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 wound
could ruin love”
they are forced to make a choice-does one read this to mean ‘what fluted wound could ruin adore’ or ‘what fluted wound 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 quotes involving both wounds & ruin. Enjoy!
THE RUMI IN YOU
may whirl and wonder
what fluted wound
could ruin love
more than the rasp
of rain eroding?
And when you hear rasp
do you think of rust,
another shade of ruin
related to rain?
Do you still not grasp
why Jalaluddin
was among the Last Poets
who faced annihilation
in every nation—
even rumination?
When the 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
start to flower,
did you also feel
any traces of faith?
Did those traces
veil or reveal
a diction
to the long open you
found centered in “fruit”
or hint why that i
so central to faith
ran quietly as a letter
left out in the rain?
And does this dot
an eye in ruin
or an 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 flour’s fat sorrow—
do one’s beard
or bruises begin
to masquerade as faith
or even masculinity?
Or do they risk dissolving
into a wounded bloom
until there’s a chance
the Rumi in you
may turn to sense
what separates us
from the nay in name
or return 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
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS WAYS OF LISTENING TO RAIN
Is all grief a mere island concealed from rain
or a sea which is waves of undone rain?
“Ki ilhas tem catxupa, ma ka tem txeu txuba?“
Where Cizé forms island wide smiles as she hums rain.
If joy drizzles thru your hair to kiss your shoulder blades
be sure to taste what some think of as plum rain.
As you shift your weight & pin a lover’s hands
—could sugarcane transmute into a rum reign?
Do tolling church bells reveal atone—the way
Monk once sought to reveal attune—to strum rain?
“If I were to cry out which angel would hear me”
—Necessary Angels soon circle to drum rain.
In a plaza where you pause to cover your face
—a bluish oud leaps its case to become rain.
In “An Exit From Our Usual Truancies”:
why does my Beloved go roadside & thumb rain?
As prophets speak with broken parchment for tongues
two ravens wheel overhead in a numb rain.
Joel—please add how [17 + 8 + 92 + 110]
seeks to atomically sum rain?
