Ygdrasil: A Journal of the Poetic Arts -- November 2002
November 2002
Editor: Klaus J. Gerken
Production Editor: Pedro Sena
European Editor: Moshe Benarroch
Contributing Editors: Martin Zurla; Rita Stilli; Michael Collings; Jack R. Wesdorp
ISSN 1480-6401
The Teachings Of Baraka
By
MOSHE BENARROCH
1.
I am Baraka
I read your heart
when you read my words
I am Baraka
wherever there is light
there I am
wherever there is war
there I am not.
I am Baraka
I light your way
when you trust me
and lead your way
when you look for me
I live in your soul
since the day
your soul was born
before you were body
before you were sand.
I am Baraka
I am blessing
and the stopping of blessing
I am the light that is too much
to see, when blindness looms in
I dim, when darkness circles
I am light
I am Baraka
I don't come from the past
and I don't seek the future
I am Baraka
I am not
the present
2.
Baraka is good for you
you can spread the word
or spread it on your skin
Baraka is light on your fears
I am Baraka
I am good for you
I am free for you
all you have to do
is touch me with your thoughts
and I come to you
wherever you fight
I am Baraka
a multinational industry
I have the rays you need
the money you will never need
I have the papers on which
you will never write
I have the job of your life
the partner you have been looking for
when you open your arms to me
I am there
I am there forever
3.
Where there is war
Baraka is not
Where there is greed
Baraka is not
Baraka is
poetry
music
silence
Baraka is not
prose
newspapers
television
Baraka
is
Elohim
Yhwh
God
Allah
Dieu
Dios
Deus
Baraka
is the El Shadday
the El who said enough
because the world was too much
I stop when you can't handle me
when too much is too much
4.
When I see the innocent child
I cry
from happiness
When I see the decaying old man
whose skin has been eaten
by greediness
I laugh
from sadness
The world was not meant for decay
That's why I have entered the word
Baraka
will create
lights without shadows
shadows that warm the sun
a moon as yellow
as the deepest ocean
Baraka
is silence
Baraka
is gold.
5.
Baraka supports all the minorities in the world,
Baraka is forever a minority,
Baraka is for the Jews, the Palestinians, Indians,
the Amazighs, The Basques, the Galicians,
the Kurds, the Armenians
wherever a child cries for his lost home
you will find Baraka
wherever someone can't speak his own words
that's where Baraka prays
wherever there are lost poets
Baraka is,
wherever the homeless lives
Baraka is,
Think of me as the foam of the wave
A wave can caress the newborn
A wave can bury a city.
6.
I am Baraka
I live in your kitchens
when the food is made with love
you will not be strangled by food
I live in your apples
and in your rice
When you end your meal
say Baraka
and say it again
Baraka
and your material food
will become spiritual guidance.
7.
Baraka is not in your guns
and not in your tanks
and no matter how much you lie
you can't put Baraka
in your weapons
Baraka is too small and too big
to be there.
8.
Where there is pain
there is longing
and there Baraka is
But Baraka prefers to be
where there is joy
and there is life
where there is love from light
and not love from shadows
Baraka
is there with you
at your darkest hour
when no friend
wants to see you
when your love has left you
Baraka caresses you.
9.
Baraka is simple
as truth should be simple
where people tell you
that their truth is so complex
that you cannot understand it
Baraka is not present
Because Baraka is clear water
no mud will show you the deepness of the ocean
and no cloud can make you see the sun
Baraka is simplicity
when you hear something
and you know
deep inside you
that what you hear is true
then that is Baraka.
10.
I am Baraka
when you eat I clean your table
when your table is empty
I bring you food.
I am Baraka
I teach you
what you already know
that death is impossible
our deeds create it
that life is infinite
our deeds stop it
that there is a flow of life
we cannot stop.
11.
I am Baraka
I break
fast
all that stops my way
to freedom
I despise
those who sell
their freedom
for lentils
I am Baraka
my country
despises
borders.
