The Dante aficionado might ask where, in this contemporary multi-faith retelling of the Divine Comedy, is Purgatory? The answer is that it is not a separate dimension but was present in each depth of hell - the 'not this, not this' rejection of solidified might in Hell Rock for instance - there is no progress without it - and further purgations are required at and as a condition of progress on every flight of heaven except the last.
At the end of each heaven, the grail quester's lovecrafts (inner space vessels) disappear like mirages. The reward for navigating and mastering a heaven is a new lovecraft capable of getting them through the next one. At the end of the quest, they realise that even the highest lovecraft is unnecessary. During it, nothing else will do. The lovecrafts are:
First heaven - the Kaleidoscope
Second heaven - the Lotos
Third heaven- the Zeus
Fourth heaven - the Lucifer
Fifth heaven - the Buddha
Sixth heaven- the Lancelot
Heaven 001
What happens
O Who Ru and Who Am I are lost in dreamland, trying to work out where they are. They describe the psychedelic delights they hear, see and scent there, gradually accessing and fully mastering the heaven, learning to trust its sixth sense (intuition). They have moved beyond reason into a sphere driven by faith and love but their descriptions are a vision, a seeing faith not a blind one. They are guided through this enchanting heaven by the face of the Divine Beloved's face which ultimately leads them beyond it.
Form and technique
A ghazal couplet translated from Hafiz is extended into a dialogue between the two grail astro-knights. An English ghazal then describes the heaven in energetic surging couplets performed in the style of a psychedelic popsong/beat poem.
'Death plunge'- the death of gross self interest in love.
'Held fast' is a paradox. They might fly their inner space craft at immense speed following all the attractions of this heaven but this would not be real progress, in fact it would be stasis. A long shot of the Beloved's Eye holds them 'fast' - a stilled meditation that actually speeds through the heaven.
The allegory
In heaven, the allegorical level is the reality. We enter the allegory as a real place. These heavens really exist within the human being and in fact are more real - increasingly so as the soul ascends them- than the material world.
The West has made Hell its favourite book of Dante. The Christian Hell remains powerful, in gothic horror if not in sermons. The feeble Christian Heaven - if we even have one beyond a harp chord in a cloud - is hardly a vision to die for. Or live for. The American Dream has become a nightmare. This is a quest for a deeper one that doesn't. Uninterrupted cogitations on hell, on our sub-human being ( the news, art without redemption, the endless lust-greed-anger habit streams of our consciousness etc etc) make us lose our true bearings. The unthinkable becomes not just thinkable but 'normal'. These are visions, seven heavens, of increasingly human being.
If you love long enough, you start to ascend through 7 inner heavens. This is the first of those seven. In an ordinary person this would be a dream but here the lover is awake, increasingly conscious of and able to direct his/her unconscious drives.
lyrics
Kas nadnist kih manzilgah-I-maqsud kujast
In qadar hast kih bang-jarasi miayad (Hafiz)
*Where the real dwelling of the Divine Beloved is, is not clear
Only that I hear the sound of bells (from the travelling caravans)”
Such celestial music! Are we dreaming, like those sleepwalkers?
Yes. But we’re awake. We are our dreams come true.
So- this is the uniform of my dreams?
Yes. Because you like to be in control!
But you like me in it?
You’re my dream girl!
Is that a bell or my heart ringing? Where are we? Oh, it’s a school! And you’re my dream teacher!
Let the lesson begin!
So I death-plunge to a black hole, in a wild spin, out of space,
With my mind jazd, but my heart stays on its flight path to your Face.
Crossing dream land’s timeless rainbow which my Earth-eyes sweep for gold:
Wept effulgence of the star-cheeked, laughing gas tears, of your Face.
I’m absorbing unabsorbed-in astral heaven’s purple haze,
Passing fairs’ kaleidoscopics of my shadow on your Face.
I pass ghost-ships on my wild wings lifting dream-high, stellar-fast,
Over planets tipped at light-speed down the bright planes of your Face.
Dazzling Path-knights rocket-science round some ace-high of their own;
My craft orbits round a Sun-heart with the image of your Face.
In this dream-town of a heaven, hidden angels are the birds
Pouring tree-song down like sunshine on a heart rung by your Face.
Singing fragrance– yet I’m held fast by the long shot of an Eye
So enchanting even sirens can’t distract me from your Face.
Smashing star-eyed with its earth-nose through Love’s cataract of lights
And my craft’s gone - but I’m still here, speeding heartlong to your Face…
O Kaleidoscope in Love-fall, O bright tunnel’s Lighted end,
Trust this sixth sense hyper-realing round the five Oned by that Face.
Performance poetry with a library card (voice & drum, folk ballads, ghazals, sonnets, beat poems, sound poems, raps) much
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