Bezelhearts

Hearts shake like hands when they meet
Reaching through to grasp
The river of life that pours through
Remnants of Adam's dreams
Flowing from life's beginning
To its end
Love's tumbling cataracts
A routine expedition
Imam Ghazali is there with Chaka
Playing frisbee with the bezels of wisdom
While Attar's Simurgh
Baked in a pie
Poops on the Greeks
Polishing their amphitheater
I hear them beating him
In the paddy wagon
somewhere in Arizona
Shaykh Abar left his old life that day
Cleaned up MLK
With a fistful of turquoise rings
A hickory staff
And the Pole of our age
Not soon after I'm approached
in a repurposed school building in North Elizabeth
By a man who thinks he knows I'm a Sufi
Now I'm out of shape with a paunch
That feels like memory foam
And a heart that has a cheek you kiss at night
Before you sleep
The du'a of protection
"Audhu bi kalimati..."
I seek refuge in the words...
I didn't know
Driving a Camry station wagon
When we all got arrested
All except me
And Willem did yoga
And head stands in the police station
On our way to Chicago
In the rain
While I spoke incessantly of deli cold cuts
waiting for us back in New Jersey
Nole changed my name
To Mario in his poem
My heart then and now
Knew now back then and
Later on that we would meet,
Would meet across the fold of space and time we know as poems
While the bezels fly across the rooftops of our loneliness
How peaceful it is
To be alone and alive, and loved
At last
In the privacy of my very own
home

Child, upon waking at night

Child, you're what's best from your mother and I
Mind of the Earth and heart of the Sky
Dream of the Dreamer and Song of the Golden
Pale of the snow drift, dance of the cold wind

The rush of the wolf pack
A whispering stream
The silence of pine groves
A tangle of mangroves

Gentle and old as the harvest moon
Cruel as the osprey
Proud as the loon
You are midnight's lagoon
                 dressed in mirroring stars

Yes you are, my sweet child
Yes you are