The strangeness this poem exhibits is its music: watch it break to pieces as it shoots towards somewhere like a body spiraling through atmosphere. Or, more grounded: the poem is an air that dangles over earth as if it resided there -- a voice saying "look more like what I speak, " while the earth drifts, stubbornly, by.

Ya Musa, I want to hit you where your blood hasn't reached; a river pain, a rock pain. Strike you so your blood springs towards things like another heart; you who're stranger to my word.

***

Al Khidr says nothing. It's Musa who believes his lesson music. 

He saw no grounding in his lesson, so he called it unfounded. 

He found his lesson unfounded, so he dubbed it music.  

There's a piece of us in words; we bury it in them like the lung we hope will wgrow, will wblow again.

Tawasin of Clarity

The truth is particular; its paths are narrow. In it, howling fires burn; beside it, deep deserts span -- the stranger travels them & tells others of the forty stations (maqamat) he meets along the way. Such as:

manners (adab), awe (rahab), fatigue (nasab), search (talab), wonder (‘ajab), ruin (‘atab), rapture (tarab), ravenousness (sharah), pureness (nazah), clarity (safa’), sincerity (sidq), company (rifq), emancipation (litq), embarking (taswih), rest (tarwih), providing, (tamani), witnessing (shuhud), existence (wujud), enumeration (‘add), labor (kada), restoration (rada), extension (imtidad), self-reliance (‘itadad), isolation (infirad), obedience (inqiyad), attraction (murad), reflection (tadabbur), presence (hudur), exercise (riyada), circumspection (hiyata), study (iftiqad), resistence (istilad), consideration (tadabbur), perplexity (tahayyur), contemplation (tafakkur), patience (tasabbur), interpretion (ta’abbur), refusal (rafd), criticism (naqd), care (ri’aya), guidance (hidaya), beginning (bidaya) In beginning is the station for the people of clarity (safa) & mysticism (sufwaya). For each station there’s a principle -- known and unknown.

He entered the desert, then conquered it, & passed though it. He didn’t belong to the lagging people of the mountains & the plains. “When Musa fulfilled the term” (28:29), he left his people to become a kin to truth. But he was satisfied with tales deprived of vision. There was a cleft (farqan) between him from the best of humankind; he said: “perhaps I’ll bring you some word” (28:29). If the guided one was satisfied with tales, how is the seeker not with the sign? At the Burning Bush, he didn’t hear the bush, or what appeared before his eyes. My form is like that Bush; these are His words, so they are the truth -- the truth is a creation. Reject the created world, so you may be Him or He you, regarding the truth. “I” is the modifier, & the modifier is modified; the modifier is with truth, so how is it modified? The True says to him: “You guide towards the proof, not the proven; I am the proof’s proof.”

The True conveyed me to the truth;
there is my secret & this is the way.

My secret is witness without my;
there is my secret & this is the way.

[The True spoke unto my heart; with knowledge of my tongue. He drew me in through distance & made me a Chosen One.]

- al Hallaj

***

الحقيقة دقيقة، طرقها مضيقة، فيها نيران شهيقة ودونها مفاوز، عميقة، الغريب سلكها يخبر عن قطع مقامات الأربعين مثل :
مقام الأدب، والرهب، والسبب والطلب، والعجب، والعطب، والطرب، والشره، والنزه، والصفاء، والصدق، والرفق، والعتق، والتسويح، والترويح، والتماني، والشهود، والوجود، والعد، والكد، والرد، والامتداد، والاعتداد، والانفراد، والانقياد، والمراد، والشهود، والحضور، والرياضة، والحياطة، والافتقاد، والاصطلاد، والتدبر، والتحير، والتفكر، والتصبر، والتغير، والرفض، والنقض، والرعاية، والهداية، والبداية، فهي مقام أهل الصفاء والصفوية.
ولكل مقام معلوم مفهوم وغير مفهوم
ثم دخل على المفازة وحازها، ثم جازها، فما لأهل المهل، مر الجبل والسهل (فلما  قضى موسى الأجل)  ترك الأهل حين صار للحقيقة أهلاً ومع ذلك كله رضي بالخبر دون النظر ليكون فرقاً بينه وبين خير البشر،  فقال: لعلي آتيكم منها بخبر، فإذا رضي المهتدي بالخبر، فكيف لا يكون المقتدي على الأثر ؟ من الشجرة  من جانب الطور ما سمع من شجرة، ما سمع من برزه، ومثلي مثل تلك الشجرة، هذا كلامه، فالحقيقة والحقيقة خليقة، دع الخليقة، لتكون أنت هو، أو هو أنت من حيث الحقيقة، لأني واصف، والموصوف واصف، والواصف بالحقيقة فكيف الموصوف، فقال له الحق (أنت تهدي إلى الدليل لا إلى المدلول، وأنا دليل الدليل). [من مخلع البسيط]
صيرني  الحق بالحقيقة
        هناك سري وذي الطريقه
شاهد سري بلا ضميري
        هناك سري وذي الطريقه
[قال الحق: وحدثني عن قلبي، ومن علم بلساني، وقربني له بعد بعدي وجعلني من الخواص واصطفاني]

الحلاج

Hallaj:

As the moth once told his sect: "I've got nothing in me but" body; fire for the it I'm not satisfied by. An air resides, therein -- pursued by light like a mirror. To the moth, the space between himself & the flame is a sea of distances, carrying him back to nowhere --

Adhem:

Our Lords trade like for like,
over oceans; in New

England, for example,
where the scent of fire

gives body to the autumn air, one'll
also finds places to disappear

insha' Allah. Praise be to Him who started all
creation, & then repeated it; like someone

on a podium once said: he "who
holds you over a pit," as if upon

a thread, "keeps you from"
terror; fire; ire; err.  O, O.

Mystical writing

Adhem: 

Reality parts before the mystic. In the instant of truth, no characteristic asserts itself more strongly than the artificiality of the experience. For if this experience reveals anything worth while to the mystic, it requires a sense of its own making in order to distinguish itself from the mundane. While the former testifies to the particular aspects of its own made-ness (whether it be pieced together by God or generated by the mystic himself), the latter does not contain any sense of sequence; only accident. The former explains why mystic writers spend so much attention on elaborate systems of signs and letters; these are divine sequences stripped down to the particles of signification. To bow down before an order that has no conceivable truth outside that which the Creator holds secret – this is the first task of the mystic. The second is to do the impossible work of translation; he shares the burden of proof with God. Hallaj differentiates the man who can tell of his experience, with one who is consumed by it. He wrote his book on burning parchment to reveal the difference between the duration of fire and the duration of God. He said to his companions: "Look not to me, but to fire; this body is the shadow of what glows & is destroyed there."

The Lord began creation, then repeated it.

Naked

after Burroughs

The mouth is parted from the sphincter in name; but to the illiterate, the body is only an extension of either. Mouthly, a man is as good as his word: sphincterly, a tear where're he sits. A man is put together & torn apart each moment.

Sphinx-like, one man bows down before the throne he earned; the other takes his place on it. It is difficult to tell which is led by the mouth, & which by the sphincter.