ghazalville

Ghazal of the Startled Silence

2010-10-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

It is the crevice a shadow crawls inside,
The cage of ribs the heart stalls inside.

It is the depths of an abyss
A stone endlessly falls inside.

An absence evolved from dimensionless Time,
The lost spaces all sound dissolves inside.

It is the maze of secret rooms
Masons built moving walls inside.

The emptiness of a pitch-black tunnel
The prisoner crawls inside.

It is the immense absence in an abandoned city,
Bombed houses the rain falls inside.

The dusty journal in an attic,
Notes the captive ghost scrawls inside.

It inhabits the abode of a sorceress,
Housing only the darkest shawls inside.

First published in Lynx (2007)

It did not hurt at all when they chopped off my head

2010-10-12T17:25:00.000-07:00

It did not hurt at all when they chopped off my head,

Just a sharp reminder I never had a head.

Your concept of existence stinks. You will see,

Theorein, after I write a book: On Your Head.

Let me rest here awhile, free from being fastest,

Yet still closest to the summit, way up ahead.

Love will suck marrow from marrowlessness itself.

Let it, or die the freezing death of being head.

Startled dove says: stop acting out of fear you fool,

Observe how easily Ozzy bites off my head.

The one secret is secrecy of saying so,

Not the top of ultimate totem, supreme head.

There was a Nicola once, a long time ago.

Now there is only what remains, this speaking head.

The Divan of Hafiz - H. Wilberforce Clarke Translation

2010-10-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

Silence and speak your heart, become my long lost friend

2010-10-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

Silence and speak your heart, become my long lost friend.

Now while all is here, even the meaning of friend.

Everything is near, above all the outside,

Where even being’s butchery is a close friend.

Don’t disappoint God with indifference or worship.

At once hard and easy is the long way of friend.

Everything becomes golden and my life is dead

When suddenly there passes a shadow like friend.

This body walks west to meet a soul walking east,

Antipodally proving circumference friend.

Stellar immolation: an ancient lonesomeness

Burning itself into life-forms. Is there a friend?

Aristotle is not among those who know me,

A deep sound, a lost breath calling Nicola friend.

Ghazal

2010-10-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

Rumi became a sage for us.
Ghalib's ghazals revealed an age to us.

It was a poem written with moonlight,
Deftly inscribed on a pond's page for us.

We were heirs to a kingdom of dust.
You foretold wars the world would wage for us.

Banished to the desert without water,
The storms you summoned would rage for us.

In a dream we were birds perched on a branch.
Shadows built in the trees a cage for us.

You are composed now completely of light.
O the world was your theatre, a stage for us.

First published in Texas Poetry Journal (2006)

Memory

2010-09-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

I conceive you now as one born of memory.
You're somewhere alive though I mourn your memory.

Their shrines destroyed, villages cling to fire.
Kashmir must bear the thorn of memory.

A dream of your mother filled with colors--
A blur of saris worn in memory!

"Color at the edge of blood / coal of dead fires..."
Lines by Faiz held in a breath, sworn to memory.

A day's countless details are mostly lost.
Images are exiled, torn from memory.

The garden cafe where you'd recite Ghalib--
Roses, red & white, adorn the memory.

The fire of the phoenix kindles the light.
Will Night, Empress of the Dark, scorn the memory?

You read ghazals to me over the phone.
Couplets left your lips to inform my memory.

First published in Blue Unicorn (2006)

Whom We Call Ishmael

2010-08-31T11:39:00.000-07:00

after a poem by Agha Shahid Ali

Here there are ghosts none can repel tonight.
Rumors of the world's end none can dispel tonight.

In prisons the executions are beginning.
One hears prayers spoken from each cell tonight.

The enemy now approaches our city.
What outcome did the Oracle foretell tonight?

They are now among us, those demons
Who departed for Earth from Hell tonight.

In the temple only shadows bow in worship--
Without a priest to toll its knell tonight.

Tornadoes curve in descent, pulling down
A sky from which archangels fell tonight.

A moonlit terrace above deafened streets
Awaits the silhouette of Jezebel tonight.

You were comforted by the evening star, shining
Like a brilliant coin in the well tonight.

We search for him whose words have guided us--
The Beloved--whom we call Ishmael tonight.

First published in HazMat Review (2010)

See, your beauty is being recorded for all

2010-08-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

See, your beauty is being recorded for all
Eternity through these eyes, to be seen by all.

Give up the search for by finding now every goal,
Circumambulate the pointless true pole of all.

A real word springs new from perfect disagreement,
Maintains silence over the muted sounds of all.

The divine comedy is still being written
On the parchment of time-space stretched over all.

Our insanity reaches with ease to the stars,
Grazes on galaxies laughing the jest of all.

Forget consolation, forget terror. Arrive
As giraffe to supreme fruit of the tree of all.

Deep inside Nicola’s skull is nothing, nothing
Remotely like a simple answer to why all.

Ghazal of the Beloved

2010-08-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

"How often had he walked
Beneath summer and the sky
To receive her shadow in his mind..."

---Wallace Stevens

With what blessing does God grace the Beloved?
By what star's course may we trace the Beloved?

What site--divine sepulchre or holy tomb--
May we honor, call the place of the Beloved?

Voice preserved in the ear, image in the mind...
From memory will Time erase the Beloved?

Who sought her exile from the world,
Banished from mirrors the face of the Beloved?

Her silhouette is seen in the twilight clouds,
Though night arrives to displace the Beloved.

A field of ashes where embers were dying,
Light by which we strove to retrace the Beloved.

