Dervish

This was inspired by a com­ment by Jef, else­where. Work­shop away, o my broth­ers.

I’m so dizzy
my head is spin­ning
like a whirlpool and
Rumi leaps past me
like some
great
cat
or
a
wild
horse;
he is drunk
again; or always
and the wind whips
his auguries
into
dust
dev­ils. He
keeps shout­ing
non­sense. Drunk I
tell you. He’s been
danc­ing for two days now
I don’t think he’ll
ever stop. I slept
last night and
woke with a
dream caught
in my throat like
a bit of sand. Rumi spun
by, white eyes white teeth
white hair like a dead bush
spin­ning, a cup of wine in
each hand shout­ing still
laugh­ing. SHUT UP
old man you make
me ill I can’t
keep up with
you You
must be drunk.
Don’t you know there
are lions in these hills?

7 thoughts on “Dervish”

  1. That rocks, Adam.

    I like the visu­al whirl of the poem too–and yet you don’t ruin it with bad­ly-cho­sen line­breaks or any­thing by try­ing to get the form to look like that.

    Impres­sive.

  2. some­what unre­lat­ed, you do know the first three lines of the poem are from Vic Reeves song ‘Dizzy’ (or was that the point?)

    I just kept want­i­ng to sing “..and it’s you, girl, mak­ing it spin. You’re mak­ing me Dizzy”

    This is not a crit­i­cism. I just found it amus­ing.

  4. while it was inten­tion­al, i’m not sure the filched lyrics work with the rest of the poem, which I liked. The ref­er­ence seemed too forced and unre­lat­ed. Unless I am miss­ing some­thing.

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