me escape.

It will hold me in its grasp

While in the sun my waters evaporate.

I have carried my people far, as if

On a river we travelled, in a reed basket ,

Seeking the promised land —

The swaying tree, the white-tipped river

Winding between the shadows of the valley, the dreams

Prophets have handed down like swaddled babes.

But now I know.

This desert is the end for me.

It whispers; it sings

The desert’s words are my unravelling.

This will be the home of my bones until I

Am desert too, unrecognizable even by God,

Blown across the sands as sand myself.

This desert’s rising and falling bosom undoes me,

Drinking me into the expanse so uniform

I will be forever displaced.

Moses Displaced:

This desert will entomb me.

Each grain of sand will consume me;

A feast of decay, a burial by decree.

This desert will not let me escape.

It will hold me in its grasp

While in the sun my waters evaporate.

I have journeyed far and thought

I might see the promised land; see the green valley,

The swaying tree, the white-tipped river I have dreamt of

Winding between the shadows of the valley

I had imagined…

But now I know.

This desert is the end for me.

It whispers each evening; In the morning it sings

And the words are my unravelling—I will never leave.

This desert will be the home of my bones until my bones

Are desert too, unrecognizable even by the eyes of God,

Blown across the sands as sand themselves.

This desert undoes me, seeks to hold on to me, to bring me

into its rising and falling bosom and hug me eternally,

Drinking me into the expanse so uniform I will be forever displaced.

The Poet is an albatross (III)

 

No matter how prodigious the wings,

No matter how resilient their feathers,

No matter how far they extend…

At some point

The poet’s wings will falter.

Words and thoughts plunge into the big still

And the poet must endure the minutes,

Hours and days as if strung up on the tree,

Blind to events, severed

From the pulsing heart, the poet’s lungs

Laboring to inflate and the poet’s sacred voice silent.

At such times the poet must then be patient;

Let the tiredness settle, let it weigh down the words

Until the curving words and all their possible connotations,

The flowing sentences and their musical enraptures,

sink into oblivion — dare them to be gone forever!

And in that moment the poet’s strength returns,

The feathers flutter as words and rhythms return

Like green leaves and the albatross takes flight once more;

Heads into the great trajectory across the globe, migrating

Across the lines of other poets, other thoughts, other rhymes

Remaking everything, recreating and soaring into the blue.

Two Women, One Child and The Judgement:

On the marbled floor, perhaps a mosaic, the tree

Spreading branches like burgeoning humanity,

Both women collapse, their hands beseech,

Their eyes wet with tears; they each tell their story,

Call for Solomon the Wise to grant them leave to claim

The squalling child as their very own son (and that babe,

Innocent of crime, did he have a sense of calamity?).

In that crowded chamber, how the onlookers

Must have studied the two? Did they place bets;

Did a voice cry out as if a new tabloid was being sold?

Were there conjectures made; whispers behind hands;

Judgements on each woman’s performance?

How many of those onlookers

Would have made a decision and moved on

to the next judgement? And if they

Looked closely into the shadows of the room

Did they see an angel shimmer, could they

Have heard the breath of God, have seen Him

Silently stride through the congregation

And into Solomon’s mind; releasing logic

And in Time, to set their King aside

From the horde of cast-off declarations?

Was Solomon’s God his innermost voice

Eternally extolling him to make the ethical choice

Regardless of how he must look to the outsider’s eyes?

And how did Solomon the Wise look

In those moments when he gave his decision?

Did the crowd gasp? Did they cover their eyes and weep?

Did they clench their fists and consider a revolution? Or worse,

Did men feel their loins stirring; knowing some other male’s child

Would soon be severed in two? Did the many beasts

In that room win out over Solomon’s emerging civilization?

And in the aftermath, as the mother gave up her child

And so gained the highest ground —

Leading to the saying that love conquers all—

Did men then feel that shudder of missed opportunity,

Of limp disappointment at no bloodshed,

Or horror at each other’s (and so their own)

Hunger for the child to be slain upon that marbled floor.

And Solomon, alone that night,

Did he weep for mankind’s future?

Did he realize that the beast is tattooed

In secret, in the soul of every child, so that each of us

Thirst for blood, seek the darkness not the light,

Shiver with delight when harm visits

Neighbor and foe alike?

Samson: (edit 1)

"The sun is within me and so is the moon"
Author: Kabir

Your hands

are embedded with minute

fragments of bone, a tribute

to the jaw of the jackass—how clearly

you should have seen then,

the warning implicit in your weapon.

The flesh that covers them—warm

even now, (the ridicule you have become)

chained and kept far from the sun—flesh

that has touched lips and breast and blood,

touch now what your eyes can no longer see—

and your mind expounds, as only a mind can,

how your eyes, lured by lunacy, have led you to this place;

for in the dark

you have forsaken yourself, followed instead

the fallacy of the moon

whose weight is nothing

compared to yours and whose light

is but a reflection—a lake that reveals

but has no reality—yet

you gave the moon all your secrets,

allowed the sickle to shear your strands

and remove your strength; now

your hands, hands that once held, caressed and fought,

rest upon the two pillars of the temple

as you strive to bring everything down…

yourself

the moon

and the shame of being blind when the sun

gave you all the light you ever needed.