A Journal of Mystical Inclinations Toward the One

POETRY AND MUSIC

June 15, 2006

Conception
by Moksha Sommer

My parents say they knew my name before my conception
reading the Bhagavad-Gita on the front porch
the word danced out of my father’s lips
and my mother’s formed the shape of ‘oh’
the shape of knowing
this word would be their next child.
they conceived me out of willingness to freedom
not from wanting or
needing
or expecting anything but their own pleasure.
like the luxury of ripe and perfect fruit.
my mother felt stoned
she said
through the pregnancy
the holding was enough
there could not be more than
some small stirring
just like
the transference of a seedling to new ground
that takes all attention
so there is nothing left for designing the architecture of alienation
she says they bought nothing in preparation, not diapers, nor crib, nor car seat, it all came later.
she says she moved a piano and tore down walls while seven months pregnant.
by herself.
reckless and romantic always, my wild but sure mother.

my mother taught a three-hour dance class the night of her labor.
she danced me out moaning all the way, both she and I
till my cries eclipsed hers
and replaced them with the voice that would sing to that pain of separation and entry
and she could again breathe startled at what
had been made
so long ago
to wine and the seamlessness of words from
holy books of places she would only later see

my father says it is not my own liberation that was made in that moment
but that of others that I would later form
intention made flesh
burden and birthright merged
and song to the point of ringing ears
on and on and out
enough to holster the weight
and complication of moving forward.

Posted by Moksha at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

De Profundis: The Seed
by Jennifer Roshan Ferraro

To bear the loneliness
of your own voice
you must be buffeted by trees
and carried by winds
toward some ceiling you imagined
Your voice can never stop hunting
It is a grief soaked cloak
It is an earth where you have become lost
It batters the rock of your self-image
as the gong of simplest truth
Deep in the field of the belly
where the children have been huddled together
for warmth
You had to arrive at the longest winter
before the hardest won spring
could begin—
Savage cold had to clear
the last stalk, brown and mushy,
so you would yield your attention
at last—
There had to be frozen anonymous gusts
bellowing over the treetops, carrying
no name
There had to be
days when the snow mocked you
with its purity, waking you from dreams
in which dirty words were said
to a white world where you were separate;
There had to be
a cry that reached you, entering you and working
quietly within your blood, carrying with it
intimations of a journey;
There had to be houses on the journey
and each house a body, inhabited and warm,
rich with human presence and voices
which did not speak to you.
You had to be a moonless night, a pilgrim in a foreign land
before the seed could find you hospitable—for it was in you
all along waiting for this, this night where you are helpless
and must dig deep for some spark of light;
You had to conceive a present buried like a seed
in all your sufferings and lack, and weep at last,
not anemic stolen tears soon to evaporate
but sob, wholesome and whole and redeeming
out of the depths of sorrow, for the seed that
was waiting for you , in you,
for the unknown life that was only waiting
for your death.

Posted by Moksha at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Magic in the Moment
by Karuna Bai

Now is all we have,
dear Friend.

How many precious secrets
slip past
because I have not
been listening?

How much delicate time
melts away
because I am
lost in my brain?

How much tender love
hides in fear
in the face of
my demand?

NOW is the moment of conception.

There has never been any other time.

BREATHE into this and live.

Posted by Moksha at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Even the Stars Will Ring with Laughter
by Saria Idana Joy Young

A rainbow caught
in a glass jar
under an overpass
in a corner
in a sliver of sun shaft
on a slab of cracked side walk
conceived this dream.

A rainbow trapped
in a bottle
out of loneliness
sang this life into existence

and here we are.

Grit in an oyster
births a luminescent pearl.

* * *

And in the purring silence
there was nothing
but the cosmic spiraling of the mother’s
pottery wheel
on which she sculpted planets out of
pink and yellow gasses and
the pulsing glow of rock.

She sculpted lands of silent shadow waiting
and lands of pure arrow light shafts
dancing circles round each other’s play.

Somewhere in this cosmic soup
my heart spun
out of thin threads
and into existence.

In dark longing
lies my heart
in space more vast than unanswered questions
my heart hangs
like a bubble from child’s soapy play
weightless in air
iridescent at its edges
and blinking dark at its center.

It is the dark that hides my heart’s greatest secrets
known not even to me.

But when my heart is pierced with arrows of light
dancing play around my dark sphere of heart
it will no longer be an amorphous spinning orb
clouded by regret and forgiveness
but will sprout its mysterious seed.

Rooted in love
my longing will blossom
the sweetest fragrance
will shine forth
even the stars will ring with laughter
and i shall be conceived.

But now in the darkest night
singing shanty songs
i search for doorways out of my own ghetto.
i sleep cradled in hand Divine
yet why
why this difficulty to feel that breath?
to remember
and re-member myself
in cosmic play
dancing shadows
and light shafts
on the screen of the mind?

Only when i learn to die
shall i conceive myself
and learn to live.

* * *

Wrapped in spirals of water
as a shrouded
a seed spun out
into sunshine and planted
a moon…

Deep within womb song
eternal laughter
like rain on tin roofs
deep within womb of my soul
i sing and birth a new day.

i cannot conceive
the love that birthed me
cannot conceive the conception of G-d.

Has G-d father and mother?
In what dance did they copulate?

Perhaps, Divine Being was birthed
out of a moment of manifested wonder
when sound first
materialized on all plains
the ringing of bells…

and then there was G-d.

we are concepts
in the Divine’s mind.

* * *

And tonight i hunger
to see your face
in every corner
beloved

And tonight i will dance
wild Dakini on my nafs
that i might see your face
in every corner
i will dance patient Shakina
will dance fire Fravashi
will dance wild Dakini
i will forget myself
dancing
melting into your face
your face
your
face
no eyes
mouth
nose
but breath
pulsing out of every pore
of every skin
of every substance.

And as i fumble drunk through
all this dark
closer to your face
beaming smiling face
i see reflected
my own image
in the placid waters of my heart

fumbling
tumbling down a shaft of light
down a tube of dark
towards my next pilgrimage.

* * *

A rainbow trapped
in a bottle
out of loneliness
sang this life into existence
and here we are.

Posted by Moksha at 07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor

Moksha wandered with the gypsies of Andalucia for years after being kidnapped by them as a babe. She finally made it home after discovering a potent herbal love potion and bartering it for safe passage. She can now be reached at moksha@saffronjournal.org.