Her presence now constitutes the hush
Between stanzas, the sacred space of the Beloved.

The defunct monastery still covets silence,
Where priests saw an Angel embrace the Beloved.

First published in Tiferet (2008)

Ghazal of Restoration

2010-08-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

The bitterness you harbor wanes tonight.
No strife within you remains tonight.

No dervish will trouble the dust.
No tornado wanders the plains tonight.

No bright flak, no disputed barricades.
The wars have ended their campaigns tonight.

All sleep. None long for departure.
Stations have only idle trains tonight.

You lived in a prison of your own making.
The captive heart dissolves its chains tonight.

From deserts a paradise will be born.
Parched lands are blessed with rains tonight.

You dream of Eden, when the animals appear--
& listen as Adam recites their names tonight.

A hush. Silence is now the world's prayer.
From God's hand stars fall like grains tonight.

In memory of Norma Horstmann (1914--2006)

First published in The Neovictorian (2005)

Event of Oneself

2010-07-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

52 ghazals

Available here and via Amazon.

Ghazal of Diminishment

2010-07-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

Waves on the shore will recede & wane.
The wind's song through the reed will wane.

Rapid air rushes through its dark mane--
But the endurance of the steed will wane.

Pressed deeply in a web of roots,
The striving of the seed will wane.

Mist quavers on a blade of grass--
& dew, its delicate bead, will wane.

It dissolves in a galaxy's hub--
Mortal comet whose speed will wane.

Orpheus can sing only of despair,
For love's searing need won't wane.

Cooing in cages before a pageant--
Now, in the distance, the freed doves wane.

This body (vessel forsaking the world)
Will let the breath concede & wane.

First published in Pebble Lake Review (2006)

Here, there is nothing to which one does not belong

2010-07-12T16:25:00.000-07:00

Here, there is nothing to which one does not belong,
Above all the nothing where everything belongs.

I am lost, and way more so for being with you,
More I, more am, more lost along a way too long.

Unfathomable colors of a comet’s tail
Neither trail nor lead this dreaming coma along.

Our infinitesimal camera will photograph
Infinity. The shot does not take very long.

Than time’s own slowness nothing is more sudden,
A blast from the past imprinting memory for long.

Habit gives all experience, from gas to this,
An evolving engine that life itself prolongs.

For now, and wins the battle of one and many.
Worlds strive to fill the space where Nicola still longs.

I will face the weight of an infinite elsewhere

2010-07-10T16:31:00.001-07:00

I will face the weight of an infinite elsewhere,
Lift the veil of all knowing that was never there.

Not seeing anyone is so hard. Is this it?
Signs pointing to answers are posted everywhere.

When memory gathers into a storm of love
What the birds symbolize is scattered here and there.

Too deep is this sleeping, aeonic and glacial.
At this rate one may wake up almost anywhere.

There is, near the absolute bottom of your heart,
A kind of second abyss that is always there.

Something about the eyes, how they open without
Ever giving away, and not, the treasure’s where.

Nicola does not prepare to leave, but to stay
In a place so silent that everything is there.

Monads are meeting, only in bewilderment

2010-07-10T07:59:00.001-07:00

Monads are meeting, only in bewilderment,
Conversing in long spirals of bewilderment.

Life, ambivalently overrated deathtrap,
Is stupendously nothing sans bewilderment.

Hold to my standard just those whose standard I hold,
Or lose my sole consolation: bewilderment.

Eking out existence is our actual state.
Slow breath abysmally down to bewilderment.

Time, time, time is forever arriving at this:
Never repetition, newer bewilderment.

Like a green desert, like orthodox heresy,
Like finding home being lost is bewilderment.

The real riddler is whoever Nicola is,
A creature from black lagoons of bewilderment.

Maybe the light of your mind is a dying star

2010-07-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

Maybe the light of your mind is a dying star,
Longly feeling its no longer being a star.

Entities, old slimes breathing songs of unknowing,
Intersect all, a formic infection of stars.

Home is among the rubble, near grinding to dust,
A material altering things into stars.

My friends are eternally stronger than they think,
With hearts like the dark secret engines of hot stars.

All this plurality is hopelessly shameful.
What the hell were you scheming in becoming star?

The high sound of castrasti-thought fills the courtyard,
Aimed, minus the pull to even wish on a star.

Near the end of the day Nicola dreams treason,
New hidden ways of supernova-ing (t)his star.

My planet does not hang suspended in your fear

2010-07-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

My planet does not hang suspended in your fear.
It spins in spontaneous orbit, always here.

Two pigeons sitting too stilly against the sky.
Words: nothing measuring something terribly near.

The uselessness of ever asking what you mean
Is trumped by my always being hopelessly clear.

I was wholly there, standing now in the song’s midst.
How passed not the notes through one, out the other, ear?

Soon life itself will be something else that happened,
And not. So hard to think anything more, less queer.

Feel how very false are feelings about feelings.
Only the matter, the wax itself is sincere.

Falling for perfection is Nicola’s real plight,
An endless fatal sense that I am right now there.

Ibn Arabi's Tarjuman Al-Ashwaq (Interpreter of Desires)

2010-07-01T06:02:00.000-07:00

PDF here.

Bâkî: Ah my Dear (From Ottoman Turkish)

2010-03-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

Ah My Dear
By Bâkî
Translated, from Ottoman Turkish, by A.Z. Foreman

Since time began, I have bowed down to passion's Shah, my dear.
Love's legendary sultanate obeys our law, my dear.

