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Tag Archives: Coleman Barks

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rumi’s constant conversation

01 Wednesday Nov 2017

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Coleman Barks, constant conversation, erotica, metaphyics, quote unquote, Rumi, Touch my skin so I can be myself

Who is luckiest in this whole orchestra? The reed.

Its mouth touches your lips to learn music.

All reeds, sugarcane especially, think only

of this chance. They sway in the canebrake,

free in the many ways they dance.

Without you the instruments would die.

One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss.

The tambourine begs, Touch my skin so I can be myself.

Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone,

that what died last night can be whole today.

Why live some soberer way and feel you ebbing out?

I won’t do it.

Either give me enough wine or leave me alone,

now that I know how it is

to be with you in a constant conversation.

— Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

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rumi’s price of a kiss

01 Wednesday Nov 2017

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Coleman Barks, erotica, metaphyics, price of a kiss, quote unquote, Rumi

I would love to kiss you.


The price of kissing is your life
.

Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,


What a bargain, let’s buy!

— Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

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rumi’s a sky where spirits live

01 Wednesday Nov 2017

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a sky where spirits live, Coleman Barks, erotic poem, Like This, Rumi, thrash metal

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,

Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,

Like this.

If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is,
or what “God’s fragrance” means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.

Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.

Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don’t try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means
to “die for love,” point
here.

If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.

This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn’t believe that,
walk back into my house.

Like this.

When lovers moan,
they’re telling our story.

Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.

Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.

Like this.

How did Joseph’s scent come to Jacob?

Huuuuu.

How did Jacob’s sight return?

Huuuu.

A little wind cleans the eyes.

Like this.

When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he’ll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us

Like this.

— Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

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quote unquote

02 Monday Jan 2017

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Coleman Barks, Moses and the Shepherd, prose poetry, Rumi, translation

Moses heard a shepherd on the road, praying, “God, where are you? I want to help you, to fix your shoes and comb your hair. I want to wash your clothes and pick the lice off. I want to bring you milk to kiss your little hands and feet when it’s time for you to go to bed. I want to sweep your room and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats are yours. All I can say, remembering you, is ayyyy and ahhhhhhhhh.”

Moses could stand it no longer:  “Who are you talking to?“

The shepherd replied: “The one who made us, and made the earth and made the sky.”

“Don’t talk about shoes and socks with God! And what’s this with your little hands  and feet? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like you’re chatting with your aunts. Only something that grows needs milk. Only someone with feet needs shoes. Even if you meant God’s human representatives, as when God said, `I was sick, and you did not visit me,’ even then this tone would be foolish and irreverent. Body-and-birth language are right for us on this side of the river, but not for addressing the origin, not for Allah.”

The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and sighed and wandered out into the desert.

And then, suddenly, a revelation came to Moses. The Friend’s voice:

`You have separated me from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to unite, or to sever? I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing that knowledge. What seems wrong to you is right for him. What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship, these mean nothing to me. I am apart from all that.

`Ways of worshiping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another. It’s all praise, and it’s all right.

`It’s not me that’s glorified in acts of worship. It’s the worshipers. I don’t hear the words they say. I look inside at the humility. That broken-open lowliness is the reality, not the language.

`I want burning, burning. Be friends  with your burning.

`Moses, those who pay attention to ways of behaving and speaking are one sort. Lovers who burn  are another. Don’t scold the Lover. The “wrong” way he talks is better than a hundred “right” ways of others. Inside the Kaaba it doesn’t matter which direction you point
your prayer rug.

`When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are, you will keep saying again and again, “This is certainly not like we thought it was!”

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi,

It’s all praise and it’s all right

(trans. Coleman Barks)

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Rumi, “Some Kiss We Want”

19 Friday Feb 2016

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Coleman Barks, love poetry, Rumi, Some Kiss We Want

There is some kiss we want

with our whole lives, the touch

of spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling!

At night, I open the window and ask

the moon to come and press its

face against mine.

Breathe into me. Close

the door of the brain and open 

the window of the heart.

The moon won’t use the door,

only the window.

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Rumi, “This Market”

19 Friday Feb 2016

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Coleman Barks, love poetry, Rumi, This Market

Can you find another market like this?

Where, with your one rose

you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?

Where, for one seed you get

a whole wilderness? For one weak

breath, the divine wind?

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Rumi, “The Price of Kissing”

19 Friday Feb 2016

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Coleman Barks, let's buy, love poetry, price of kissing, Rumi

I would love to kiss you.

“The price of kissing is your
life
.”

Now my love is running toward my soul shouting,

“What a bargain, let’s buy!”

Quote

Rumi, “Like This”

19 Friday Feb 2016

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Coleman Barks, huuuu is the sound of blowing wind across your palm, Like This, love poetry, Rumi, Shams

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,

Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,

Like this.

If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is,
or what “God’s fragrance” means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.

Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.

Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don’t try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means
to “die for love,” point
here to my heart.

If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.

This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, the returns.
When someone doesn’t believe that,
walk back into my house.

Like this.

When lovers moan,
they’re telling our story.

Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.

Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.

Like this.

How did Joseph’s scent come to Jacob?

Huuuuu.

How did Jacob’s sight return?

Huuuu.

A little wind cleans the eyes.

Like this.

When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he’ll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us

Like this.

