AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION
IN ARABIC WITH “EMILY”
(a koan?)
Why did Ibn Al-Arabi
not try
“silver bells, coral shells, and carousels”
to query the Beloved
how a lift—meme—lamb
could equal
“the thing with feathers—
that perches in the soul—“?
Ahmad Jamal (probably)
What if the shape of poems to come is a tesseract?
Meaning let us view the poem as a tesseract of faith
This is the central tenet of HyperQBism. HyperQBism as a poetics which employs an idea of improvisation as a tesseract of faith—which could mean a superposition of cacophony & apophany or from another angle an entanglement of epiphany & apophany.
Of course any poetics of superposition may be a poetics of rein/reign/rain which aims to splice the eye/aye/I, where i is understood as the Imaginary Unit.
The colorpuntal and the alchemical metaphor are among the hyperforms I employ to achieve a superposition of forms in any given poem to induce a metapoem.
HyperQBism posits the poem as a polyvocal, nonlinear tesseract of faith which uses the Imaginary Unit as metaphor for the self.
HyperQBism as a poetics of superposition can also imply an idea of improvisation as a collapse of a wave function. Anyway, here’s a new poem.
This is the last—and to me—one of the most important poems in my book “Ideas of Improvisation” and was also one of the final poems I wrote when finishing the manuscript. As such I wasn't totally happy with the version in the book and have kept revising it since. Here is a version that I think better reflects my original intent. A reader may find it useful to know that the first poem in Rumi’s Masnavi is “The Song of the Reed Flute” and that the Ney flute is very important to Sufis in general and Rumi in particular. While Rumi’s masterpiece deals with various types of separation, mine has different concerns. Throughout my book the ideas of entanglement & superposition keep popping up. I was very interested in having superposition play an important part not just in the content of this poem, but also its construction. Thus when the reader encounters the lines:
“what fluted thing
could ruin love”
they are forced to make a choice-does one read this to mean ‘what fluted thing could ruin adore’ or ‘what fluted thing could degrade love’? Both meanings are grammatically superposed in the text and it is only the mind of the reader that collapses the waveform of meaning in one direction or the other. Thus the poem is at least two different poems intertwined with each other. And in case anyone is wondering, yes this poem is in conversation with the famous Rumi quote involving ruin. Enjoy!
THE RUMI IN YOU
may whirl to wonder
what fluted thing
could ruin love
more than the rasp
of eroding rain?
And when you hear rasp
do you think of rust,
another shade of ruin
born of rain?
Do you still not grasp
why Jalaluddin
was among the Last Poets
who faced arrest
in every nation
including rumination?
When the past Harvest moon
was covered by clouds,
did you learn to lavender
your deepest bruise,
or did you whisker
your weak chin as if
your own ruined beauty
wasn’t a wearable thing?
Even unspoken
wabi-sabi—
Japanese for a reign of rust—
seems a roomy word.
When you first heard
a lavender flute
begin to flower,
did you overhear
any traces of faith?
Did those traces
prevent or incite
a diction
to the long open you
found in “fruit”
or hint why that i
so central to faith
ran quietly as a letter
left out in the rain?
And might they dot
the eye in ruin
or the eye in union?
Perhaps outside your window
the U in Rumi mishears
a whirling tune
of windblown petals
reining in whispers
and turns sapphire
as the i of a sufi
to wonder:
if one spins
to whisk a thicker roux
from a flower’s fat sorrow,
do one’s beard
or bruises begin
to masquerade as faith
or even masculinity?
Or do they still
seep a fluted mood
of wounded blooms
until there’s a chance
the Rumi in you
may turn to sense
what separates us
from the nay in name
or returns to view
how some become lovers
of the sound of rain,
yet others simply lovers
of the sound of ruin?
As long as I’ve been writing poetry there are only three forms that I wanted to become competent at—haiku, sonnet, and ghazals. Ghazal is by far the older form and the one I understood least, but now I’m ready to at least attempt to sink or swim. Here
THIRTEEN WAYS OF GLISTENING TO RAIN
Is this grief just an island precluded from rain
or waves on a sea which recycles rain?
“Ki ilhas tem catxupa, ma ka tem txeu txuba?
Where Cizé wakes island wide smiles as she hums rain.
At this angle of dawn & that density of dusk
yin & yang question when zero-sum reigns.
“If I were to cry out which angel would hear me”
—Necessary Angels may circle to drum rain.
If joy drizzles thru your hair to kiss your shoulder blades
don’t fail to sniff what some think of as plum rain.
As you shift your weight & pin a lover’s hands
—could sugarcane be pressed into a rum reign?
“With vice I hold the mic device, with force
I keep it away of course” one spits to overcome rein.
Do church bells tolling to carry atone—the way
Monk once sought to carry attune—outnumber rain?
In this plaza you pause to tissue your face
—a bluish guitar and its case to strum rain.
In “A Return To Our Usual Truancies”:
why does my Beloved go roadside & thumb rain?
As people pass with broken parchment for tongues
two ravens caw to bathe in a crumb rain.
Joel—please add how [17 + 8 + 92 + 110]
seems to atomically sum rain?