The grief-scorched heart lies red and black: a poppy in the wasteland.
Rain like a bounteous cloud and slake the parched heart's shaw, my dear.

Fate saw the jewel in me, and pawed the heart apart to have it,
Leaving a bleeding body mined of love and raw, my dear.

Do not let turbid sadness taint the waters of your fountain.
All faces gleam for us, the Ottoman world's awe, my dear.

Bâkî's turned verse goes round the world: a wine-bowl among friends.
Time turns to us to fill its cup. What wines we draw, my dear!

The Original:

ازلدن شاه عشقك بنۀ فرمانيوز جانا
محبت ملكنك سلطان عليشانيوز جانا

سحاب لطفك آبن تشن دللردن دريغ اتمه
بو دشتك بغرى يانمش لالۀ نعمانيوز جانا

زمان بزده گوهر سزدگچون دل خراش ايلر
انكچون بغمرز خوندر معارف كانيوز جانا

مكدّر قلمسون گرد كدورت چشمۀ جاني
بلورسن آب روى ملكت عثمانيوز جانا

جهاني جام نظمم شعر باقى كبى دور ايلر
بو بزمك شمدو بز ده جامئ دورانيوز جانا

Modern Transliteration:

Ezelden şâh-ı aşkın bende-i fermânıyüz cânâ
Mahabbet mülkünün sultânı âlî-şânıyüz cânâ

Sehâb-ı lutfun âbın teşne-dillerden dirîğ itme
Bu deştin bağrı yanmış lâle-i Nu'mânıyüz cânâ

Zemâne bizde cevher sezdiğiyçün dil-hırâş eyler
Anınçün bağrımız hûndur ma'ârif kânıyüz câna

Mükedder kılmasun gerd-i küdûret çeşme-i canı
Bilürsün âb-ı rûy-i mülket-i Osmâniyüz cânâ

Cihanı câm-ı nazmım şi'r-i Bakî gibi devr eyler
Bu bezmin şimdi biz de Câmi-i devrânıyüz cânâ

Sheyhī: Springrise

2010-02-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

Springrise
By Sheyhī
Translated, from Ottoman Turkish, by A.Z. Foreman

Spring is afoot, so let us be the dawn wind's heart-sworn friends.
Let us befriend the rose and let us walk where it talks scents.

Tulips in season! Let us take the cup up with hearts pure
As a narcissus. Let us drink ourselves beyond pretense.

Like the rosebud, conceal the secrets of what you must be.
But like the rose, unseal your heart to fields that pleasure tends.

Jamshīd once held a cup and called it key to all his city.
We are but adepts of that cup wherein our world lies pent.

Let us implore God's mercy for our sins must be forgiven
If we expect the least reward for being obedient.

Sheyhi! Wise men say prayer in this season is insane.
Today's for spring and pleasuring. Tomorrow we repent.

The Original:

بهار موسم در همدم صبا اوللم
گليلة دوست قحوسين آشنا اوللم

چو دور لالدر اخلاصل قدح دتلم
نت ک نرگيس اولر مست بيريا اوللم

زمانى سرنى قو غنجه بيگى سربسته
چمن صفاسنه گل بيگى دلگشَ اوللم

جهان فتوحن جم جام در دمش مفتاح
گلن ملازم جام جهان نما اوللم

عملدن اجرت امنجه غرور طاعتله
گنهده منتظر رحمت خدا اوللم

بهار توبيه شيخى جنون دمش عاقل
بگن موافقت ات ارته پارسا اوللم

Is it a circus, this world, or a drunken lord

2010-02-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

Is it a circus, this world, or a drunken lord
Carousing like a less than capitalized lord?

Blow me away into flaming infinite life,
Says smoldering heart, razed and raked by a dark lord.

Cosmos is not creation, but the real killing
Of all ignorance, every slave who says lord.

Burn down the tent of the heavens, every temple.
I want to see the look on the faces of lords.

The kindergarten of taking-giving offense
Graduates so many beelzebubs, flies’ lords.

All things enter into endless auto-fatigue.
Blame whomever you will, especially the lord.

Have you spoken? Who, high-placed, hears your little word?
Nicola vanishes the court, exiles all lords.

VR

2010-01-25T05:39:00.000-08:00

This is a work in progress, not in format, and eons from completion, but it sounded good at 4:30, so do what you will, ghazalers. Suggestions? Replacements? The power is yours!

if louder words came from typing things

your message heard: the world's phone rings

the last decree of part man, machine

can only see his life in dream

sadistic egging segues to mania

for even circuits suffer megalomania

given the power, a steady connection

evolution is energy in a million directions

your Jobe is just another worry

a necessary adversary

for without work, at least rudimentary

all of technology would be... elementary

Problem is not anything in particular

2009-11-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

Problem is not anything in particular,
More like the friction of being particular.

Think life deepestly stupid, perhaps on a train,
Not exactly anywhere in particular.

Each day I massage a new spot on Ghalib’s heart.
The health benefits? General and particular.

Why not let love kill everything, turn all to dust?
Soon you’ll begin, stop being so particular.

The sound of death is projects receiving applause,
A hurried knell drowning all things particular.

Empire dies drunk on the taste of its own folly,
Burping worry-consumption of particulars.

If you finally meet Nicola, please recall
His name, remind him of this one particular.

No, we are not become companions to no end

2009-11-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

No, we are not become companions to no end.
My hand does not grow cold touching you to no end.

Evil swims the outermost shallow of our love,
A glistening thing revealing depths to no end.

