How Can We Escape (1/19/20)
Love came and broke my regret as if it were a bottle.
How can we escape
Love’s constant breaking and repairing?
Who can repair a broken bottle except Love?
Rubailer (2016), Rubai #3, page 112.
How Lucky (1/12/10)
The soul’s Sultan pushes us from one play to another
as if we were pawns in a chess game.
I wonder if He wins. I wonder if He is ever checkmated.
After all, aren’t we the ones on trial?
He picked up our particles, gathered them together,
then kneaded them with the universe to make a paste.
He pierced our noses and inserted reins made of greed and lust
in order to pull us around the world like camels.
Who are we?
He put an oxen’s bell on the neck of the sky
and keeps crushing us under that sky as if we were sesame.
How lucky is that camel who has been tied by the halter of God’s Love.
He makes us drunk and excited while we are among the other camels.
Divan-i Kebir, Volume 15, Ghazal 6, verses 48-52, page 11.
Love Has Arrived (12/22/19)
Love has arrived and become the blood in my skin and veins.
It has emptied me of my self, filling me with the Beloved.
Every part of my body is now occupied by the Beloved.
Only my name has been left to me.
He has become everything else.
Rubailer (2016), Rubai #4, page 112.
I Will Keep Silent (12/1/19)
Just now, ruby-colored tears have started coming from my eyes.
A trace of Love’s dust never appears, but a sign has appeared from Love. Continue reading
Two Opposite Bits of News (10/27/19)
A smile explains Your kindness.
Crying is a complaint about Your grief. Continue reading
“Why Don’t You Come, Too?” (9/8/19)
“O heart,” I said, “why are you like this?
How long will you be hanging around Love?
My heart answered, “Why don’t you come, too?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you came and tasted the pleasure of Love? Continue reading
I am Absent (8/4/19)
He is inside and outside of my heart.
He is the soul of my body.
He is my blood and my veins.
How could faith or heresy fit here?
I am absent. He is all of my existence.
Rubailer (2016), page 68, Rubai #4
You are the Antidote…You are the Bait (7/28/19)
What is life without You?
Life without You is forbidden.
Living without Your beautiful face is nothing but death,
that thing which was given the name, “life.” Continue reading
Stay for Awhile (7/14/19)
A sugar buyer comes, saying,
“A caravan has arrived from Egypt.”
Hundreds of camels come loaded with sugar cane.
O my God, what a beautiful gift. Continue reading
I Have No Constancy, No Peace (6/30/19)
He said, “I am the fire which burns you.”
I answered, “Yes, but Your Love and Your sun are in my heart.
“If I smell one rose without Your Love,
burn me right away like a thorn.” Continue reading
Once life is ended, God gives another life, a different one.
If this temporary life is annihilated, here is the permanent one:
Love is the Water of Life. Plunge into it.
There is new life in every drop of that sea.
Rubailer (2016), Rubai #3, Page 42.
We have seen that time has no beginning of its beginning,
because we are the ones who have fallen in Love.
The others are merely spectators. Continue reading
Love for You has killed Turks as well as Arabs.
We are slaves and servants to those martyrs, those generals.
Love for You is saying, “No one escapes Me. I own all souls.”
He is right, O heart. Quit playing.
Rubailer (2016), Page 40, Rubai #4.
Love is flying to the sky
and tearing hundreds of curtains.
Love is to be free from the self in the first breath,
to be lifted above the feet from the first step. Continue reading
I don’t have any friend except Love.
Love was with me before I came into this world, and Love is still with me.
My soul yells, “O lazy one on Love’s way, come on.
Hurry up. Reach me.”
Rubailer I2016), Rubai #1, Page 38.
Reach Me (4/28/19)
O Kingdom of Love (4/21/19)
O Kingdom of Love which opens hearts in the world!
O one who has had good fortune, been honored
by the secret of “God does what He pleases!”
O the joy that is hidden in the torment of Love!
How wonderful, how wonderful is the Kingdom of Love! Continue reading
First, He pampered me with a thousand favors.
Then, He burned me with a thousand troubles.
He played with me as if I was nothing more than dice in His game of Love.
But, when I died from myself and became Him, He finally threw me out.
Rubailar (2016), Rubai #3, page 31.
From the End to the Beginning (2/24/19)
We are brave, insolent revolutionaries
who play with our own lives.
It is a pity that this muddy flesh
is the peer of our pure, clean soul. Continue reading
The Beyond (2/17/19)
Some people tell stories about the Beyond.