12.
I am Baraka
I play the piano
like a drunk
but it sounds like Mozart
When you believe in keys
all the doors open.
13.
When Baraka dies
Baraka resurrects
Baraka lives in death
Baraka dies in Life
Nothing can be greener
than the decay
and the dying
of the light.
14.
Remember the neighbor who helped you
when most needed
there I was
Baraka lives when people talk
Baraka laughs when people love
Baraka disappears when there is a fight
He waits in a cave
until the clouds
start to rain.
15.
When Baraka is a painter
he paints
only clouds
clouds change all the time
they have faces and are unknown
they have fingerprints
and the white
changes every second
Baraka changes like a cloud.
16.
Baraka is Jimi Hendrix
Janis Joplin, Van Gogh, John Coltrane,
Gram Parsons, Jim Morrison,
Townes Van Zandt, Lounes Matoub
Baraka lives in them
and their art
17.
Say Baraka
repeat again Baraka
again and again
Baraka
sing Baraka
pray Baraka
dance Baraka
again and again
a thousand times
write Baraka
Baraka
Baraka
Until you see the bottom of the ocean
the top of the sky
Baraka Baraka
Baraka
18.
Always forgive
Never forget
All that is buried
comes back
new words
for old atrocities
Old words
for the new oppression.
19.
If you are afraid of death
it is because you are alive
The dead are not afraid of death.
20.
Baraka is not god nor human
Baraka is not substance
Baraka is not nothing
Baraka says:
The woman
in me
will
one day be
the man who can
live
with her.
21.
I can clean the ocean
from its salt
I can stop the rain
and the tears
I can destroy the waves
I am one
in my oneness
one in my
onlyness
one in my
nothingness
There is no end
to my end.
22.
99 steps lead to the door
the key is 66 times
smaller
than the
grave
in which
an old man still alive
shouts
open this door
but no one hears him
the cemetery is deserted
No one hears him
except the black ant
on the black stone
in the black night.
23.
You've lost me
said my friend
I don't know
what you are talking about
It is
I says
because I am lost
but it is also
and more so
because you
are lost.
24.
The lost man seeks solace
in the hand of the master
who is also lost
in the mind of his master
but the lost man
believes in what he finds
he needs a teacher
he believes the teacher exists
Baraka says
there are no teachers
the only teacher is Baraka
and Baraka is you
inside you
outside you
and the life
you have never leaved.
25.
Many lives we live in one life
but none the right one
many lives we imagine
should be ours
but none of them
is the real one
I have heard the eagle in the sky
he says the same he said
to our ancestors
he says
I am Baraka
as you are Baraka
I suck blood
from dead bodies.
26.
Baraka does not write in languages
he does not live in tongues
not many and not one
his poetry is the poetry of sound
of words, not of language
his poetry is the poetry of your words
if you can read it
you are Baraka
If you can't Baraka
is not for you
and Baraka urges you
to seek
another teacher
for Baraka is not a teacher
he is only Baraka.
27.
Baraka says:
Don't ask me a question
if you seek the answer within me
ask the question
only if you know the answer
is
within you.
28.
Baraka is the great deceiver
whenever you think
you are seeing him
you are in front of the mirror
when you think
you've heard his voice
he is in another planet
whenever you think
you understand what he said
you are already mad enough
to speak with horses
ask questions
from birds
receive answers from trees
everything on this planet
is talking to you
except Baraka
Baraka is silence.
29.
When despair is everything in your life
there is no more despair
you can laugh at it all
as if you were never born
when everything is lost
everything is won
when you have nothing to lose
you have won
The sky and the sea, the air and the water
is yours
your naked body belongs to the wind
it comes and goes
and goes
and never
comes back.
30.
Baraka is the teacher who cannot teach
Baraka is the teacher
who does not want to teach
Baraka is blind
Baraka is deaf
Baraka is mute
Don't follow Baraka
he doesn't know where to go
Baraka is the fences
not the way
Baraka is the wheel
not the car
If you follow Baraka
you'll find yourself
Don't trust yourself
and trust the others
even less
Baraka is trust.
