Save Yourself From Yourself (5 Sufi Poems)

1// Sometimes Daniel doesn’t sleep too well. His mind races around an invisible track; dances into all kinds of moving, breathing colours. It’s as if God had decided to start fondling him more tirelessly than usual.

“Cut  it out!” Daniel would scream. “You know I have a strong imagination and a tragic weakness for dreaming...”

“You’re doing it to yourself” God laughed, in reply. For God always permits everything to everyone – even masturbation.

2// Sweetheart, you might be a boy but you know everything there is to know about softness, tears, surrender. When a beautiful girl enters your world, you already know her. For one recognises best what they already are.

Daniel feels content in the presence of almost anything; under rainclouds in an unfamiliar forest; in the bed of a sweet-smelling stranger; writing on his laptop; drinking coffee; running through the dunes.

There are strange places you must continuously visit in order to realise that, in this life, and on this Godly kingdom, you are always Home.

Where you suffer most; the roads down which your own madness takes you, is where one should travel. For if you feel scared, confused, or in Fear my dear, you can rest assured that you’ve entered God’s greatest fantasy. And that he’ll surely enjoy you once you’re there.

3// Save yourself from yourself. Swear like a 21st century Sufi. Point out your own bullshit, as if you were in fact two people, face to face in conversation. Don’t doubt your insanity, for it’s a fact. There can be no ‘normal’; only ‘you’.

God and Daniel talk in a similar way. They usually start with a couple of morning insults, before sharing a cup of tea together, and then some cuddling. In the afternoon they go to work and usually ignore each other. By evening their fighting and love-making restarts. In this way God keeps Daniel humble, while he reminds her that she is truly capable of anything...

4// Everything Daniel writes is both true and untrue. That is God. That is perfection. The only thing that even God cannot always handle is laughter; for how can one laugh if not taken by surprise, and therefore somewhat a stranger to what’s happening.

And yet no one laughs quite like God does, for he is the ultimate stranger. Only when you really need a friend, or likewise an enemy, does he reveal himself.

Sometimes Daniel is still surprised by the anonymity of Him. He’ll call out God, God, where on Earth are you?... Probably on Mars tonight, he’d answer for him. Or maybe Jupiter.

Why don’t you come down here to help? He’d continue. But he’s everything, so how can he come ‘down’ from anywhere...

In this way God saves himself and others so much time, simply by being non-existent.

5// You are lucky enough to have a full harvest of apples this year, and yet they always seem to fall from the wrong tree. The flowers in your garden are every colour except the one you want. And you daren’t even pull them angrily out of the ground in order to better appreciate them.

When the sun is set and the moon high, invent yourself a new religion dedicated to the night sky. 

You’ll find Daniel lying down feverishly upon the grass, obsessing over which star should be the centrepiece of his worship. Once the lightning comes he’ll have an easy answer and can relax once more.

Did you enjoy this blog? If so, click here to support The Running Monk…