Truth is, we do not exist, except the way wind,
Unheeded, never stops transpiring to no end.

Wait a moment. Only impossibility
Of guarantee consoles, gives one hope to no end.

Without our invisible smiles and unwept tears
Life was pathetic circus boring to no end.

Willy-nilly, the heart breaks this prison to be
An unseen anemone singing to no end.

Hide Nicola so far away from his blindness
That he forever perceives beauty to no end.

This heart, only one to face the impossible

2009-10-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

This heart, only one to face the impossible.
No other hunter to chase the impossible.

Poetry wants nothing, only emptiest words,
Passing pen and ink to trace the impossible.

Friendship, found by happenstance only haptically,
Is never one to abase the impossible.

Count me among the living only if my breath
Continually lays waste the impossible.

Real tombs are only full of creeds. All else decays
By special descent of grace, the impossible.

Reality? We only ignore illusion
At peril, risking to race the impossible.

Tell Nicola why he only scapegoats himself,
Tragically fails to embrace the impossible.

Hear divinity in the corpse’s every pore

2009-10-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

Hear divinity in the corpse’s every pore,
A live, hideous gnosis for which you are for.

Inside towers of silence is not what you think,
More like the final understanding of all lore.

Real voice is breathing, ingesting another breath,
Eating the inner child that from a cold mouth soars.

Speculative realism, still dating its desire,
Knows not yet the chimerical wedding in store.

Alpine ibex face off above our first ascent,
Trading poetry impossible to explore.

From the black pit a bleaching, skin-wrapped skeleton
Explains there is never any such thing as more.

Hard to see what mirror-cleaning Nicola’s mind
Reveals, to say the clarity that we ignore.

Fifty Poems of Attar by Kenneth Avery and Ali Alizadeh

2009-10-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

Full text at Googlebooks. Click pic.

In the madness of my love

2009-09-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

Sukhdarshan Dhaliwal generously shares the following ghazal:

In the madness of my love, I only dance for you, my dear,
I long to dissolve myself into your majestic hue, my dear.

Your joyous passion for which I want to die to live for you,
It arouses me with its bliss that is eternal and true, my dear.

Splendors of your majesty that shine even beyond my sight,
Elate my poor soul with their magic as they imbue, my dear.

I can still feel your sweet warmth on my lips, even though,
You have not yet revealed your captivating view, my dear.

Sacred melodies of your essence make every moment dance,
As in intoxication of scent, flower dances with dew, my dear.

It was your precious gift of love and the power of its touch,
Made me able to behold beyond the world I knew, my dear.

With this hope, ‘Darshan’ wrote this Ghazal in your honor,
Maybe one day, in your soul its rhythm will ensue, my dear.

newness

2009-09-01T20:04:00.001-07:00

maybe all that's left of originality is ours
paths cleared before us, but unfathomable towers

negative should attract positive or so I was told
and instant gratification now winds up taking hours

so many nights we sip, invoking muses and missteps
a hundred test runs for a magic mix that empowers

oh! that contrived humor doesn't work so well
the more you disrupt the bed, the less it flowers

force. deliberate, deceptive and decadent.
scream at the toughest of dogs? he still cowers.

shouldn't we all experience one moment of true joy?
eudaemonia isn't found in mental prison showers

that which is untread upon, that which is virgin, novel,
is something Samantha hungers for, but time soon devours

The Next Ghazalville

2009-08-24T11:34:00.000-07:00

Another Ghazalville is coming up soon!

Join us once again at Freddy's on

Tuesday, October 20th from 8-10 PM.

Freddy's Bar & Backroom.

Located at 485 Dean Street

Brooklyn, NY

Feeling lost? Here's a map!

More details as the date approaches.

Homay & Mastan

2009-08-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

Mah Pareh (translation)

You are sweet lips, sweet all over

Drunk, drunken, and high

Moon-like (gorgeous) careless beauty

With countless flirting

The heart breaker and heart steeler

All the beauties on one side and you on the other side

When you spread your hair around, You disrupt my calmness

At the end I will hang my self from by you (long) hair

Oh friend (hear me) cry, oh people (hear me) cry because of this careless, because of this crazy love

I have lost my credit (respect). I am drinking all the time one after another. I have lost control

Bring your sweet mouth put it on my unhappy month

So your mouth bring back life to this broken, unhappy body of mine

You are sweet lips, sweet all over

Drunk, drunken, and high

Moon-like careless beauty

With countless flirting

The heart breaker and heart steeler

All the beauties on one side and you on the other side

When you spread your hair around, You disrupt my calmness

At the end I will hang my self from by you (long) hair

No predicting this ontological panic

2009-08-12T17:40:00.001-07:00

No predicting this ontological panic,
Inverted reflection of origin: panic!

Flying upside down in an unforeseen cosmos,
It’s surprising how infrequently we panic.

Beauty: each moment losing a new argument.
Who provides me so many to lose I panic?

People, if you refuse to share their worry,
Have a shy tendency to essentially panic.

This love’s pervading pain is not so much a pain
As a too-profound suprasensual panic.

I throw my arms around Nietzsche and the whipped horse,
Immolate myself on their altars of panic.

You and Nicola are other than space-time rides,
Even unreasons for hope, preemptive panic.

Who writes heart-words holding keys to the doors of blood?

2009-08-04T05:45:00.001-07:00

Who writes heart-words holding keys to the doors of blood?
Who hears our silent arrival on shores of blood?

You are the only one like yourself, the sole love
Of whomsoever’s heart, with/without stores of blood.