31.
Listen to the sound of the bird in the garden
of the noisy big city
he's trying to say something he knows
his singing is not for beauty
his singing is a message
from ancient planets
a message
from forgotten gods
a message
from people
who were and hadn't
who weren't and won
who lost and came back
The sound of the bird is Baraka
but Baraka is also the sound of the machines
that dissipate the beauty of the bird.
32.
You have sinned my lord
and we are all clean
You have sinned my lord
and no one can forgive you
we are too busy
asking for
your forgiveness
We are man my lord
human kind
dusty dust, windy wind
we are leaves in autumn
we are the rays of the sun
my lord my lord
Baraka is forgiveness
for sins never sinned
Baraka is the flame and the ray
the water that bleeds
the sound of the wind
in a tornado
the mud when the child walks
the rain when the old man dies
Baraka cries sometimes
but not with tears
he cries the history of the centuries
Baraka cries the past
Baraka cries years.
33.
My son my son
who's your mother?
your father's lost
in crazy centuries
looking for peace
where there is only blood
he looks at the skies
and the skies
are below the ground
he looks at the sea
but the fish
are in the skies
My son, my son
why did you kill your father?
why did your mother run away from you?
My son, my son, you are now alone
the loneliness of god
has become your fate
run from sea to sea
from land to land
running is your country and your family.
34.
Men eat cows/
men raise cows
and they always need more.
Now imagine this/
some other civilization
extraterrestrial
lives from the soul of men
a substance emitted
by the death of people
and they start raising up more people.
Baraka says
a man must be crazy
to think this.
Baraka is crazy.
35.
Baraka speaks with God
when God sleeps
he is afraid of God
when God speaks
He has asked God many questions
the answers
came back to him
through the birds
That's why
Baraka
won't speak
with birds.
36.
Baraka says:
Beware of words
don't use the words
love or truth
lightly
unless
you have seen
what others should
see
Don't say there is no love in this world
for it might
hit you
when less
expected.
37.
Baraka says:
I write poetry
because it is
the closest thing
to
doing nothing
I am a poet
because it
is the closest thing
to being no one
I am a poet
because
I don't exist
someone who must die
cannot exist.
38.
Baraka says:
I am not a wise man
for wise men
in the end of times
don't write poems
and don't even say a word
their only wisdom left
is silence
Baraka knows the world
is ill from too many words
but he cant's help
but add his own
He is weak and ill
when it comes to words.
39.
Baraka loves the sea
but does not
trust the sea
he knows that behind every wave
lies a storm
below every fish the memory
of a shark
Baraka knows
a giant wave
bigger than the twin towers
will one day erase his city
but Baraka needs the sea
as much as he needs the sun
and air
and poetry.
40.
The Jews were chosen by God
to carry the stone
of the father and the son
from birth to grave
from dusk to dawn
and light the day
with a match
Jews were chosen
because God is free
to chose
the last to be the first
Baraka says:
So are we,
we can choose the chair
in which we sit
even if it has three legs.
41.
Baraka is the child
beaten by his father
Baraka is God
when his people
look the other way
Baraka is not the child
beating his sister
nor God
destroying
men.
42.
Baraka says:
You cannot burn ashes twice
that's why I don't see evil
where there is light
and that's why
I have closed the doors
on Mephisto and his gang
Once you know you are mortal
you cannot be killed twice
Be free and
talk
from
the bottom of your heart.
43.
Baraka says:
truth should be simple
and clear
clear as the blue
in the skies
in a day without clouds
simple as the whiteness
of the cloud
in a day without skies
When you hear it
you will feel it is
the truth
when you see it
your eyes
should shine.
Copyright (c) 2002 Moshe Benarroch
HTTP://www.authorsden.com/moshebenarroch
All poems copyrighted by their respective authors. Any reproduction of
these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.
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