There’s Rumi in Here

Part of what I hope to achieve through these writings is to round out the consumer experience with us here at Beautiful Idiots LLC, or to provide context to the creative process in hopes of bringing the audience closer to the essence of the art we’re sharing… basically I’m telling you stuff so you can get to know us so you can enjoy the songs more when they come out. You get it. It’s like… never mind. You get it.

Anyway, that’s all just to say I was flipping through an old poetry book I have, The Essential Rumi and I came across a couple poems I think pair nicely with the upcoming Roe’s Garden release, “Where Do You Go” (presave). The feelings in these poems and this song are like…some kind of wine and some kind of cheese… I don’t really do wine or cheese; I should’ve picked another metaphor.

Rumi was a Persian poet from the 13th century, introduced to me by one of my professors at Chapman University. I want to share these poems here because the feeling I get when I read “A Thirsty Fish” or “Enough Words” is the same longing I was aiming for with the lyrics and the visual aesthetic of the clips I’ve been sharing for Where Do You Go. A sense of tragic beauty that arises when you sit in silence - the love that a romantic believes would balance out an immense loneliness. The insatiable desire that burns in the artist’s stomach that forces them to cry out into the void. Or something like that.

Hope you like these poems. They helped inspire the song. I could’ve just said that.

Poem 1

A THIRSTY FISH

I don’t get tired of you. Don’t grow weary of being compassionate toward me!

All this thirst equipment must surely be tired of me, the water jar, the water carrier.

I have a thirsty fish in me that can never find enough of what it’s thirsty for!

Show me the way to the ocean! Break these half-measures, these small containers.

All this fantasy and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave that rose last night in the courtyard hidden in the center of my chest.

Joseph fell like the moon into my well. The harvest I expected was washed away. But no matter.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat. I don’t want learning, or dignity, or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble, but I’m not going with them.

This is how it always is when I finish a poem.

A great silence comes over me, and I wonder why I ever thought to use language.

Poem 2

ENOUGH WORDS

How does a part of the world leave the world? How can wetness leave water?

Don’t try to put out a fire by throwing on more fire! Don’t wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run, your shadow more than keeps up. Sometimes, it’s in front!

Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you! What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break the glass cover on your heart, and there’s no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe. When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout on you, be quieter than a dove. Don’t open your mouth for even a cooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake cannot get it. Then the frog climbs back out and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake would hear through the hiss the information he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent, then the snake would go back to sleeping, and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in that silent breath.

And that grain of barley is such that, when you put it in the ground, it grows.

Are these enough words, or shall I squeeze more juice from this? Who am I, my friend?