All distant stars will know this love’s perfect tenor
As unforeseen joy releases bright spores of blood.

Happiness is (not) proving simpler than I thought:
A couple diurnal, infernal chores of blood.

See me over the next mountain? asks the led one.
Guide says, return tunneling through hot ores of blood.

Dreamer or doer, killer and victim, each one
Invisibly, eventually bores of blood.

Befriend Nicola before his quick, weird demise,
When a silent sword wins himself, not wars of blood.

Abstraction

2009-07-29T03:18:00.000-07:00

There was some interesting discussion at Ghazalville 6 about abstract vs. expressive language and the relation of subjectivity to that distinction. Here is a passage from Aijaz Ahmad's introduction to The Ghazals of Ghalib (Columbia, 1971) that has something to say about that:

"Like Persian, Urdu is also very much a language of abstractions. In this sense, it is very difficult to translate Urdu into English. The movement in Urdu poetry is always away from concreteness. Meaning is not expressed or stated; it is signified. Urdu has only the shoddiest tradition of dramatic or descriptive poetry. The main tradition is one of highly condensed, reflective verse, with abundance and variety of lyrical effects, verbal complexity, and metaphorical abstraction. And this preference for abstractions is not, as should be obvious, merely a characateristic of language, but is also a way of thinking--of reflecting on man's place in the universe and his relation with the world, with others, with God, with his own interiority. Thus, although always a poetry of love, Urdu poetry, in its classical phase, never contemplates the experience of love in terms of a specific love relation. Specification and personality are kept rigorously out of the poetic substance" (xv-xvi).

Note the essential conjunction between abstraction and interiority.

Open Invitation to Ghazalists

2009-07-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

If you write ghazals and would like to post them here (and/or other ghazal-related writings), please send an email to nicolamasciandaro AT gmail.com and I will add you as an author.

Crack

2009-07-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

My body could rot, would I ever see you again
But it wouldn't stop if I ever see you again

My body sways wondering, remembering
What it would be like if I ever see you again

Did you ever think of, fancy our return date
Sit in that old place if I ever see you again

Together finally, oh what we would build up
Worlds grow, expanding - will I ever see you again

In my mind I laugh, smile, start running towards you
Amber's heart just knows she will never see you again

beyond fruit

2009-07-24T05:46:00.000-07:00

There's a stone inside me that'll break your teeth

Cause life is not an apple but just a peach

I'm full of pits and seeds and things

But I still feel like a leech

How do I know I'm more evolved

if the only proof is speech?

We've gone beyond fruit and animals

and put a price tag on the beach...

We birth it out, build it up tear it down

and give a shit about porn starring Screech

The more there are, the less we pass on

the more we learn, the less we teach

The more qualified we get, the lower the standard

and soon it's the end of the man we call "Cheech"

We should be so lucky to live in times like these.

Have we truly made it cause we have color-safe bleach?

That stone of mine keeps rolling, I don't mean to preach,

but fruit doesn't take much but sunlight ...and some grub from underneath.

Ghazalville 7/23

2009-07-17T18:05:00.000-07:00

Join us at Freddy's Bar and Backroom once again for another riveting installment of Ghazalville.

Care to read? Want your stuff read from afar? Let us know.

Be there or be square, Thursday, July 23rd from 8-10Pm.

Freddy's Bar & Backroom.

Located at 485 Dean Street

Brooklyn, NY

Feeling lost? Here's a map!

The worry-machine of materialism

2009-07-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

The worry-machine of materialism
Lurches cliffward on fuel of empiricism.

Master and slave take dictation from the same dog,
A rabid cur sometimes called capitalism.

Nor does philosophy exist, being fallen
Into self-fables, intellectualism.

Can hearts anamnesically learn love-sickness,
Self-consumption, via such consumerism?

Tomorrow we will institute the World Center
For the Imminent Destruction of All Ism.

For now, semi-audible complaint will suffice,
A heady, modern luxury: criticism.

Nicola is not bird or cage, light or spectrum,
But something invisible trapped in a prism.

A face always before me, a face in the air

2009-07-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

A face always before me, a face in the air,
Unmoving in my moving, an eternal stare.

I hate that forgetting everything is easy,
Far and away too easy to miss what is there.

What has happened to us? Nothing. It is only
What is always not happening that makes us care.

Shoegazing? This is doom-howling berzerker hordes
Wielding death-lightning, slaying all from who knows where.

Because the staring back is never bargained for
And finds you, reveals you totally unaware.

Because the way up and the way down are the same,
A single winding ladder way beyond repair.

Feeling dark down a humming Lynchian hallway,
Nicola walks without hope and without despair.

Dust mote dictates empyrean conspiracy

2009-06-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

Dust mote dictates empyrean conspiracy,
Ice sings antarctic black metal conspiracy.

It hurts ego to hear cosmos is one big tree
Infinitely ramifying conspiracy.

Witness thought's betrayal of thinking's own body,
Keeping secret everybody's conspiracy.

Who is my only and non-essential essence,
The halo of this event as conspiracy.

A single anything spontaneously kills
All chance of there not being a conspiracy.

Individuation glitches every system,
Endlessly out-conspires every conspiracy.

Ecstatic mnemonic paralysis seizes
Nicola's heart in the sweetest conspiracy.

Ghazalville Five

2009-04-30T13:49:00.000-07:00

After a considerable hiatus, Ghazalville is back! Dust off those radifs and break out the qaafiyaas, because

Ghazalville Five will take place on Tuesday June 9th, from 8:00 to 10:00pm.

Freddy's Bar & Backroom.

