True Love
POETRY FORMAT, 12 Sep 2016
Bhakta Joseph P. – TRANSCEND Media Service
Come, my beloved,
Let me taste your ambrosial nectar.
I have had my fill of this cruel world: tainted
The taste of misery upon my lips.
Only You can take away these pangs.
Your love – the remedy
For all sensual desire.
I wish only to bask in Your light; to
Suffocate in Your strong embrace.
So come now, my sweet Govinda
Fulfill my desire and lay waste the longings
Of my heart, for only Your love can
Complete me.
The only peace and happiness
The only love that’s true
Is that which comes from God
The love He has for you.”
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Bhakta Joseph P. is an inmate at a Correctional Center in Illinois, USA.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 12 Sep 2016.
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Obviously, Bhakta Joseph P. has talent. I must confess, though, that on first reading this, I wondered if I was reading a modern translation of an old Hindu text, or an early love poem by Tagore, or something of that sort.
For a few years of my life, while a young Instructor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville, I volunteered to teach poetry at nearby Florida State Prison and Union Correctional Institution. I learned to appreciate the fact that, while many of the inmates lacked technical skills, their life-experiences provided them with a well of experiences–good, bad, and, sometimes, terrible–from which to draw buckets overflowing with poetic insights and truths.
I hope Bhakta will familiarize himself with more modern poets, especially the work of the “Beat” poets like Ginsberg, Snyder (especially good for “devotional” poems about Zen, etc.), Ferlinghetti, Levertov, et. al. Other poets who may interest him are African-American poets Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.
There are many ways to express love–even the profound love of the Divine. How can we speak in the language of these times to address ancient and modern wounds and striving?