Quote

Lalleshwari: clad only in sky

19 Sunday Apr 2015

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Coleman Barks, female mystic, Kashmiri language, Lalla, Lalleshwari, poems, Poetry, Richard Temple, Shiva, translations, vatsun

These are two translations of the same poem:


Dance, Lalla, with nothing on

but air. Sing, Lalla,

wearing the sky.


Look at this glowing day! What clothes

could be so beautiful, or

more sacred?   

Barks, Coleman. Naked Song. Lalla. Athens, GA: Maypop, (1992)

<><><><>


Dance then, Lalla, clothed but by the
air;

Sing, thou, Lalla, clad but in the sky.

Air and sky: what garment is more fair?


Dance then Lalla, clothed by the air;

Sing then Lalla, clad but by the sky.

Air and sky; what garmant is more fair?

‘Cloth’, saith custom; ’ doth that
sanctify?’

Temple, Sir Richard Carnac. The
words of Lalla, The Prophetess: Being the sayings of Lal Ded or Lal
Diddhi of Kashmir
. Cambridge University Press (1924)

<><><><><><>

Lalleshwari (1320–1392) was a female mystic of the Kashmiri Shaivite sect. She was a creator of the mystic poetry called vatsun or Vakhs, literally “divine speech.”  As a child she was married at the age of 12 into a family that was reported to have regularly mistreated her. After becoming a disciple of Sidh Srikanth, she renounced her material life and marriage to become a devotee of the god Shiva. As a mystic, she wandered naked, reciting her proverbs and quatrain-based poems. Her verses are the earliest compositions in the Kashmiri language and are an important part in history of Kashmiri literature.

rumi’s “the importance of gourd crafting”

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by babylon crashing in Erotic, Illustration and art, story

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bestiality, Coleman Barks, porn, Rumi, The Importance of Gourd Crafting, translation, zoophilia

The Sufi mystic, Jalal ad-Din Rumi, tells this story of the dangers of letting the animal in you run wild, literally. I have heard some commentators talk about how it is a metaphor for self-restraint, and perhaps it is, but it also seems to serve as porn, that is, “art for the purpose of sexual gratification,” as the dictionary so blandly puts it, as well.

Mythology seems full of such stories; Zeus only appears as an animal when he takes it into his head to impregnate a mortal. They say it is because his “godly figure” would be too awe inspiring otherwise, but if you are a god with unlimited powers that answer seems a tad convenient. This all leads to the question of how often were shepherds and shepherdesses caught enjoying the flesh of their flock before “that’s not a bull, that’s a god in bull-form” became the standard response?

There was a maidservant
who had cleverly trained a donkey
to perform the services of a man.

From a gourd,
she had carved a flanged device
to fit on the donkey’s penis,
to keep him from going too far into her.

She had fashioned it just to the point
of her pleasure, and she greatly enjoyed
the arrangement, as often as she could!

She thrived, but the donkey was getting
a little thin and tired looking.

The mistress began to investigate.
One day she peeked through a crack in the door
and saw the animal’s marvelous member
and the delight of the girl
stretched under the donkey.

She said nothing. Later, she knocked on the door
and called the maid out on an errand,
a long and complicated errand.
I won’t go into details.

The servant knew what was happening, though.
“Ah, my mistress,” she thought to herself,
“you should not send away the expert.

When you begin to work without full knowledge,
you risk your life. Your shame keeps you
from asking me about the gourd, but you must
have that to join with this donkey.
There’s a trick you don’t know!”

But the woman was too fascinated with her idea
to consider any danger. She led the donkey in
and closed the door, thinking, “With no one around
I can shout in my pleasure.”

She was dizzy
with anticipation, her vagina glowing
and singing like a nightingale.

She arranged the chair under the donkey,
as she had seen the girl do. She raised her legs
and pulled him into her.

Her fire kindled more,
and the donkey politely pushed as she urged him to,
pushed through and into her intestines,
and, without a word, she died.

The chair fell one way,
and she the other.

The room was smeared with blood.

Reader,
have you ever seen anyone martyred
for a donkey? Remember what the Qur’an
says about the torment of disgracing yourself.

Don’t sacrifice your life to your animal-soul!

If you die of what that leads you to do,
you are just like this woman on the floor.
She is an image of immoderation.

Remember her,
and keep your balance.

The maidservant returns and says, “Yes, you saw
my pleasure, but you didn’t see the gourd
that put a limit on it. You opened
your shop before a master
taught you the craft.”

(tr. Coleman Barks)

age difference Alejandra Pizarnik anal sex Armenia Armenian Genocide Armenian translation art artist unknown Babylon Crashing blow job conversations with imaginary sisters cum cunnilingus drama drowning erotic erotica erotic poem erotic poetry Federico Garcia Lorca fellatio feminism finger fucking free verse ghost ghost girl ghost lover gif Greek myth grief Gyumri haiku homoerotic homoerotica Humor i'm spilling more thank ink y'all incest Japan Japanese mythology lesbians Lilith Lord Byron Love shall make us a threesome masturbation more than just spilled ink more than spilled ink mythology Onna bugeisha oral sex orgasm Peace Corps photo poem Poetry Portuguese Portuguese translation prose quote unquote reblog Rumi Sappho sheismadeinpoland sonnet sorrow Spanish Spanish translation story thank you threesome translation video Walt Whitman war woman warrior Yerevan

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