Located at 485 Dean Street

Brooklyn, NY

Haven't mastered your GPS? Check out this map!

A first for Ghazalville, G-5 welcomes you back with a special performance by singer/percussionist/ghazalist Paula Jeanine!

Readings are to be determined. If you'd like to read your ghazals, e-mail Samantha.

Desire desires only desire itself

2009-03-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

Desire desires only desire itself
Not this or that, or you or me, only itself.

Little analogy, a slight allegory,
Talking of another and listening to itself.

Far above rabid trees and our viral worries
A singular trembling moon wholly hangs itself.

I am hungrier than hunger, than every else
That interposes me between me and itself.

Prophecy is no big deal, unless you forget
How everything is always forever itself.

Local tombs, drawn nearer by naming, testify
Precisely to what was never slightly itself.

Poetry is not poisonous, it is fatal,
A way for Nicola to speak speaking itself.

Tree of Voice, etc.

2009-03-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

Check out Raza Yaseen's English ghazal blog, The Tree of Voice.

Also of possible interest to local ghazalists, there is a translation conference this Thursday at Queen's College called From Ghazal to Zuihitsu: A Conference on Translating Asian Languages and Cultures.

And if you are wondering what happened to Ghazalville, it is still here!

Ghazalist's Tomb Bombed, Verse Grows Stronger

2009-03-06T04:21:00.000-08:00

Here's the story.

Here the book.

Sow flowers so your surroundings become a garden
Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet

If you shoot arrows at others,
Know that the same arrow will come back to hit you.

Don’t dig a well in another’s path,
In case you come to the well’s edge

You look at everyone with hungry eyes
But you will be first to become mere dirt.

Humans are all one body,
Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.

D304

The Voorhies Avenue Tractor Beam

2009-01-22T16:44:00.000-08:00

A time line sits gathering dust around the corner
just allowing itself to be forgot around the corner.
My earliest memories begin at the cinema
far from my first home but now around the corner.
I never thought I would get used to a new block
when everything I thought I loved was not around the corner.
We tossed water balloons from the third floor
at the guidos that lived around the corner.
On weekends in high school we sat at The Spot
laughing and drinking out of paper bags around the corner.
If you look at google maps' street view here
you will see my mom walking around the corner.
So many nights at four in the morning I have spent
picking up beer and munchies in the 711 around the corner.
Every one of my friends has, at one point or another,
walked with me down the block and around the corner.
Some ridiculous guilt, or Catholic school fear,
prevents me from living further than around the corner.
There's something that propels people to confess everything to me
when we put down the controller and walk around the corner.
Waiting in the cold for the B4 is quite the ordeal
but Wheeler's is not exactly around the corner.
I have seen my fair share of tears
and heard plenty of laughter around the corner.
There are so many dead souls that seem to linger
ignoring the "No Loitering" sign plastered on the wall around the corner.
I am forever pacing back and forth in front of the building
waiting for his car to come from around the corner.
I've walked and talked and smoked and thought with Aurora,
building walls and breaking balls just around the corner.
The sound of crashing hockey players and excited little leaguers,
goats, drums and dinosaurs mysteriously come from around the corner.
If what Starbuck tells Apollo has any small sense of merit,
At this point, Samantha must always be around the corner.

Hafiz translation by Austin Pearlman (1943-1996)

2009-01-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

Though a thousand enemies attempt my destruction
If you are my friend I do not dread enemies.

For me hope of union with you preserves life
And if not, in your separation every moment is the fear of destruction.

Moment by moment if I don't catch his scent
Time after time I rip my collar from grief.

My two eyes go to sleep before your image--far be it!
My heart be patient within your separation--God forbid!

If you strike me a wound--better than another's ointment
And if you give me poison--better than another's antidote.

Slaughter by the blow of your sabre is the water of life
'For my souls nothing is more heavenly than being sacrificed for you!'

Don't turn the reins for if you strike me with a sword
I'll make my head the shield and I won't take my hand from your pommel.

How can every vision see you as you are?
Everyone perceives to the extent of his own knowledge.

In the eyes of mankind Hafiz became the sweetheart of the world
When he placed the face of lowliness on the dust at your door.

Now in silence I see my most terrible need

2009-01-21T04:55:00.000-08:00

Now in silence I see my most terrible need,
A candor unveiling, killing every creed.

Bless the cold night caressing our lonesomeness,
Polishing the heart to such radiant distress.

The dark associations of the northern wastes
Are protective projections of honesty’s face.

So corpse paint, spikes, and hair hide the sweetest fellows,
Tendernesses only black metal can mellow.

Can I follow this openness all the way down
Into the infinite heat of self-truth and drown?

Will you make it past wolf, glacier, and spear
Into tales of wonder the bright hall will hear?

Nicola knows there is no hope, no room for pride.
The sweet lies he tells himself have already died.

"Betwixt Death and Obama (What Lies?)" By Bill Verdone, Nicola Masciandaro, Samantha LoSapio, and Isabel Martin

2009-01-20T21:01:00.000-08:00

Enough of the evening's festivities, Obama!
We'll relive this experience in four years, Obama.

When the blade of nonduality descends,
Does the dying disciple whisper... "obama?"

When the executioner lifts his mask,
Does he see visions of a dancing Obama?

Obama is the final Cylon.
I'm just not motivated today by Obama.

In Gaza, they enjoyed the inauguration ceasefire.
A child looks out the window and cries: "Oh! Bomb! Huh?"

Where are all those pigeons when you need them?
Perhaps they'll flock back in four years, Obama.

