Tag Archives: poems

After the Sufis

Vikshepa Posted on by

“Oh come! In whatever guise you appear, I know you!”

Oh Lord, without me you are a pauper.
You cannot find your own feet unless my lips brush them.
Oh Lord you would have no presence
If I were not here to reveal you to yourself.
What can you know without my eyes, my gentle fingers to divine your form?
I lead you Lord through the darkness of your hidden chambers and
In the dazzle of your sudden sunlight I am your guide.
O Lord, I give you your creation
In the moment that I, a man, destroy, disrupt, defile…
In the moment that I extinguish I make plain
The wonder of your works.
O Lord, without my belief in you, you would be nothing!
I’m the hound whose homeless master becomes through my worship a hero.
Be thankful for my diligence
In unmasking you O Lord!
In taking these many coloured beads and finding the thread
That makes of them a garland for your worship.
You placed baubles at my feet. I made sense of them.
You gave me worthless clay.
I fashioned it into an idol of you.
Do not be angry at my idolatry!
Only through it can you ever know your form.
I gave you yourself
I am your eyes, your fingers
Through which you can caress your creation.
Do not undervalue my gifts.

They are your own.

Everything subject to doubt

Vikshepa Posted on by

What we have been taught by parents and teachers is doubtful.
What we are told by neighbours and friends is likely to be mistaken.
Our perception, experience and understanding are not to be trusted.
Common sense is a bit of a joke.
Reason, gut-feelings, mind and heart are all fallible.
Nations are unscrupulous and untrustworthy.
Leaders and politicians all the more so.
Merchants of goods and services are out for our money.
Scientists have a limited and therefore distorted understanding of reality.
Medical professionals test out this distorted understanding of reality on our bodies.
No guru is to be trusted – many are proven charlatans, and about the others, who can say?
Scriptures are not to be trusted; they mostly cause only mischief.
We can rely on nothing, only quietly make our way through life, holding all assumptions up to scrutiny, and not trusting the conclusions we reach.
Language, based on words and verbal associations, is itself inadequate to express anything real; and when left unexpressed, our intimations or reality remain vague and foggy.

We can
Spend a lot of time in silence, just being.
Unravel and reject conditioned responses.
Break down all old connections and imposed patterns.
Reject everything we think we know, see what if anything remains.

There is nothing to be afraid of.
Nothingness itself is not scary, only what we put in it.

Umm Burj on Nakba Day

Vikshepa Posted on by

Just a car ride into oblivion
At the end of asphalt roads.

To a park whose signs demark
A history too crowded for meagre lives

They built their homes among ruins.
We walk among their graves.

The last of them are buried elsewhere
Their story almost silent now.

We briefly populate the hilltop,
With our talk and picture taking.

These thornfields once were gardens
Kept by water from the well.

The hilltop bloodied now
In sunset rust,

The only green is found in niches
Hewn deep into the earth

Where broad-leaved fig trees
Dream a shady coolness
Safe again for children’s song.