Sample poems from A Bird in the Garden of Angels

That Which Cannot Be Found Is What I Desire

Show me your face: a flower-filled garden is what I desire.
Give me your lips: overflowing sweetness is what I desire.

“Go away!” you cried out, faking it. “Leave me alone!”
The sound of your voice is what I desire.

A voice stands guard, “Leave now! She’s not at home.”
The doorkeeper’s rude pretense is what I desire.

We’re each unique in our way of being sweet.
That mine of sweetness in you is what I desire.

To settle for fate is to trifle with bread and water.
I am a fish. To battle a crocodile is what I desire.

Without you, this city is a prison; to be left
on a mountain, or in a desert, is what I desire.

I am tired of my feeble companions. 
The lion of God, the heroic Rustam, is what I desire.

Bankrupt as I am, I still won’t accept cheap flowers.
A mine of precious stones is what I desire.

Weary of these weary people, I am weeping.
The shouting and jumping of drunkards is what I desire.

Pharaoh in his tyranny fatigues my soul.
The light of Moses of Imran is what I desire.

“We have searched,” they said.” It cannot be found.”
That which cannot be found is what I desire.

All things come from Him, yet He remains hidden.
The hidden whose works are manifest is what I desire.

                                                     (D441)

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I Come from Nowhere

From the moment you became my world, oh world
of water and mud, my life has been a world

of suffering and affliction. This donkey’s pasture
is not a home for Jesus. Why should I live

where donkeys feed? You’ve bound my hands and feet
with which I once roamed freely in the cradle of truth.

I will free them. I know
how escape artists escape.

I will push my arms like a tree up from under the ground,
reaching for the one who taught me to reach;

like a blossoming infant, I will grow and say,
“I have left my childishness behind.

A branch growing upward, for it came from above,
I will go to the source that I know.”

But why this pointless talk of above and below?
I am from nowhere; my place is placeless.

And if I come from no place,
how can I know a place?

Be silent! Go nowhere and become nothing.
Look how much I have learned from nothing!

                                          (D1585)

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To The Woman At The Bar

Brown hair, leather jacket, torn jeans,
suppose I walk across this room right now
and offer you a drink. Would you tell me

you’re a painter, a middle sister with four brothers,
whose mother’s work of art is the life
she tries daily to seduce you into? Would you

finger-stir your scotch, eyes averted, waiting
for words you’ll know when you hear them
were those you wanted your blond, hovering boyfriend

to say, or leave, or you knew you’d walk out?
And his silence left you no choice?
Would you dance with me, end the evening

on the couch your mother bought wholesale,
pushed against the balcony’s grate
so we can fuck overlooking the river?

Instead, will we talk about your work?
Will I leave with your number scribbled
just below my chin in the caricature

you sketch of me as the drummer
I never had the courage to become?
A week from now, will we meet for sushi?

Two nights later, the European art film
with real sex in it? You tell me your name
means pearl in the language your father spoke,

that your mother gave it to you when he left.
You ask me up to see your paintings.
I want to say I see in them

a foreshadowing of what comes next,
but what comes next poses formal problems
I would have to know you to solve.