Human or reptilian shape shifter: which are you?
And why did you ruin my Ghazal, Obama?

"Loss Ghazal" by Bill Verdone

2009-01-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

Headlong, into a funk of rejection in loss,
Headlong, with hopes and aspirations dashed with loss.

What great love did I sense to ensnare,
How does one seekout, and find this loss.

Surely, when emotions encroach our senses,
Surely, still, we should feel enriched and feel no loss.

So, when the flowers bloom then wither away,
Then, too, this garden of hope is a garden of loss.

Come, time draws to its close,
As daylight prepares for sunlight's loss.

Remember this love, recall this joy, review this life,
Alas, a lesson of time is a lesson of loss.

I sensed an energy, a drive, a purpose,
I live with doubt, nostalgia, and loss.

Ghazalville Four

2008-12-31T04:32:00.000-08:00

Ghazalville Four will take place on Tuesday January 20, 8:00-10:00 p.m.

Freddy's Bar & Backroom
485 Dean St.
Brooklyn, NY

Readings by: Samantha LoSapio, Isabel Martin, Nicola Masciandaro, Tutsak Tekten, et al.

Here's a map.

Want to read your ghazals? Contact Nicola Masciandaro (nicolamasciandaro@gmail.com).

out of whine

2008-12-03T15:53:00.001-08:00

why for does this maiden haunt my being?
like the ever-evading worm, caught not,

i chase her ideals of lun’r fancy
and her tendency towards deep inner rot.

one asks through whispers and silent glances
“please spare me this eve of Bacchus begot”.

selfish i, to woodland creature betrothed,
falter at resistance and restraint. ought

not i obtain release and forbearance;
another path, one less pained, to be sought?

these questions reign high, as the night becomes
Steve’s psyche: redemption still to be wrought.

Ghazalville Three: Pictures

2008-11-19T06:01:00.000-08:00

"Tools for the hand, language for the face, are twin poles of the same apparatus" (André Leroi-Gourhan).

"Being-in-the-world, as concern, is fascinated by the world with which it is concerned. . . . When concern holds back [Sichenhalten] from any kind of producing, manipulating, and the like, it puts itself into what is now the sole remaining mode of Being-in, the mode of just tarrying alongside . . . This kind of Being towards the world is one which lets us encounter entities within-the-world purely in the way they look (eidos), just that; on the basis of this kind of Being, and as a mode of it, looking explicitly at we encounter is possible. Looking at something in this way is sometimes a definite way of taking up a direction towards something--of setting our sights towards what is present at hand. . . . Such looking-at enters the mode of dwelling autonomously alongside entities within-the-world" (Martin Heidegger).

"Dumas insists upon the ecstatic appearance of the victim's expression. There is, of course, something undeniable in his expression, no doubt due at least in part to the opium, which augments what is most anguishing about this photograph. . . . What I suddenly saw, and what imprisoned me in anguish--but which at the same time delivered me from it--was the identity of these perfect contraries, divine ecstasy and its opposite, extreme horror" (Georges Bataille).

"The word 'here' applied to my body does not refer to a determinate position in relation to other positions or to external coordinates, but the laying down of the first-coordinates, the anchoring of the active body in an object, the situation of the body in face of its tasks. . . . As far as spatiality is concerned . . . one’s own body is the third term, always tacitly understood, in the figure-background structure, and every figure stands out against the double horizon of external and bodily space" (Maurice Merleau-Ponty).

"The problem of closure does not enclose the space of a unitary history and forclose the possibility of transgression, but rather traces the double necessity and double impossibility of both belonging to a history whose closure can be delimited and not belonging to a history whose closure we are unable to leave. There is no exit within a repetition and there is no exit without repetition." (Simon Critchley).

"The passage to be commented on has been distributed to you. Perhaps you should not take it with you. The texts of the Oral Law that have been set into writing should never be separated from their living commentary. When the voice of the exegetist no longer sounds--and who would dare believe it reverberates long in the ears of its listeners--the texts return to their immobility, becoming once again enigmatic, strange, sometimes even ridiculously archaic" (Emmanuel Levinas).

The Ghazal's Problem

2008-10-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

A ghazal's biggest flaw is often its radif
I wince in pain as soon as I see the radif

For I know it's the one word that the writer will have to
Maneuver around like a spider - in thrall to the radif

It rules us; it toys with us. We are enslaved by
Its every whim. Bow down at the great shrine of Radif!

It stands holy, erected, a temple of stone
Gray and unmoving, a sphinx's mask: the radif

But at once, it is invisible if I can crack the code
And fashion my lines to call attention from the radif

So that the great, meaty god's head withers and fades
Like a gorgon under spell until it is nothing more
Than the shadow of a radif.

2008-10-26T15:25:00.001-07:00

There's something lonely about a ship in the ocean.
Voluntarily solitary in the ocean.

Vast stretches of land reside in the plains of the mind.
Brevity knows no place when we speak of the ocean.

No particle, no tract of understanding, absorbs.
There is no soundtrack accompanying the ocean.

Fate, hope and tragedy oft do work in harmony.
Lonely sailors abandon their words for the ocean.

New, meaningful words do not come to ears lost at sea.
Nothing is novel once you set sail on your ocean.

Mother ship, she just carries, and has not found the words.
Searching for purpose, oblivious to the ocean.

It's the saddest existence to have no dock in view.
The weight of the burden gives meaning to the ocean.

