Send me chips and an unabridged list of your nicknames
terms of endearment and scorn and worship and ridicule
and chance–decompositon and chance and accordions and chance
riding away on a glittery tram with an ad for the water you want. Meanwhile, you must
remain as in ruminate as in Rumi’s
years without Shams
Maybe I just typed Shames and maybe in their origin story Shams
approaches Rumi in a library a Rumi surrounded by piles of books
glowing and gilded and bent in half like hats or open bare and butterflied and Shams
gestures to this spectacle and is like what’s this and Rumi is immediately all
o you wouldn’t know but before he finishes Shams sets the books and library on fire
then it’s Rumi’s turn for what’s this [except incredulous] and Shams for o you wouldn’t know.
Meaning sun in Arabic Shams was a Ra was heliomantic
or the most subversive thing you could do is go by your own sun dial
unacknowledged yet more true like their romance yes platonic but what did plato know about love in
the warmth of love, hello choose hello
hello
Shams fucking rocked. I taught Rumi’s work in a long ago class at the New School, and Shams’s rocking-ness was not lost on me. I mean, he inspired a guy to whirl around a pillar, and dervishes been whirling ever since. That’s rocking. And whirling.
Ahhhh! I wish I could’ve been in that class! Yeah Shams FTW