Feb. 18, 2023
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THE RUMI IN YOU
By Joel Dias-Porter
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THE RUMI IN YOU
By Joel Dias-Porter
(first published in his collection, Ideas of Improvisation (Thread Makes Blanket Press, 2022)
may stir to wonder—
what lavender thing
could ruin love
as much as the rasp
of rain eroding?
When you hear rasp
you may think of rust,
another shade of erosion
related to rain.
Do you still not grasp
why Jalaluddin
was among the Last Poets
whose rusty beard
faced arrest in every nation including rumination?
As the last Harvest moon
acquired a goatee of clouds, did you admit to loving
any certain bruise,
or did you begin
to whisker a weak chin
as if your own ruined beauty was an unwearable thing?
Although you’ve never
whispered it, wabi-sabi—
Japanese for a reign of rust— seems a very Rumi word.
When you first heard
a lilac flamenca
begin to flower,
did you feel your faith
as a blooming
of the imagination?
Did this sprouting
incite or prevent
a diction
to the long open you
found in “bruise”
or hint why that i
so central to your faith
ran quietly as a letter
left out in the rain?
Perhaps outside some window you misheard
the whirling tune
of windblown petals
whispering
“Rein in violets”
or even as they
sought to whisk
a thicker roux
from a flower’s fat sorrow, perhaps either
beards or bruises
masqueraded as faith
or masculinity
or sought to rearrange
into the music
of fragrant purple blooms as if there was some chance the Rumi in you
might soon hear
how some become lovers of the sound of rain,
but others simply lovers of the sound of ruin?
Joel Dias-Porter
Joel Dias-Porter (aka DJ Renegade) is originally from Pittsburgh, PA & resides in South Jersey. The 1998 & 1999 Haiku Slam Champion, his poems have been published in POETRY, Mead, Best American Poetry 2014, Callaloo, Asahi Shimbun, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, & the anthologies, Short Fuse, Role Call, Def Poetry Jam, 360 Degrees of Black Poetry, Slam (The Book), Poetry Nation, Beyond the Frontier, and Catch a Fire. A Cave Canem Fellow, in 1995 he received the Furious Flower "Emerging Poet Award.” His collection “Ideas of Improvisation” is on Thread Makes Blanket Press (Jun 2022).
Image description: Photo features a large brown-skinned African-American man with a full white beard and wearing a black Steelers baseball cap and a black windbreaker. He is standing in front of a wall which contains spray painted grafitti.