Amazing

2008-10-24T07:29:00.000-07:00

"In many ways I feel amazing."
So many ways to feel amazing

Maybe he had a moment of clarity
Or maybe he just feels amazing

He's talking like he joined a cult.
Maybe the cult is amazing

footnote boggle

2008-10-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

a footnote to this vocal trap
will yield static to the ear.

all’s been said constructed and framed
then why bother? why fret? why fear?

you’ve made your way, guessed the answer,
deciphered the word, proved career!

yet you’re stuck, boggled, over-well-done,
sacrificed time, strength, blood and tear.

thus a crumbling of spirit,
you no longer feel cavalier.

empty, aimless, purposelessness;
rains, winds, a blackened sky unclear.

to what text does one turn? what air?
this breath of Steve. your atmosphere.

Negate panpsychism’s impossibility

2008-10-23T17:17:00.000-07:00

Negate panpsychism’s impossibility,
Live the death of your mind/matter duality.

Becoming dust is way beyond imagining,
The essence of friendship, pure actuality.

Help me fail to forget we live on planet wine,
Enrich impoverished notions of reality.

The pestilence of human labor is a spring
From fertile infernal dimensionality.

Procure me verse to envenom the universe,
Deep inseminating form, not formality.

Around the abyss of your radical event
Angels sing hymns in bliss to abnormality.

Down to his fingers, down to his toes, Nicola
Feels the non-existence of triviality.

Posting Ghazals

2008-10-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

As requested, invitations have been sent out to all Ghazalville ghazalists to join the blog and post ghazals here.

Ghazalville Three

2008-09-24T04:38:00.000-07:00

Ghazalville Three will take place on Wednesday October 22, 8:30-10:30 p.m.

Freddy's Bar & Backroom
485 Dean St.
Brooklyn, NY

Readings by Ryan Dobran, Laurynn Lowe, Isabel Martin, Nicola Masciandaro et al. + Open Mike

Here's a map.

Want to read your ghazals? Contact Nicola Masciandaro (nicolam@brooklyn.cuny.edu).

Ghazalville Two: The Report

2008-09-19T07:36:00.000-07:00

"Wonderful," said one. "Sparkling," said another. "Staring into the ashes of my beloved's abandoned campfire," said someone else. In a word, Ghazalville Two was a very good (and increasingly crowded) place to be, and here are the pictures (lovingly provided by Scott Dexter) to prove it:

Debilitating couplets from a heavy metal cripple.

Howard, laying down the laws of love, and camels. Note frightenly calligraphic hand!

Laurynn, inwardly acknowledging the awesomeness of her muse.

Joseph grabbing the ghazal jugularwise and never letting go.

Cosmopolitan man of mystery and Hispano-Arabist qawwal.

Green and silent golden accompaniment.

Thanks again to the ghazalists: Ryan Dobran, Joseph Herceg, Scott Lindenbaum, Isabel Martin, Nicola Masciandaro, H.D. Miller, and Elizabeth Oluwole.

Stay tuned for info on Ghazalville Three.

Ghazalville Two

2008-08-15T10:39:00.000-07:00

Ghazalville Two will take place on Wednesday September 17, 8:30-10:30 p.m.

Freddy's Bar & Backroom
485 Dean St.
Brooklyn, NY

Readings by Ryan Dobran, Robert Donohue, Joseph Herceg, Scott Lindenbaum, Laurynn Lowe, Isabel Martin, Fayre Makeig, Nicola Masciandaro, Dan Remein, et al. + Open Mike!

Here's a map.

Want to read your ghazals? Contact Nicola Masciandaro (nicolam@brooklyn.cuny.edu).

Ghazalville One: Report, Photos

2008-08-13T07:29:00.000-07:00

Ghazalville's poet-seedlings sprouted wonderfully last night at Freddy's, and much more peacefully and promisingly than Cadmus's dragon teeth. The inaugural ghazal was provided by Mike Alexander who, unable to make the trip from Texas, posted this over at The Sonnet Board:

All the ghazals you'll need at Freddy's bar
Poets you'll find to heed at Freddy's bar

Take the two or the three train to Bergan street
Or hurry by cab to read at Freddy's bar

Qafiyahs pronounced in Brooklynese
Let our radifs stampede at Freddy's bar

Sher & sher alike barbaric yawps
But no whitmanic greed at Freddy's bar

Alas, I will not make it to the open mic
Indulgences I plead at Freddy's bar

Next came the main course, a slew of shers from Nicola Masciandaro, Joseph Herceg, Isabel Martin, and Dan Remein.

For dessert: a collaborative ghazal improvised on the audience-provided radif "you think," served simultaneously with a surprise ghazal by Ryan Dobran, whose "you think" contributions got out of hand in a very good way.

Here are some pictures, which speak, but not louder than the words that were spoken:

Joseph, strong verse from small paper.

Heather, feeling the magic.

Isabel, destroying the crowd without drums.

Dan, being inimitable.

Ryan, happy hitting the nail on the head.

The spirit of collaboration, and spirits.

Nicola, initiating teleportation to another world (this one).

Stay tuned for scheduling of Ghazalville Two!

Ghazalville One

2008-05-14T06:19:00.000-07:00

Ghazalville One will take place on Tuesday August 12th, 7-9 p.m. at

Freddy's Bar & Backroom
485 Dean St.
Brooklyn, NY

Readings by Marika Dey, Joseph Herceg, Isabel Martin, Nicola Masciandaro, Dan Remein, et al. + Open Mike!

Here's a map.

Want to read your ghazals? Contact Nicola Masciandaro (nicolam@brooklyn.cuny.edu).