Monday, May 27, 2024

More fun with HyperQBism.

 









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—lam

could equal 

“the thing with feathers—

that perches in the soul—“?


Ahmad Jamal (probably)







Saturday, May 25, 2024

On HyperQBism

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. 





Sunday, May 19, 2024

The Final Boss?

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?


Wednesday, May 08, 2024

Haiku, Sonnet, and Ghazal—a lifelong dream

 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?