Some expect help from the Beyond.
Souls keep running out of bodies secretly,
looking for the Beyond.
Rubailar, Rubai #4, Page 222.
Slave and Servant (2/3/19)
I am drunk with the wine that Love has engraved on His glass.
I ride a horse. Its reins are Love.
Falling in Love with my moon-faced Beloved is great,
but I am a slave and servant to the One who made Love a slave-servant to Him.
Rubailar (2016), Page 108, Rubai #3
Your Sun (1/20/19)
My God, the thing this poor soul wants from You
is something for which not even sultans would dare ask.
Every particle is happy in the sunshine, but every one of them is still distant from Your sun.
And, this penniless beggar wants to have Your sun.
Rubailar (2016), Page 145, #1.
Don’t Even Think of “Two” (1/13/19)
I am such a lover that I have given up the road and everything that exists on the road,
because the only companion of the lover
is that exalted one person who has no beginning of the beginning. Continue reading
Majesty, Majesty, Majesty (12/23/18)
Love is completion, completion, completion.
The self is imagination, imagination, imagination.
This divine light is majesty, majesty, majesty.
Today is the Day of Union, Union, Union!
Rubailer (2016), Page 287, Rubai #4
For Whom Are You Searching? (12/9/18)
Sometimes you get tired of living with His sorrow and reject life.
Sometimes you tell His story with the troubles in your heart.
Why are you dizzily turning around the world?
He is not outside of you. For whom are you searching?
Rubailer (2016), Page 471, Rubai #2
Love’s Murmur (11/25/18)
There is nothing remaining in my ears but Love’s murmur.
There is nothing remaining in my soul –no reason, no thought– only the sweetness of Eternity.
The colorless brush of Love has blended all colors.
Still, the state of no-color remains.
Rubailer (2016), Page 184, Rubai #4
The Sweetness of Eternity (9/16/18)
There is nothing remaining in my ears except Love’s murmur.
There is nothing remaining in my soul–no reason, no thought–
only the sweetness of Eternity.
The colorless brush of Love has mixed all colors.
Now, it can’t even remember its past.
Rubailer (2016), Page 184, Rubai #4
The Smell of a Burning Heart (6/24/18)
Troubles for me are cooking in my Beloved’s kitchen of grief.
Every moment hundreds of different meals of sorrow
are being served to my table.
The smell of a burning heart surrounds my table all the time.
I wonder. Where is this smell coming from?
Rubailer, Page 290, Rubai #1
The Shrill Pipe of Love (6/3/18)
You are coming our way. You are a decent person.
We are also nice.
In appearance we look like fire,
but we are the Fountain of Life for you.
You are a small pigeon. You were born in this nest.
If you don’t come this way on your own, we will pull you by force.
Be in our temple. We are in the temple of that Beauty,
becoming drunk on His wine, the wine that comes only from Him.
We stand at our place like a mountain, but we flow like a torrent.
We keep silent like that, but sometimes yell and scream like thunder.
Although like fate we kill people for no reason,
you have a soul that resembles the sea.
Put it in your palm and come to us.
Our part of ownership of these five senses is only a short five days.
But, there are six dimensions and we are a sultan in each one of them.
We are following the shrill pipe of Love.
Our breath is sharp. Our voice caresses the soul,
because we keep playing the vessel of the soul, crying for you.
You concern yourself with the matters of Love.
If you are sincere, don’t look for a bed and a pillow.
We have welcomed this illness caused by our desire to reach the Mine.
We haven’t welcomed it out of love for a bed and pillow.
The light of the sky, the praise of Tebriz is our Shamseddin.
Because of that Sun, our insides have turned out to be the sky
and the self has become the Moon.
Divan-i Kebir, Meter 10, Gazel 71, Verses 749-757, Pages 155-156.
Aren’t You Worth… (4/29/18)
I am the wind, You are a leaf. When I blow, how can you not move?
If I give you an order, how can you ignore it?
What can you do if I throw a stone and break your jar?
Aren’t you worth hundreds of pearls, hundreds of seas?
Rubailer, Page 465, Rubai #2
Don’t Worry (1/28/18)
Once you become the friend of one whose heart is in God,
don’t pay attention to other people and their customs.
Your soul will fall in Love’s fire like your fate.
Don’t worry. Don’t run away.
Know this well: From now on, you won’t fit in anywhere.
Rubailer, Page 424, Rubai #2