We might have to medicate
You.

In the ocean
A lot goes on beneath your eyes.

Listen,
They have clinics there too
For the insane
Who persist in saying things like:

“I am independent from the
Sea,

God is not always around,

Gently
Pressing against
My body.”

*

- Hafiz

I sail to you in the ocean of my dreams
To a far away distant place

-Amjid Yaseen

I will rouse you from your sleep, you who have given yourself up to recitation, who have taken the study of the Qur’an as a practice, who have seized upon some of its outward meanings and sentences. How long will you wander about the shore of the sea with your eyes closed to its wonders? Was it not for you to sail through its depths in order to see its amazing things, to travel to its islands to pick its delicacies, to dive to its bottom and become rich from obtaining its jewels? Don’t you despise yourself for losing out on its pearls and jewels as you continue to look only to its shores and esoteric aspects? Haven’t you heard that the Qur’an is an ocean from which the knowledge of all ages branches out just as rivers and streams branch out from the shores of the ocean?

Don’t you envy the happiness of people who have plunged into its overflowing waves and seized red sulfur, who have dived into its depths and taken out red rubies, shining pearls and green chrysolite, who have roamed its shores and gathered gray ambergris and fresh blooming aloes wood, who have clung to its islands and found an abundance in their animals of the greatest antidote and pungent musk?

from Kristin Zahra Sands,
Sufi commentaries on the Qur’an in classical Islam
found here

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
How are you?

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
What is God?

If you think that Truth can be known
From words,

If you think that the Sun and the Ocean
Can pass through that tiny opening
Called the mouth,

O someone should start laughing!

Someone should start wildly Laughing–
Now!

*

- Hafiz

I taste what you taste. I know the kind of lyrics your
Soul most likes. I know which sounds will become
Resplendent in your mind and bring such pleasure
Your feet will jump and whirl.

When anything touches or enters your body
Never say it is not God, for He is
Just trying to get close.

I have no use for divine patience — my lips are always
Burning and everywhere. I am running from every corner
Of this world and sky wanting to kiss you;

I am every particle of dust and wheat — you and I
Are ground from His Own Body. I am rioting at your door;
I am spinning in midair like golden falling leaves
Trying to win your glance.

I am sweetly rolling against your walls and shores
All night, even though you are asleep. I am singing from
The mouths of animals and birds honouring our
beloved’s promise and need: to let
you know the Truth.

My dear, when anything touches or enters your body
Never say it is not God, for She and I are
Just trying to get close to you.

God and I are rushing
From every corner of existence, needing to say,
“We are yours.”

*

- Hafiz

The cosmos is like a net thrown into the sea, unable to make that in which is its own.  Already the sea is spread out, and the net spreads with it as far as it can, for no one of its parts can be anywhere else than where it is. But because it has no size, the soul’s nature is sufficiently ample to contain the whole cosmic body in one and the same grasp.

- Plotinus, Ennead IV S.9

Love comes with a knife…

You have been walking at the ocean’s edge,

holding up your robes to keep them dry.

You must dive naked under and deeper under,

a thousand times deeper.

Love flows down.

- Rumi