New year...new beginnings... and glimpses of times past

During my yearly tradition of a trip down memory lane which I always engage in at the start of a new year, I came across this one... I wrote this in the summer of '07

Random thoughts I wrote down one night. Upon rereading, I was startled at the intensity of the emotions stated.

HIM

Your memory took my breath away just now...

my heart explodes and shrinks.

I cannot breathe.

I see you as you sit across from me on that chair,

I watch you as you write...

You lean forward to kiss me,

Where are you?

I feel your soul...

I need your soul.

I am consumed by your memory.

No.

Wait.

I am incinerated by the image of our souls.

Together.

Locked in their timeless dance...

Gaze into my eyes...

Let me gaze into yours.

Let my soul speak to yours,

again...

again...

one more time...

always.

My soul cried out for yours today.

It tore at the bars I placed in its way.

It broke free,

and danced with joy at the sight of your memory...

While,

My subdued and broken will cried an ocean of tears.

I could not contain my soul-

It danced with your memory

Jealously protecting your essence in its embrace.

It would not let me erase you from my being.

Alas!

I shall carry you with me always.

And yet, never have you.

I have no need of you,

But what of your soul?

Mine has laid claim to yours...

I am helpless.

Torn apart.

I laugh for joy in ecstasy...

Or do I cry in the depths of despair?

I do both.

Soul in exaltation...

Will and reality in defeat.

Now I know I have felt true love.

It has a life of its own...

I do not own it.

I cannot control it.

It does what it will.

It asks nothing of me,

But that it be set free...

just to be,

to remember,

to dance.

It feels joy in the warmth of our souls' connection.

It pays homage to our sacred bond.

Like a pilgrim round its Ka'abah...

Labbaik!

...here I come...

It flies to you...

to your memory,

to your essense,

to your being,

to your spirit.

While here my body-

My earthly shell

watches.

Helpless.

Mesmerized.

Amazed.

I have no control over it

...

So

I dance.

The dance of my soul.

While tears flow,

unchecked

down my cheeks.

I now understand

the trance of the dervish.

How he dances

in himself.

In his beloved,

he is lost.

He has nothing to give

and nothing left to lose...

he has at last

merged

with his love.

Their souls have blended.

Become one.

If only in memory...

And so he dances.

With joy.

With ecstasy.

The soul is at peace on a different plane.

The body and will in torment.

Like a drug

you fill my being

But it is not you.

It is your spirit.

My eyelids are heavy as I begin to hallucinate.

I feel the warm desert sand beneath my bare feet.

In the dusk of the setting sun,

I can smell the musky odor of your skin-

taste the salt of my tears on my lips.

There is such peace

and yet such emptiness-

Such a sense of being

and yet

a sense of vastness.

I am FOUND at the same moment that I am LOST...

I hear the flutes play and the drums,

"Come to Salavation"

I am in a trance.

I am high.

Intoxicated.

Like a mirage is our dance.

So vivid.

So real,

Yet merely a reflection.

Here now,

and gone in a second.

It is like our LOVE.

We feel it

And then,

It eludes us.

Keeping us forever guessing...

Is it real?